Recent content by Diane_

I wouldn't call it "cowboys in space". It seems to take off from the American Civil War. The time period is right, but the feel is different.

Well, the reasoning and the equation look fine, but I'm getting a different answer. You might check the calculation again.

That doesn't make you a nerd. Why, my boyfriend and I have a Firefly marathon planned for tomorrow afternoon, and we're both... Uhh. Never mind.

Well, the only difference is that 45 degree angle. If it weren't for that, you'd have the force of the string one way, the force of friction the other, the normal force up and weight down. As the problem stands, you still have those forces except that the force of the string needs to be broken...

Sigh. The preformatted text tag doesn't work. I think I knew that. The string is pulling the block both to the side and upwards at a 45 degree angle. This will give you not only a force tending to make the block slide but one pulling it upward from the table, reducing the normal force...

It depends on what the question means, exactly. To loft the satellite, you'd need to do work against gravity. This is what you're calculating. You'd need to use the height above the Earth's surface for the distance, since this is the distance through which you're lifting it. However, to...

OK - and since I'm a mathematician and need to get a little back: A mathematician, a physicist and an engineer are presented with the proposition that all odd numbers are prime and asked to verify or refute it. The mathematician starts: Let's see, one is prime, three is prime, five is...

A group of engineering students and a group of mathematics students were on the same train heading towards a conference. Each of the mathematicians had his own ticket, while the engineers had just one for all of them. The mathematicians, of course, made fun of the stupid engineers, most of...

One way to do this is to show that you have a pair of congruent triangles. (There are actually several pair, but you only need one.) Remember the definition of a parallelogram - that'll give you the angles. There's one more property of parallelograms that will give you the sides that you need.

Isn't there a law prohibiting mentioning those two things in a sentence with her as the subject?

The distance in Newton's Law of Gravitation is from the center of mass of the two objects involved. In this case, it'll be essentially from the center of the Earth, not from the surface.

Doesn't that rather depend on the size of the counterweight, the weight of the arm, and the moment arms involved?

I ended up with 76 degrees south of east, but that may be because I used the full length calculated instead of just the 115. Remember - there is a difference between "south of east" and "east of south". "South of east" is measured clockwise from the positive x-axis. "East of south" would be...

Right idea, but what you're finding there is the obtuse angle between the resultant and the wind. The Law of Sines - well, your calculator, actually - will always give you the acute angle. That's what I meant by "you'll need to interpret the result." So - find the obtuse angle that has that...

If you're not sure where the equations come from, it's best not to use them. You never know when an assumption made for the derivation doesn't apply to the specific problem you're using. The problem is complicated by the fact that your two equations are not of the same order, but that can be...