Concepts

Hello fellow physics people. This is Lina and I’m slowly, but surely recovering from the lowest point of my academic career. Yes, my test was that bad. This is a note for everyone, beware of silly mistakes and study diligently!

So during our class on Friday, we first went over a worksheet that dealt with some basic concepts that would help us with our dynamics unit. Because I feel like it, I will illustrate the concept for you.

Let’s take our stick figure (who isn’t nearly as cute as Little Nellie Newton) and hang him from a bar. The net force would be zero because there is no acceleration and therefore the upward pull is the same as the downward pull. Let say that our figure, call him whatever you want, weighs 300 Newtons, we have to determine what the scale reading would be in each case.

Here’s our first case:

Our figure weighs 300 N, so the scale reading would read just that.

Now we are measuring his weight with two scales, but don’t be fooled. Each scale would read 300 N because they are still measuring the same weight.

Our next cases are a little different.

In these cases, the weight is evenly distributed between two different parts so the reading for each of the scales’ readings would be half of the figure’s apparent weight. That’s half of 300N, so each scale would read 150 N.

Ok, so my illustrations aren’t that great, but I’m sure someone enjoyed looking at them.

Later on the class we the first three questions off of our worksheet on vectors and equilibrium which can be seen in the slides Ms. K posted up earlier. We will go over the rest of the questions the next day. We also received another worksheet on dynamics so don’t forget to work on that one as well.

That’s all from me today. Our next scribe will be… etimz!