Tension Calculation for Spinning Rope

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sesj
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Stuck
AI Thread Summary
The discussion focuses on calculating the tension in a spinning rope with a mass of 3.14 kg and a radius of 2 meters, rotating at an angular velocity of 1 rad/sec. It is clarified that there is no angular acceleration since the motion is uniformly circular, and the tension varies along the length of the rope due to its mass. A proposed method involves integrating the differences in centripetal forces acting on infinitesimally close points along the rope to determine the tension. The correct approach suggests dividing the rope into small mass segments and calculating the tension on each segment, ultimately integrating to find the total tension. The final expression for tension incorporates the angular velocity and the mass distribution along the rope.
Sesj
Messages
1
Reaction score
0
HELP! stuck on this problem

A circle of rope of total mass 3.14kg and a radius of 2 meters is spinning at an angular velocity of 1 rad/sec about an axis through the center of the circle. What is the tension in the rope?

any help or solution would be great!
 
Physics news on Phys.org
I'm not a physicist (and as such not a competant advisor), but it seems to me that it would be equal to the tangenitial component of the force,

F_t=m\alpha r.

Someone should possibly confirm or deny.
 
Last edited:
Berislav said:
I'm not a physicist (and as such not a competant advisor), but it seems to me that it would be equal to the tangenitial component of the force,

F_t=m\alpha r.

Someone should possible confirm or deny.

Berislav, there is no angular acceleration \alpha because the motion is uniformly circular.

Also the question is not as easy as it seems. Because the rope has mass, the tension varies (probably non-linearly) along the length of the rope. So it depends on which point of the rope is asked the value of tension T. It can be expressed as a formula, instead.
 
ramollari said:
Berislav, there is no angular acceleration \alpha because the motion is uniformly circular.

Ah, yes. I misread the question. I thought that it said angular acceleration instead of angular velocity. Sorry for posting the wrong answer.

EDIT:

This is probably wrong as well, but since I'm planning to study physics at University I would like to try to solve as much exercies as possible:

What about finding the tension by comparing the difference of the x-th component of two centripical forces acting in two infitesmaly close point and then integrating over the enitire rope.
 
Last edited:
Berislav said:
This is probably wrong as well,

What about finding the tension by comparing the difference of the x-th component of two centripical forces acting in two infitesmaly close point and then integrating over the enitire rope.

Yes, you are close to the solution. The tension at the very end is zero. If you sum up (or rather integrate) the differences in tension up to the point we are interested in, you come up with the resultant tension.
A better approach IMO is to divide the rope into tiny pieces of mass dm and find the tension on each piece as

dT = \omega ^2rdm,

Knowing that the tension is transmitted along all the rope, we add the tensions of all the pieces with integration from m_0 the mass at the extreme (= 0), to m_f, which is the mass from the point we are interested into the extreme. The variable r can be expressed in terms of the mass from a specific point to the extreme of the rope, since the latter is uniformly distributed.

T = \int dT = \omega ^2 \int_{m_0 = 0}^{m_f} r(m)dm,

PS: I may also have misunderstood the question because maybe the rope is in circular shape rotating about an axis passing through its centre.

Expressing r in terms of m is left to the guy who started the thread.
 
Last edited:
I multiplied the values first without the error limit. Got 19.38. rounded it off to 2 significant figures since the given data has 2 significant figures. So = 19. For error I used the above formula. It comes out about 1.48. Now my question is. Should I write the answer as 19±1.5 (rounding 1.48 to 2 significant figures) OR should I write it as 19±1. So in short, should the error have same number of significant figures as the mean value or should it have the same number of decimal places as...
Thread 'A cylinder connected to a hanging mass'
Let's declare that for the cylinder, mass = M = 10 kg Radius = R = 4 m For the wall and the floor, Friction coeff = ##\mu## = 0.5 For the hanging mass, mass = m = 11 kg First, we divide the force according to their respective plane (x and y thing, correct me if I'm wrong) and according to which, cylinder or the hanging mass, they're working on. Force on the hanging mass $$mg - T = ma$$ Force(Cylinder) on y $$N_f + f_w - Mg = 0$$ Force(Cylinder) on x $$T + f_f - N_w = Ma$$ There's also...
Back
Top