Recent content by chaneth8

I've had a think about this but there is still something I don't get - could you explain why a normal force pair never changes the system's mechanical energy? I understand that the forces within the pair are equal and opposite, but when we consider the system's mechanical energy, we need to...

Suppose we are given the 2 following masses 1 and 2, where 1 initially moves at velocity ##v_\rm{1}## and 2 is stationary. Note, however, that 2 is not bolted down to any surface - it is free to move around after collision. What would the free-body force diagram of masses 1 and 2 be, after they...

Could you elaborate a bit more on this part? I thought when an object moves in a circle, the direction of motion is always tangent to the circle - and we are given that the ramp is circular. Why would the block being in motion change that? I see - so we consider the block and the cube as one...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the normal force of the block on the cube perpendicular to the direction the cube is travelling? The block is circular, so the cube is travelling tangent to the surface of the block. Meanwhile, the normal force of the block on the cube acts in the radial...

This is my reasoning: At any point in time, let us denote the normal force acting on the ball as ##F_\rm{N}##, and the gravity force as ##F_\rm{g}##. If we take the angle between the vectors for ##F_\rm{N}## and ##F_\rm{g}##, we can see that the magnitude of ##F_\rm{N}## = ##mg cos(\theta)##...

I understand that, but I'm considering this from the perspective of the external forces acting on the ball in the j direction. To my understanding, at every point in time, the net force in the j-direction has a negative or zero value, assuming we consider the direction of the j as positive. So I...

That makes sense! One last question though - why would the integral ##\int_{t_\rm{initial}}^{t_\rm{final}} F_\rm{external} \, dt## evaluate to 0? I'm asking this because if we consider the direction of j to be positive, then it seems to me that the value of ##F_\rm{external}## will always be...

Hi, I'm working on part a of the following mechanics problem from MIT Open Courseware: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/8-01sc-classical-mechanics-fall-2016/resources/mit8_01f16_pset9/: I think the key to solving this problem relies on the conservation of mechanical energy. Since there are no...

This isn't exactly a homework question, but it was inspired by a homework problem. It's my first time here, so if there's a better place for this question feel free to point it out. Let's consider a ball rolling up the following circular slope. Let's assume it rolls up the slope until it...