Question

If you are driving at 95 km/h along a straight road, and you look to the side for 2.0 s, how far do you travel during this inattentive period?

Short answer

You travel 52.78 m during the inattentive period.

Step-by-step solution

Step 1. Relation between the traveled distance with speed and time

The term ‘distance’ can be defined as the length measured in between any two given points. The distance covered by an object can be calculated by the product of the velocity of the object and the time taken to move from one point to another.

Given data.

The speed of the car is $v=95\frac{\mathrm{km}}{\mathrm{h}}$.

The inattentive duration of time is localid="1642739142775" $\Delta t=2.0\mathrm{s}$.

Unit conversion.

$\begin{array}{c}v=95\frac{\mathrm{km}}{\mathrm{h}}\\ =95\frac{\mathrm{km}}{\mathrm{h}}\times \frac{1000\mathrm{m}}{1\mathrm{km}}\times \frac{1\mathrm{h}}{3600\mathrm{s}}\\ =26.39\frac{\mathrm{m}}{\mathrm{s}}\end{array}$

Rule.

You know that

localid="1642739159913" $\begin{array}{c}Traveleddis\tan ce=speed\times time\\ =v\times \Delta t\dots \left(i\right)\end{array}$

Step 2. Determination of the traveled distance during an inattentive period

Now, substituting all the values in equation (i), you will get

$\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{Traveled}\mathrm{distance}=26.39\frac{\mathrm{m}}{\mathrm{s}}\times 2.0\mathrm{s}\\ =52.78\mathrm{m}\end{array}$

Therefore, you travel 52.78 m during the inattentive period.