The Final Frontier
1) Bif, the Space Walleye, as he hovers above the rings of Saturn, notices the arch-villain Shiela the Intergalactic Turtle. Immediately he fires his nanofiber net rifle to snare her. Assuming that Bif has a mass of 5kg, the rifle has a mass of 1kg, the net has a mass of 0.32kg and the net has a velocity of 289m/s, what is Bif’s final velocity?
a) 289 m/s backwards
b) 15 m/s backwards
c) 18 m/s backwards
2) If Shiela sees the net coming and fires her thrusters in order to scoot behind a minivan-sized ring particle, assuming she has a mass of 79kg and has to change her velocity by 83m/s to dodge the net, and if it takes 3 seconds to achieve this change in velocity, how much force did her thrusters produce?
a) 2186 N
b) 0.317 N
c) 19671 N
3) If Shiela’s original velocity was 24 m/s, the ring particle’s mass was 3333kg, its velocity was 0 m/s, and if Shiela miscalculated and slammed into the particle’s surface, what would the new velocity of the ring particle be?
a) .57 m/s
b) 79992 m/s
c) 2.5 m/s
4) If, shortly after she hits the rock, Bif’s net impacts the ring particle from exactly the opposite direction as Shiela, how fast would the ring particle move due to the net?
a) 0.03 m/s
b) 79992 m/s
c) Who’s Bif?
5) If Bif wanted to use his thrusters to stop his own movement, how much force would they need to produce if they took 52 seconds to stop him?
a) 52 N
b) 1.7 N
c) 21 m/s
6) If Bif overcompensates and fires his thrusters so much that they give him a velocity of 67m/s, and if he loses control so that he slams into the same space rock (ring particle) that Shiela hit, who would be named (by the bacteria living on the ring particle) Space Buffoon of the Year for making the biggest impact on their world?
a) Shiela
b) Bif