Bat Alert

Because of your technical background, you have been given a job as a student assistant in a University research laboratory that has been investigating possible accident avoidance systems for automobiles. You have just begun a study of how bats avoid obstacles. In your study, a bat is fitted with a transceiver that broadcasts the bat's velocity to your instruments. Your research director has told you that the signal travels at the speed of light which is 1.0 ft/nanosecond (1 nanosecond is 10-9 seconds). You know that the bat detects obstacles by emitting a forward going sound pulse (sonar) which travels at 1100 ft/s through the air. The bat detects the obstacle when the sound pulse reflects from the obstacle and that reflected pulse is heard by the bat. You are told to determine the maximum amount of time that a bat has after it detects the existence of an obstacle to change its flight path to avoid the obstacle. In the experiment your instruments tell you that a bat is flying straight toward a wall at a constant velocity of 20.0 ft/s and emits a sound pulse when it is 10.0 ft from the wall.