Check Your Understanding
a. , ; b. Since the angular velocity increases linearly, there has to be a constant acceleration throughout the indicated time. Therefore, the instantaneous angular acceleration at any time is the solution to .
The angular acceleration is . Therefore, the total angle that the boy passes through is
.
Thus, we calculate
.
The initial rotational kinetic energy of the propeller is
.
At 5.0 s the new rotational kinetic energy of the propeller is
.
and the new angular velocity is
which is 3.58 rev/s.
The angle between the lever arm and the force vector is therefore, .
The cross product gives a negative or clockwise torque.
The torque is then .
a. The angular acceleration is . Solving for the torque, we have ; b. The angular acceleration is . Solving for the torque, we have
Conceptual Questions
The second hand rotates clockwise, so by the right-hand rule, the angular velocity vector is into the wall.
They have the same angular velocity. Points further out on the bat have greater tangential speeds.
a. It decreases. b. The arms could be approximated with rods and the discus with a disk. The torso is near the axis of rotation so it doesn’t contribute much to the moment of inertia.
Because the moment of inertia varies as the square of the distance to the axis of rotation. The mass of the rod located at distances greater than L/2 would provide the larger contribution to make its moment of inertia greater than the point mass at L/2.
The moment of inertia of the wheels is reduced, so a smaller torque is needed to accelerate them.
If the forces are along the axis of rotation, or if they have the same lever arm and are applied at a point on the rod.
Problems
The propeller takes only to come to rest, when the propeller is at 0 rad/s, it would start rotating in the opposite direction. This would be impossible due to the magnitude of forces involved in getting the propeller to stop and start rotating in the opposite direction.
Plotting both accelerations gives
The tangential acceleration is constant, while the centripetal acceleration is time dependent, and increases with time to values much greater than the tangential acceleration after t = 1s. For times less than 0.7 s and approaching zero the centripetal acceleration is much less than the tangential acceleration.