Friday, September 9, 2011

What is the speed of the plane with respect to the ground?

The compass in a plane indicates that the plane is heading west; its air speed indicator reads 238 km/hr. There is a steady wind blowing from the north with a speed of 60.4 km/hr. What is the speed of the plane with respect to the ground?|||Simple. Really. Think about it this way. You are flying east and the wind is blowing south. Where are you going to go? Somewhere between the south and the west right? Good. Let's draw a vector diagram. Draw the vector of the airplane going west. Now at the end of that vector, draw a vector going directly south. Label the first one the airplane speed of 238 km/h and label the second one windspeed of 60.4 km/h. Draw the hypotenuse to form a right triangle. Congratulations! You just added vectors together! Now, we just need to use Pythagorean Theorm to find out what the hypoentuse is. It is 245.5 km/h.





I hope I helped!|||The answer helped me a lot... thanks! =)

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