Ferris Wheel Physics: Solving for Weightlessness Velocity

[brendan3eb]

I have a problem asking me what velocity must be achieved so that a person on at the top of a ferris wheel with a 15-m diameter can feel weightless. I am wondering how you define weightless. At first I tried setting mg=0, but I couldn't get anywhere that way.

 

[rcgldr]

At the top of the ferris wheel, a person is weightless when the only source of centripetal force (the inwards force) is gravity. For that brief moment, the person is in freefall.

 

[uart]

Weightlessness is simply where your acceleration exactly matches the local acceleration due to gravity.

 

[russ_watters]

Right, so putting that together, you need to calculate the speed at which the centripetal acceleration equals g.

Is this a homework problem...?