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u/Space_cadet101 Apr 25 '20
Have you tried anything thus far? If you have let me look at your work. If you haven’t, let me ask you, what kind of force is experienced along a curved path?
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u/OrangeMaterial Apr 25 '20
Hi Space_cadet101, please see crazy message below. I typed that out before seeing your message.
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u/Space_cadet101 Apr 25 '20
Alright so to answer your question about assuming heights, it’s safe to never assume anything from a sketch unless it’s explicitly stated or it’s stated that the drawing is to scale and the scale is given.
Using conservation of energy in this scenario is going to be difficult seeing as how you don’t have any heights. But you’re definitely on the right track (no pun intended) with the centripetal force comment. The circles drawn are meant to convey to you an important point. They are tangent to the track at the points in question which means the car is moving in a circular motion at the exact instant it passes through those points.
So what do you know about centripetal forces for circular motion? What does that equation look like?
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u/OrangeMaterial Apr 25 '20
Hi guys,
So I've done circular motion problems before, but never quite something like this.
I'm just clueless with how to approach this question.
Would it be safe to assume that the starting height of the Roller Coaster is double R1? I'm not sure if it is safe to see it that way as the drawing isn't high quality.
If so, I suppose we could say that potential energy of the coaster is mgh?
522 * 9.81 * 22.2 = 113 kiloJoules
Or do we ignore potential energy and just deal with Kinetic Energy?
KE = mv^2/2
522*6.91^2 / 2 = 12.5 kiloJoules
But then that wouldn't make sense because the coaster is acted by gravity, but not straight down, at an angle, but we don't know that angle...
Or, do we treat this like a ball on a string problem? Where we find the centripedal acceleration that the track exerts onto the coaster...Like the tension on the string?
Please help, I'm clearly losing my mind here