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Catching the Bus














Patrick (my son) walks out of the house and sees the schoolbus about to pull away. He runs at it from behind at 4 meters/second. When he is twenty meters behind the still-open schoolbus door, the bus starts to pull away at an acceleration of 0.5 m/sec$^2$.

Does Patrick catch the bus before it pulls away, avoiding the disaster of having DAD drive him to school? If so, how far has the bus gone when he reaches it?



Robert G. Brown 2000-12-09