Random Mechanics Problems

Steve Sque, University of Exeter

Here are a few mechanics problems, along with my answers and detailed derivations. As they stand, they're pretty random and pointless — they were just created as an exercise, although they have become quite popular on the search engines and someone might find them useful, so I'll leave them up.

• How fast must I drive to jump a humped-back bridge?
• The radius of a geostationary orbit
• The distance to the horizon
• The time period of a simple pendulum

If you came looking for some "proper" physics, have a look at my research interests.