Analyzing the Safety of a New Amusement Park Ride Prototype

[tomboi03]

This is the Question:

Amusement parks are great fun and the venerable Tilt-a-Whirl is a perennial favorite. You are asked to examine a new prototype model with a little more whirl. General guidelines suggest a maximum of 3.5 g's on any ride (Note: amusement parks rides are not regulated at the federal level and so in many states there is really little or no oversight, caveat emptor). The general layout of the machine is sketched below and the design firm claims to have done its homework. The distance between pivots (A to B or B to C) is 20.0 m and the individual tangential velocities of the two armatures are 6.0 and 2.5 m/s respectively when the ride is operating a full power. The distance from the C pivot to the seat is set to 5m. Does this new design satisfy the guidelines?

So, basically... This is how far I got...

v²/r= rw²

So v=rw

\alpha= dw/dt
and a = v²/r

but since this is not a circle, I'm not sure how to go about this...?

Am i just thinking too hard? Is this a really easy problem that I'm viewing in a difficult way?

 

[LowlyPion]

Without an illustration it's a little hard to imagine what the A to B or B to C distances happen to be.

 

[tomboi03]

Here is the picture! :D

Sorry about that guys...