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Raziel2701
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Homework Statement
A meter stick stands on a frictionless surface and leans against a frictionless wall as shown. It is released to fall when it makes an angle of 1 degree from the vertical. Use Lagrange and Euler to find how long it takes the stick to fall to the ground.
The Attempt at a Solution
The potential of the stick will essentially just be mgL correct? Since the stick starts from an angle of 1 degree.
The Kinetic energy would have two components, a rotational and a translational. For rotation, I guess I'll just use [tex]\frac{1}{2}I\omega^2[/tex]. I guess I could look up the moment of inertia later on but I want to get the setup right.
For translational kinetic energy, when the stick falls, the center of mass of the stick falls down but it also moves horizontally, so there's an x and y component to the velocity so the KE would be [tex]\frac{1}{2}mv^2[/tex]
What concerns me is that v should be x-dot squared and y-dot squared but then it seems like I have too many variables for an object that has two(?) degrees of freedom.
How do I set this up?