Tutor profile: John S.

If you were to convert a 1974 Pontiac Firebird from carbureted fuel delivery to electronic fuel ignition, what parts and components in the engine would need to be updated or replaced?

You would need a CPU to decifer sensor readings and set desired fuel to air ratios at your RPM ranges, to specify a new fuel pump to boost the pressure at which fuel is delivered, a new cam shaft to produce more efficient valve function at high RPM's, a new intake manifold to allow for correct delivery to the new injectors and correct instrument readings for the CPU unit.

How do you relate something tangible, like distance, velocity, and acceleration, to their graphs and using derivatives and integrals to describe them?

If you were to drop a ball to the ground and see how high it bounces back, you could graph the path of that ball with y being the height and x being the time it takes to bounce back. The derivative, or graph of the slope of this graph, describes the velocity (distance/time) or rate of change of distance, of the ball during that time. The derivative of the velocity graph describes the acceleration (velocity/time) or rate of change of velocity, of the ball during that time. The integral of the acceleration graph is the velocity graph, and the integral of the velocity graph is the original graph of the path of the ball.

If you were to throw a dodgeball at a car while it is driving down the highway, which object would exert a larger force on the other? the car or the ball?

The two objects actually exert an equal and opposite force on each other, according to Newton's 3rd Law of Motion. Force equals mass times acceleration. So for the ball, which has much less mass than the car, to apply an equivalent force, must have a much higher acceleration. This is why the ball would fly off and the car would be virtually unaffected.