One of the contests at the school carnival is to throw a spear at an underwater
ID: 1500620 • Letter: O
Question
One of the contests at the school carnival is to throw a spear at an underwater target lying flat on the bottom of a pool. The water is 0.800 m deep. You're standing on a small stool that places your eyes 3.00 m above the bottom of the pool. As you look at the target, your gaze is 30 below horizontal. At what angle below horizontal should you throw the spear in order to hit the target?
Part A
Your raised arm brings the spear point to the level of your eyes as you throw it, and over this short distance you can assume that the spear travels in a straight line rather than a parabolic trajectory.
Express your answer with the appropriate units.
When I tried I got 32.87deg But it not correct Not quite. Check through your calculations; you may have made a rounding error or used the wrong number of significant figures
Explanation / Answer
height of the observer above the water is
h = 3 m - 0.8 m = 2.2 m
From Snell's law, we have
sin(90-i) = nsin(90-r)
cosi = ncosr
cos30 = (1.33) cosr
Hence, the angle is
r = 49.37°
But
D = h/tan30 = 2.2 m / tan30 = 3.81 m
Similarly
D' = d/tanr = 0.8 m / tan49.37= 0.6864 m
the angle is,
= tan-1[(h+d)/(D+D')] = tan-1[3 m/4.4964 m]= 33.7°
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