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It is common to see birds of prey rising upward on thermals. The paths they take

ID: 2025337 • Letter: I

Question

It is common to see birds of prey rising upward on thermals. The paths they take may be spiral-like. You can model the spiral motion as uniform circular motion combined with a constant upward velocity. Assume a bird completes a circle of radius 8.00 every 5.00 and rises vertically at a rate of 3.00 .

Find the speed of the bird relative to the ground.
I got v=10.5 m/s

Find the magnitude of the bird's acceleration.
a=12.6 m/s^2

Now, this is what I DON'T know how to answer. Please help:
Find the direction of the bird's acceleration (written as degrees above the horizontal)

Thank you so much!

Explanation / Answer

(a)

speed=distance/time.
after 5 seconds, the bird travels a spiral of length 52.45 metres (length of the spiral curve).
speed = 52.45 / 5 = 10.5 m/s.

(b)

Acceleration in vertical direction is 9.8 m/s2   (value of g).

radial acceleration of bird = v2/r = 12.63 m/s2  

(c)

the angle between the velocity

tangential velocity = 0

angular velocity = * r = (2 * pi / 5) * r = 10.05 m/s.

total horizontal velocity = 10.05.

vertical velocity = 3 m/s

angle between resultant and holizontal = tan-1 ( vertical / horizontal ) = tan-1 (3/10.05) = 16.62 degrees.

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