7) A Trip to the Store
Question: A woman in a grocery store pushes her shopping cart at 2 meters/sec down Aisle 9. She stops 15 meters down the aisle and turns 180° to pick up a 1.2lb pack of toilet paper that dropped off the back of her cart. As she leans over, her posterior pushes into the cart at 1.2 Newtons. The floor happens to be sloped at a 1.89375° angle downward, causing the cart to accelerate at 1.9 meters/second². The cart travels 45 more meters down the aisle where it runs into a second unattended cart. The second cart begins to travel at 5 meters/second down the same asile, accelerating at 2.4 meters/second². Cart 2 then rams into the metal stop bar at the deli counter, which happens to be disconnected from the floor in all but one point. The bar swivels 7.8° around the single support point and hits a third cart, situated 10.2 meters from the opposite side of the support point. Cart 3 then accelerates down aisle 7, causing 4.8 shoppers to duck out of the way. Cart 3 now rams into, and inserts itself into, a 4th Cart. The combined Cart 3 and 4 now travel 25 meters more until they come to an abrupt stop against check-out counter number 5.
The 24.9lb Watermelon that was in Cart 3 now rolls up the Cheerios box that is leaning at a 47.9° angle against the front of the cart. The watermelon's momentum carries it up the ramp at 25mph. It arches over the checkout counter and lands in a 5th Cart, which is 22.5% full of groceries. Cart 5 now moves forward, accelerating at 7.9 meters/second² on a down hill slope. Cart 5 now rolls out of the store, causing 3 children to be pulled out of the way and causing 8.9 people to stop and stare. The cart now rolls into the street at 35 mph, making 2 trucks, 3 cars, and a bicycle to come to a stop to let it pass. Cart 5 now manages to roll across the 5457 meter long parking lot, accelerating down a 2.67589° slope towards the road. A Mack truck, which is 10 minutes late for its delivery, now travels westward along the Pennsylvania Interstate #78. Cart 5 now rolls off the grocery store parking lot and into the highway. The driver of the Mack truck sees the cart and puts on both the normal and Jake Brake. They collide at a 90° angle, causing the watermelon to launch onto the windshield of the Mack truck and making the cart get tangled up in the undercarriage. Given that the watermelon was ripe, a child counts as a third of a person, the grocery store was an old K-Mart and was at one point level, and that the Interstate was backed-up for less than 10 hours, how much money does the woman owe?
Answer: ± $145,792 - If the woman was not a blond, not over the average weight limit, not of African decent, not a teenage mother, and not on welfare, the woman owes the grocery store $35874, the Mack Truck company $64587, the people who had to dodge the cart $45330, and the shopping cart company $1. If any of the conditions above are true, then all the parties mentioned owe her the given amounts.
