Recent content by shadowplay

Well I haven't been able to use fictitious forces, so there is no point in me writing down the working out. Fictitious forces act IN addition to the forces present in inertial frames, like N1. Shouldn't N1 have the same value in the inertial frame and the frame in which the block is fixed? So...

Thanks, ehild. This has been revelatory.

Okay, thanks, but suppose we don't invoke the work-kinetic energy theorem, and instead want to calculated the work "input" directly from the integral of F*dr. Then doesn't it seem like we've imparted the same amount of work to the rod since the "dr" in (1) and (2) are the same? Also, we've...

Homework Statement This is a very simple problem to state, yet I've not found any answers on PF or anywhere else online. So let's say we have a simple rigid body like a rod. We apply an external force Fext for a fixed time dt to the rod in two different ways: (1) directly on the center of...

Homework Statement This is a standard block on wedge problem - we have an incline of angle \alpha, a block of mass m on wedge of mass M. The block is released from the inclined surface. The wedge is not fixed and can accelerate. The question is typical - find the horizontal accelerations...

Hi, Even though I know how to 'solve' this problem mathematically, something about it still bothers me, physically speaking. So having calculated the minimum and maximum accelerations (lets call them amin and amax), suppose we give the block an acceleration a strictly between these two...