Aristides S. Bouras

Exercise – Where is the Car? Calculating Distance Traveled

A car starts from rest and moves with a constant acceleration along a straight horizontal road for a given time. Write a program that prompts the user to enter the acceleration and the time the car traveled, and then calculates and displays the distance traveled. The required formula is

where

  • S is the distance the car traveled, in meters (m)
  • uo is the initial velocity (speed) of the car, in meters per second (m/sec)
  • t is the time the car traveled, in seconds (sec)
  • a is the acceleration, in meters per second2 (m/sec2)
Solution

Since the car starts from rest, the initial velocity (speed) u0 is zero. Thus, the formula becomes

and the program is

PHP

<?php
  echo "Enter acceleration: ";
  $a = trim(fgets(STDIN));
  echo "Enter time traveled: ";
  $t = trim(fgets(STDIN));
  
  $S = 0.5 * $a * $t * $t;
  
  echo "Your car traveled ", $S, " meters";
?>

Java

public static void main(String[] args) throws java.io.IOException {
  java.io.BufferedReader cin = new java.io.
          BufferedReader(new java.io.InputStreamReader(System.in));
  double S, a, t;

  System.out.print("Enter acceleration: ");
  a = Double.parseDouble(cin.readLine());
  System.out.print("Enter time traveled: ");
  t = Double.parseDouble(cin.readLine());
  
  S = 0.5 * a * t * t;
  
  System.out.println("Your car traveled " + S + " meters");
}

C++

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main() {
  double S, a, t;

  cout << "Enter acceleration: ";
  cin >> a;
  cout << "Enter time traveled: ";
  cin >> t;
  
  S = 0.5 * a * t * t;
  
  cout << "Your car traveled " << S << " meters";
  return 0;
}

C#

static void Main() {
  double S, a, t;

  Console.Write("Enter acceleration: ");
  a = Double.Parse(Console.ReadLine());
  Console.Write("Enter time traveled: ");
  t = Double.Parse(Console.ReadLine());
  
  S = 0.5 * a * t * t;
  
  Console.Write("Your car traveled " + S + " meters");
  Console.ReadKey();
}

Visual Basic

Sub Main()
  Dim S, a, t As Double

  Console.Write("Enter acceleration: ")
  a = Console.ReadLine()
  Console.Write("Enter time traveled: ")
  t = Console.ReadLine()

  S = 0.5 * a * t ^ 2

  Console.Write("Your car traveled " & S & " meters")

  Console.ReadKey()
End Sub

Python

a = float(input("Enter acceleration: "))
t = float(input("Enter time traveled: "))

S = 0.5 * a * t ** 2

print("Your car traveled", S, "meters")

Related articles:

  1. Exercise – Calculating the Area of a Parallelogram
  2. Exercise – Calculating Sales Tax
  3. Exercise – Calculating a Sales Discount
  4. Exercise – Calculating the Distance Between Two Points
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