Balancing Forces

Hollysmoke

I'm having trouble with two problems and I was hoping if someone could point me in the right direction go about solving them:

1) Two beams support a 4.0kg pail of water above an open well. How much compression force is exerted on each beam by the water pail, what outward force do the two beams exert on the well's wall, and what additional vertical compression is exerted on the bricks under the beams?

2) A bird lands on a telephone wire midway between the two poles 18m apart. The wire (assumed weightless) sags by 52 cm. If the tension in the wire is 90N, what is the mass of the bird?

sdekivit

draw the situation and then construct appropriate vectors to answer you the questions.

Hollysmoke

For the second question, should I resolve the vectors into x and y then use the distances to find sigma t?

mukundpa

I think the forces on the bird are the tensions its weight, resultant is zero, use the length of wire and the sag to fing the angle.