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fredfighter@spamcop.net wrote:
>If by crossing we mean the ground tracks are orthogonal and
>if it was already behind the B17 when the shot was fired
>then without a velocity component parallel to the
>flight path of the B17 the Me-109 will always cross the
>flight path of the B17 *behind* the point where the shot
>was fired. The gunner can't hit the ME 109 in those
>circumstances.
Agreed - this much was completely obvious from the beginning
- you cannot get the bullets behind the current location of
the bomber. It looked like the poster realized that the
bullet was stationary relative to the ground and was
confused as to how you could hit an ME-109 with a stationary
bullet.
In retrospect, this is not a physics question so much as a
"how do you interpret the question" question. The problem
setup didn't say the ground tracks were perfectly
orthogonal, and based on the comment that the gunner was
leading the fighter, and apparently knew what he was doing,
I assumed the fighter was just crossing behind, but not
perfectly orthogonally. It's not unusual for a poster's
question to use terms loosely or be internally inconsistent
in certain respects, so you need to fill in the blanks or
make assumptions to be able to answer it. That's what this
question looked like to me.
T o d d P a t t i s t
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Re: Physics question
