May 4th, 2019

The 51st Sir Isaac Newton Physics Exam

Department of Physics & Astronomy
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada
519 888-4567 x33556

Full name of student

Email address

Name of School

Letter answers (a to e):

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Instructions:

• You have two hours to write this exam.

• This is a prize exam, not a university entrance exam. The results are used only to
decide SIN prize awards. It is meant to be both fun and challenging.

• All questions are of equal value: +4 for a correct answer, 0 for a blank answer, and -1
for an incorrect answer.

• Some numerical answers may be "rounded off" and may differ from yours. Choose
the closest answer.

• Calculators are permitted. Use g = 9.81 m/s2.

2019 - 51st SIN Test
1) The Mad Trapper is being pursued by the
Mounties on foot over the arctic ice. After a
long chase, he finally eludes them, and stops
for the night to rest. He decides to build an
igloo and cuts a number of snow bricks, each
of dimension 20x20x2 cm, using his snow
knife. What is the total number of loose,
identical snow bricks needed so that, when
stacked on each other as illustrated, the top
brick completely overhangs the bottom one?
(a) 4
(b) 5
(c) 6
(d) 7
(e) 8
2) A rebellious faction of Newfoundlanders is
determined to secede from Confederation.
They fire a flaming bag of moose droppings
(mass 20 kg) across the Gulf of St. Lawrence
toward the mainland. The cannon fires at an
angle of 60 degrees with a muzzle velocity of
100 m/s. Immediately after the cannon fires,
the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary seizes
it back from the rebels. Hoping to douse the
flames, they load the cannon with a water
balloon (mass 8 kg) and change the launch
angle to 30 degrees. How long after the first
projectile was fired must the Constabulary
launch the balloon such that they collide mid-
air? The muzzle velocity of the water is 80 m/
s. Answer in s.
(a) 6.84
(b) 24.6
(c) 67.1
(d) 241
(e) The moose doo unavoidably hits the
ground.
3) In year 2059, his Majesty King Harry
builds an electrified fence around the last
bastion of freedom in the world: the
Dominion of Canada. The fence is a square
grid of wire of constant resistance per unit
length. A section of the grid is equipped with
ammeters that measure a current flow of
constant magnitude I, but different directions
as illustrated. At a later time, Harry notices
that two of the ammeters, A and B, have
registered a change in their current direction
from “up” to “down”. From this observation,
what is the minimum number of other
ammeters that must register a change in
direction?
(a) 0
(b) 1
(c) 2
(d) 3
(e) All other ammeters
must register a change
in direction.
4) Zizzer Zazzer Zuzz (also known as Z3) is
picking tired turtles from a tuttle tuttle tree.
The turtles are spaced throughout the tree,
and Z3 (mass 60 kg) jumps on a trampoline
with spring constant k = 300 N/m. He picks
up one turtle (10 kg each) at the peak of each
jump, and then drops the turtle on the ground
at the bottom of each jump when he is
instantaneously at rest. If the height of Z3’s
first jump is observed to be 2 m, what is the
maximum height of his fifth jump? Answer in
m.
(a) 1.75
(b) 2.00
(c) 3.71
(d) 7.10
(e) 14.3
5) It’s the Northern Manitoba Trapper’s
Festival, and Lonesome Mary is ready to win
the ice fishing derby. She spools her fishing
line on an oldie time bike wheel (radius 2.9
m), that lays horizontally on the frictionless
ice covering the hole. A red bob with a hole
drilled in it is placed on a frictionless rod,
attached at the edge of the wheel, and bent
upwards at 60 degrees as illustrated.
Suddenly, a huge jackfish takes the hook and
unspools the line, causing the wheel to rotate
at a frequency of 0.379 Hz. At what length L
must Mary place the bob so that upon release
it does not slide up or down? Answer in cm.
(a) 5.81
(b) 6.22
(c) 9.33
(d) 16.0
(e) 19.3
6) A Canada goose braves the winter in an
open pond of water at the University of
Waterloo. Come spring her eggs hatch, and
she flies East 200 km where she discovers
Quebec’s strategic reserve of poutine.
Grabbing a bill full of delicious curds, she
then flies back West to feed her goslings. The
goose's speed relative to the air is 8 m/s. If the
wind is blowing from the East and the goose's
average speed for the round trip is 7.5 m/s,
what is the speed of the wind relative to the
ground? Answer in m/s.
(a) 1.0
(b) 2.0
(c) 3.5
(d) 7.5
(e) 8.0
7) A farmer is pulling a 110 kg wagon full of
prairie oysters up a hill. Suddenly, the wagon
breaks loose, and starts rolling downhill on its
massless, frictionless wheels. After it has
covered 11 m its speed is 4 m/s. The farmer’s
wife (mass 72 kg) gives chase, jumping onto
the wagon platform when it has moved a total
distance of 13 m. Her speed when she jumps
on is 8 m/s relative to the wagon. Her intent is
to save the delicious treats, but she ends up
sliding all the way down the wagon, and off
the other end. If her speed relative to the
wagon at the moment she slides off is 7 m/s,
what is her speed relative to the ground?
Answer in m/s.
(a) 11.0
(b) 11.6
(c) 12.0
(d) 12.4
(e) 13.1
8) The coach of the Toronto Maple Laughs,
Mike Blabcock, is devising new dry-land
training for the off-season consisting of a
frictionless straight slide. Mike (mass 75 kg)
fixes the slide (length 2 m, mass 120 kg) to
solid ground and slides down, reaching the
end of it in 1.5 s. He then places the slide on
the frictionless ice rink, where it can slide
horizontally, and places the Laughs’ Captain
(mass 82 kg) at the top. Just as he is about to
begin to slide down, Mike pushes the slide
horizontally with a constant continuous force
F. He observes that the Captain takes 4 s to
reach the bottom. How far did the slide move
on the ice horizontally? Answer in m.
(a) 4.20
(b) 6.24
(c) 8.68
(d) 10.4
(e) 12.4
9) A year ago, Rohan (A) and Donna (B)
shone two parallel laser beams onto a semi-
cylindrical crystal ball. They gazed into the
crystal ball, in attempt to predict the 2018
Nobel Prize winner. The curved surface of the
crystal ball (n = 1.5) has radius R = 50 cm,
and sits on an optical table in Donna’s lab.
Rohan observes that the two laser beams
converge precisely at a point C as illustrated.
What is the distance h? Answer in cm.
(a) 64
(b) 75
(c) 86
(d) 97
(e) 108
10) In honour of Chinese New Year, Trudeau
makes a batch of maple syrup flavoured
tangyuan in the kitchen of Parliament. Sliding
together on the frictionless table, the
dumplings coagulate into one huge sticky ball
of mass 230 g. Frustrated, Trudeau throws the
ball, so it strikes horizontally with speed v,
and sticks to the tray of a kitchen scale lying
on its side on the table. The tray has mass 120
g, and is attached via a massless spring to a
base of mass 50 g, which is at rest against a
vertical wall as illustrated. After contact with
the tangyuan, the spring reaches maximum
compression, and then maximum extension,
and then compresses again. When the spring
is fully compressed again for the second time,
the speed of the base is 1.2 m/s. If the spring
constant is k = 170 N/m, how much is the
spring compressed at that point? Answer in
cm.
(a) 2.2
(b) 3.1
(c) 5.0
(d) 5.8
(e) 6.2
11) Deep in the wilderness near Chalk River,
a lumberjack encounters an irradiated poplar
tree, that has grown as a tall and perfect cone.
He falls the tree, but as soon as it hits the
ground, two ravenous mutant beavers dart out
of the forest and start devouring it from
opposite ends. The helpless lumberjack can
do nothing but watch. After the tree has been
eaten, he observes that the beaver, which was
eating from the thin end, ate 1/3 of the length
of the tree. How much of the tree has he eaten
by weight, if the total mass of the tree was
270 kg? Answer in kg.
(a) 9
(b) 10
(c) 30
(d) 60
(e) 90
12) For his float entry for the Oktoberfest
parade, Onkel Hans builds a giant keg and
fills it with delicious draft beer. The keg is a
cylinder of radius R = 5 m, and sits on a large
carousel platform that spins about its central
vertical axis. An inebriated baton twirler,
marching next to the float, observes that in its
steady state the surface of the beer is curved
as a parabola. It is shallowest at the center of
the keg, and deepest at the edge. What must
the frequency of rotation be so that this
difference in depth equals the radius of the
pool? Answer in rad/sec. Hint: the slope of
the function h(r) = r2 is 2r.
(a) 0.315
(b) 0.560
(c) 0.625
(d) 1.98
(e) 3.01
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