Recent content by Rarugged

Gauss's Law -- Irregular Surfaces I don't fully understand why Gauss's Law holds for any Gaussian surface. My textbook clearly derives Gauss's Law from Coulomb's Law using a spherical surface, but it then extends the result to any Gaussian surface without sufficient explanation. Why does...

Will A fall off first because it accelerates at some a, while B accelerates in the x-direction at some value a_b < a, because gravity is split up into lesser components??

I need a theoretical, not an experimental, explanation of this system. Is there any "theroetical" approach I can take? I am tempted to say that it takes the same amount of time for A to fall off as for B to hit the side of the table, but I don't have strong justifications to back that claim up...

Bump. I would appreciate any response, as I need to finish this problem soon.

Sorry, I have no idea how to use Hamiltonian mechanics. I am enrolled in a very basic introductory mechanics class so is there anything I could use from good old Newtonian mechanics?

Homework Statement Two small balls of the same mass and shape are attached by a massless string of length L. Ball A is placed on a frictionless table and ball B is held a distance L/2 over the edge with the string taut. When ball B is dropped, will it hit the side of the table before A...