Past exam of the physics 1 paper of the University of Oxford / 2015 resit / 8 / b / Solution

The air fall lastsRetain the underwater deceleration rather than replacing the whole water trajectory with motion at terminal velocity. DefineSeparation of the descent equation gives the hyperbolic cotangent solution and its integrated depth:where $t=0$ now means water entry. The derivative of the logarithm verifies $\dot{z}=v$, while $v(0)=v_t\coth \chi =u$. At water depth $H_w=5\mathrm{m}$, inversion using the inverse hyperbolic sine yieldsThe total elapsed time is thereforeFor an estimate without evaluating the exact expression, $b{H}_w\gg 1$ permits $\mathrm{arsinh}x\simeq \ln (2x)$ here, givingThis gives the same $4.43\mathrm{s}$ to the quoted precision. The simpler $H_w/v_t\simeq 4.72\mathrm{s}$ overestimates the underwater time because the pebble initially moves faster than $v_t$.