Recent content by guitarman

Homework Statement Two dipoles are oriented as shown in the diagram below. Each dipole consists of two charges +q and -q, held apart by a rod of length s, and the center of each dipole is a distance d from location A. If q = 4 nC, s = 1 mm, and d = 6 cm, what is the electric field at location...

Hey, I'm trying to teach myself physics II and am having difficulty understanding the difference between potential and potential energy. Could somebody please attempt to explain the differences between them to me, and use analogies if possible? Thanks in advance!

woops sorry wrong problem

the problem is that the picture is misleading. there are really only 2 balls, and the picture shows those two balls at 4 different periods in time. You should get the right answer now.

Don't you need to use cos(theta) to take into account for the angular speed of the space station?

Homework Statement Space Station A space station has the form of a hoop of radius R, with mass M. Initially its center of mass is not moving, but it is spinning with angular speed ω0. Then a small package of mass m is thrown by a spring-loaded gun toward a nearby spacecraft as shown; the...

Homework Statement A device consists of eight balls each of mass 0.4 kg attached to the ends of low-mass spokes of length 1.8 m, so the radius of rotation of the balls is 0.9 m. The device is mounted in the vertical plane. The axle is held up by supports that are not shown, and the wheel is...

So would I want to do Rcos(theta)*(m+M)*(v+V) so as to take into account both masses and velocities? And if so, do I convert both speeds to m/s or radians/s?

Homework Statement A rotating uniform-density disk of radius 0.7 m is mounted in the vertical plane. The axle is held up by supports that are not shown, and the disk is free to rotate on the nearly frictionless axle. The disk has mass 3.4 kg. A lump of clay with mass 0.5 kg falls and sticks to...

So do I use mgh when dealing with the energy principle and mg when using the momentum principle?

Can somebody please help me understand in which situations (for a intro physics 1 class) I would be required to use mg versus mgh? Neither my teacher nor my textbook have really gone into when you use which, rather they seem to arbitrarily use one, and I would like to understand why. Thanks for...

Ahh okay so after rereading the problem I understand it better. Our teacher did an example in class with finding the center of mass of a letter "T", and now he wants us to do the same for the letter "L". So I suppose that although it is not literally made out of rods, for simplicity's sake we...

You refer to the rod in a length of meters, in reference to its distance.

Why would my coordinates be in something other than x and y? The only other thing that jumps to my mind would be radians, although I am unsure if radians can be classified as a coodinate system.

So I tried using (M1y1 + M2y2)/(M1+M2) for the y component with the origin at the lower left, but this was incorrect. Now I am thinking that if I am at the lower left region, my y1 will be zero, and so wouldn't the y component simply be M2y2/(M1+M2)?