Question

An iguana launches itself off the edge of a table using a spring. The spring in the launcher has a spring constant of 500 N/m, the combined mass of the box and the iguana is 4.0kg. The coefficient of kinetic friction between the box and the table is 0.3. If the spring is initially compressed a distance of 75.0cm and the iguana is initally 6.5 m away from the end of the table, how fast will the iguana be moving when it reaches the end of the table?

Answer 1

The body diagram of iguana can be shown as,

Here normal force N is,

friction force f is,

  

and the spring force is,

  

Thus the acceleration of iguana can be calculated as,

The initial velocity of iguana is 0 and distance covered is 6.5 m. Thus the final velocity can be calculated as,