Honors Physics Midterm Review Problems – Part 1
1. A bus is traveling at 25 km/h and accelerates at 4.0 m/s2 for 6.2 seconds. What is its final
velocity in km/h?
2. A ball is thrown straight up into the air with an initial speed of 50 m/s. It is caught at the
same distance above the ground from which it was thrown.
a. How high does it rise?
b. How long does the ball remain in the air?
3. A 1000 N man sits in the center of a hammock. His weight causes the hammock to make
an angle of 75 to either side of the vertical. Will the hammock break if the rope is able
to sustain a force of 1500 N? (Hint make a vector diagram and calculate the tension force
in either side of the hammock)
4. A ball rolls down a frictionless inclined plane with an initial velocity of 0.2 m/s. The
plane is 1500 cm long and the ball reaches the bottom of the incline in five seconds.
a. What is the acceleration of the ball?
b. What is its final velocity?
c. What distance is traveled in the fifth second?
5. An 85 N box is suspended by two cables. Solve for the variables (F and θ) in the diagram
below.
F
76 N
θ
31º
85 N
6. A certain automobile manufacturer claims that its super-deluxe sports car will accelerate
uniformly from rest to a speed of 38.9 m/s in 8 seconds.
a. Determine the acceleration of the car.
b. How far does the car travel during this acceleration?
c. What is the velocity of the car 1 seconds after it begins its motion, assuming it
continues to accelerate at the same rate?
7. A ball rolls down an incline from an initial position. It accelerates uniformly at a rate of
3 m/s2. At a certain instant, the velocity of the ball is 0.15 m/s.
a. What is the velocity 20 seconds later?
b. What distance is traveled in 20 seconds?
c. What distance is traveled in the 20th second?
8. A brick falls freely from a high scaffold at a construction site.
a. What is its velocity after 4.5 seconds?
b. How far does it fall during this time?
9. An astronaut on the moon throws a wrench straight up at 4.0 m/s. Three seconds later it
is falling downwards at a velocity of 0.8 m/s.
a. What was the acceleration of the wrench after it left the astronaut’s hand?
b. How long did it take for the wrench to reach its highest point?
c. How high above the point from which it was released was the wrench at 3.o
seconds?
d. After release, how long did it take the wrench to return to the position from which
it was thrown?
10. A ball is thrown from the ground to the top of the school flagpole. If it returns to the
ground after 4.0 seconds, what is the height of the flagpole?
11. A punter kicks a football at an angle of 30 degrees with the horizontal at an n initial speed
of 20 m/s.
a. Where should a punt returner position himself to catch the ball just before it
strikes the ground?
b. How long will it take for the ball to reach the receiver?
c. How high will the ball go before heading back down towards the ground?
12. Divers at Acapulco dive from a cliff that is 61 m high. If the rocks below the cliff extend
outward for 23 m, what is the minimum horizontal velocity a diver must have to clear the
rocks safely?
13. A dart player throws a dart horizontally at a speed of 12.4 m/s The dart hits the board
0.32 m below the height from which it was thrown. How far away is the player from the
board?
14. A 42 km/h wind blows toward 215 degrees. What is the resultant velocity of a plane that
flies toward 125 degrees at 152 km/h?
15. A rock is dropped from a bridge to the water below. It takes 2.40 seconds for the rock to
hit the water.
a. Find the speed of the rock as it hits the water.
b. How high is the bridge above the water?
16. A ball I thrown downward from a 12 m building with an initial velocity of 21 m/s. Find
is velocity as it strikes the ground.
17. A stone is thrown from the top of a building with an initial velocity of 20 m/s straight
upward. The building is 50.0 m high, and the stone just misses the edge of the roof on its
way down. Determine
a. the time needed for the stone to reach its maximum height
b. the maximum height
c. the time needed for the stone to return to the level of the thrower
d. the velocity of the stone when it returns so the level of the thrower
e. The velocity and displacement of the stone at t=5.0 s.
18. The engine of a model rocket accelerates vertically upward for 2 seconds such that its
speed is given by the following data. At t=0, is speed is zero; at t = 1 s, its speed is 5 m/s;
at t = 2 s, its speed is 15 m/s. Plot a velocity-time graph of this motion and from it
determine
a. The average acceleration during the 2 second interval
b. The instantaneous acceleration at 1.5 seconds.