Wire Suspended By Magnetic Field

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Lancelot59
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I'm given the following situation:
Giancoli.ch28.p52.jpg

The suspended wire has a radius of 1.20mm (0.0012m), and is being held up by the magnetic fields generated by the bottom two wires which have a current of 50A each.

I started with a simple force setup:

[tex]F_{g}=2F_{M}sin(60)[/tex]
[tex]mg=2F_{M}sin(60)[/tex]
[tex]F_{M}=\frac{mg}{2sin(60)})[/tex]

To get the mass of the wire I assumed it was made of copper, the density being 8.94 g/cm^3. Not being given any information about the length I just decided to ignore it.

[tex]m=d*v[/tex]
[tex]m=(89.2 \frac{kg}{m^{3}})*\pir^{2}*length[/tex]

[tex]m=(89.2 \frac{kg}{m^{3}})*\pi(0.0006)^{2}*length[/tex]
[tex]m=0.000100883kg[/tex]

So the total weight force pulling the top wire down is: 0.0009896622N

Now to get the magnetic force I treated the wires as infinitely long wires:
[tex]F=I_{2}lB[/tex] and then for the magnetic field generated from each wire:[tex]B=\frac{\mu_{0}I_{1}}{2\pi r}[/tex]

Then sticking everything together, and doubling the magnetic field:
[tex]F_{M}=I_{2}l2B[/tex]
[tex]F_{M}=I_{2}l2(\frac{\mu_{0}I_{1}}{2\pi r})[/tex]

Putting that into the net force equation:
[tex]F_{g}=2(I_{2}l2(\frac{\mu_{0}I_{1}}{2\pi r}))sin(60)[/tex]
[tex]F_{g}=2(I_{2}l(\frac{\mu_{0}I_{1}}{\pi r}))sin(60)[/tex]

So I substituted in the values and solved for I2. I decided to ignore the length term.
[tex]0.0009896622=2(I_{2}l(\frac{(4\pi x10^{-7})(50.0A)}{\pi (0.035m)}))sin(60)[/tex]
I wound up with I2 being 0.999918041, which is way off. After guessing a few times I got the correct answer of 199 from the system after feeding it 200. Where did I go wrong?
 
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Lancelot59 said:
To get the mass of the wire I assumed it was made of copper, the density being 8.94 g/cm^3. Not being given any information about the length I just decided to ignore it.

This where I think you went wrong, did you consider doing it in terms of a linear mass density? You know the cross-sectional area of the wire, it might help.
 
Elwin.Martin said:
This where I think you went wrong, did you consider doing it in terms of a linear mass density? You know the cross-sectional area of the wire, it might help.

Sorry, could you explain that to me?