Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 6.2 National olympiad Find the answer

4. 207 Car A is 100 meters west of Car B. Now both cars start moving east at the same time. If Car A moves forward at a constant speed of 50 meters/second, and Car B accelerates forward at 20 meters/second 2{ }^{2}, how many seconds will it take for the two cars to be closest to each other? At that time, how far apart are the two cars?

A number or a short expression. Spacing and $ signs are ignored.

Solution

[Solution] Let the distance between the two cars be SS meters after tt seconds.
At this time, car A is S1=vt=50tS_{1}=v t=50 t meters from the starting point, and car B is
S2=100+12at2=100+10t2S=S2S1=100+10t250t=10(t52)2+752\begin{aligned} S_{2} & =100+\frac{1}{2} a t^{2}=100+10 t^{2} \\ S & =S_{2}-S_{1}=100+10 t^{2}-50 t \\ & =10\left(t-\frac{5}{2}\right)^{2}+\frac{75}{2} \end{aligned}

Therefore, when t=52t=\frac{5}{2} (seconds), SS is minimized, at which point the two cars are 752\frac{75}{2} meters apart.

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Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.