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PHY 241
Your 'question form' report has been received. Scroll down through the document to see any comments I might have inserted, and my final comment at the end.
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2. A ball rolls down a certain incline, starting from rest at the x position 23 cm and accelerating at 20 cm/s^2.
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I was working through problem 1 and then number 2. my question is regarding the 23 cm in the initial statement. I as not sure whether that is referring to x, x0, or something else. There is probably some oversight on my part.
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x(t) is the position as a function of clock time. Sometimes this is abbreviated as just plain x, when the context makes the meaning of the reference clear. In this case x is regarded as a variable quantity.
x is also the name of the axis, meaning that x is the quantity that changes along this axis.
x = x0 refers to the specific point on the axis which characterizes a moving object and clock time 0.
Since the object in this problem starts at x position 23 cm, we know that at the instant t = 0 the position is x0 = 23 cm.