Question

At the company picnic there were two teams for tug of war. from their starting positions team a pulls team b forward 3 meters, and are then pulled forward themselves 5 meters. team b then pulls team a forward 2 meters. if the first team is to be pulled forward 10 meters loses, how many more meters must team b pull team a forward to win?

Answer 1

In a game of tug and war, if the game is fair, no displacement occurs. Therefore, the total displacement made by the two teams is equal to 0. In order to compute the displacement the team B must pull to win over team A, let us get the sum of all the displacements and equal to zero. This is because team A and team B must pull equal distances to determine the minimum. For convention, distances pulled in favor of team B will be positive and that of team A is negative. Thus,

-3+5+2-10+x =0
x = 6

Therefore, team B must pull MORE THAN 6 meters in order to win.