Question

A hunter aims his gun and fires a bullet directly at a monkey on a tree. At the instant the bullet leaves the gun, the monkey drops. The bullet:
A: cannot hit the monkey
B: may hit the monkey if it weight is more than 30kg.wt
C: may hit the monkey if it weight is less than 30kg.wt
D: may hit the monkey irrespective of its weight

Answer 1

This situation is clearly an example of projectile motion where we observe the projectile motion of the bullet that is projected by aiming the monkey sitting on top of the tree. Not just the bullet but the monkey also gets into motion by dropping. Hence, we have to observe the path and the displacement traversed by these two bodies.

Complete step by step answer:
In the question we are provided that a hunter aims his gun and fires a bullet directly at a monkey on a tree and at the instant the bullet leaves the gun, the monkey drops.
We have to find whether the bullet is going to hit the monkey in this condition or not.
At the time of firing, the monkey is at the horizontal level as that of the hunter. The reason is that the downward velocity of both the fired bullet and the dropping monkey is zero. This causes them to travel the same distance downwards and this leads the bullet to hit the monkey, irrespective of its weight.
Thus option B is the correct answer among the given options.

So, the correct answer is “Option B”.

Note:
When we consider the vertical displacement of both the bodies in projectile motion, theoretically we can conclude both the bodies have the same value of vertical displacement. Upon further calculation, we can derive that the values of the vertical displacement for both the bodies is
$S=\dfrac{g{{t}^{2}}}{2}$