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Thursday, December 18, 2008

Solve This Physics Problem

A Backhoe weighing 8 tons is on top of a flatbed trailer and heading east on Interstate 70 near Hays, Kansas ?
The extended shovel arm is made of hardened refined steel.
The approaching overpass is made of commercial-grade concrete, reinforced with 1 1/2 inch steel rebar spaced at 6 inch intervals in a criss-cross pattern layered at 1 foot vertical spacing.
Solve: When the shovel arm hits the overpass, how fast do you have to be going to slice the bridge in half??
(Assume no effect for headwind and no braking by the driver...)
Extra Credit: Solve for the time and distance required for the entire rig to come to a complete stop after hitting the overpass at the speed calculated above.?
Yes, you can neglect friction.




I Didn't Solve It Either......But Who Cares; The Pictures Are Great!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I heard about this when it happened. this stretch of Highway was closed for 11 days and the drivers company was fined $134,000 dollars to cover the cost of fixing the roads. The driver didn't have the proper Drivers license to be driving on an interstate with this kind of load.

Anonymous said...

That's an excavator not a backhoe.

Anonymous said...

Please do us with ADD a favor and at least make this a "multiple choice" question (in which case, my answer is always "C").

Anonymous said...

I solved it

=A GARRY PROJECT=yo nex mare!!!!
hahahaha

Anonymous said...

T=truck
E=excavator
C=concrete
d=driver
s=speed
C/E+T>S= D the Idiot.

Anonymous said...

Actually it was on the trailer pic'd in the photo and the excavator did not have the arm of the bucket down therefore it was too high to clear the overpass. A real big OOPS!