In some amazing situations, people have survived falling large distances when the surface they land on is soft enough. During a traverse of Eiger's infamous Nordvand, mountaineer Carlos Ragone's rock anchor gave way and he plummeted 512 feet to land in snow. Amazingly, he suffered only a few bruises and a wrenched shoulder. Assuming that his impact left a hole in the snow 4.8 ft deep, estimate his average acceleration as he slowed to a stop (that is while he was impacting the snow). Pick a coordinate system where down is positive.

-3413 ft/s2

Explanation:

We need to know the velocity with which he landed on the snow.

He 'dropped' from 512 feet. This is the displacement. His initial velocity is 0 and the acceleration of gravity is 32 ft/s2.

We use the equation of mition

v and u are the initial and final velocities, a is the acceleration and s is the displacement. Putting the appropriate values

This is the final velocity of the fall and becomes the initial velocity as he goes into the snow.

In this second motion, his final velocity is 0 because he stops after a displacement of 4.8 ft. We use the same equation of motion but with different values. This time, , v = 0 and s = 4.8 ft.

Note that this is negative because it was a deceleration, that is, his velocity was decreasing.

uio

explanation: