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A car drives north at 36mi/h for 10 min and then turns east and goes 5.0 mi at 66mi/h . Finally, it goes southwest at 32mi/h for 6.0 min .

Find the car's displacement and find the average velocity for the trip. Both is in x & y components.

I'm having a really hard time all around with this question. i drew a triangle, but not sure which components are x and which are y

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For the displacement, you just need to find the displacement in each component (x and y) separately. To do this, find and use the x and y components of each velocity (using trigonometry if needed). –  Pratyush Sarkar Sep 20 at 2:55
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If you draw a diagram of the trip, you won't get an obvious triangle - think of the diagram as a map. –  Mark Bennet Sep 20 at 3:07
 
If you drew a triangle, why don't you show it to us? Otherwise we don't know what triangle you drew or whether it is the right one. –  dfeuer Sep 20 at 13:01
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What's with all of the downvotes? –  user7530 Sep 20 at 14:11

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1 Answer

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The assignment question should be considered incomplete without specifying which cardinal direction corresponds to $x$ and which to $y$, but the most common convention I've seen is that $\bf\hat{x}$ points east and $\bf\hat{y}$ points north.

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ok yeah those are the directions!! –  tilly swain Sep 20 at 3:06

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