How Does Adding Mass Affect the Angular Momentum of a Rotating System?

  • Thread starter Thread starter luckylauren
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Balls
Join the discussion
Ask a follow-up here, or get your own question answered by working scientists, mathematicians and engineers — people, not an autocomplete.
Real named experts · corrections over time · the nuance an AI answer skips
1 reply · 7K views
luckylauren
Messages
2
Reaction score
0
A device consists of eight balls each of mass 0.8 kg attached to the ends of low-mass spokes of length 1.2 m, so the radius of rotation of the balls is 0.6 m. The device is mounted in the vertical plane. The axle is held up by supports that are not shown, and the wheel is free to rotate on the nearly frictionless axle. A lump of clay with mass 0.20 kg falls and sticks to one of the balls at the location shown, when the spoke attached to that ball is at 45 degrees to the horizontal. Just before the impact the clay has a speed 9 m/s, and the wheel is rotating counterclockwise with angular speed 0.28 radians/s.

(a) Which of the following statements are true about the device and the clay, for angular momentum relative to the axle of the device?

Just before the collision the angular momentum of the wheel is 0.
The angular momentum of the device is the same before and after the collision.
The angular momentum of the device is the sum of the angular momenta of all eight balls.
The angular momentum of the device + clay just after the collision is equal to the angular momentum of the device + clay just before the collision.
The angular momentum of the falling clay is zero because the clay is moving in a straight line.



(b) Just before the impact, what is the angular momentum of the combined system of device plus clay about the center C? (As usual, x is to the right, y is up, and z is out of the screen, toward you.)


(c) Just after the impact, what is the angular momentum of the combined system of device plus clay about the center C?

(d) Just after the impact, what is the angular velocity of the device?




i understand the purpose of using the equation for L but not for this case =[
 
Physics news on Phys.org