Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Skate ramp, centripetal force, newton's 3rd law

 
 
This is a picture of a ramp i created using the phet simulation. Notice the two loops are almost circles? at first i couldn't find an explanation as to how the skater was able to skate through the loop without falling off. Then we did centripetal force and it started to make sense. So for the skater on the ramp there is a force of gravity and a normal force. As he travels down the ramp notice the direction of normal force changes as he goes through the loop -normal force points towards the center of the loop but newton's third law states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction so as the normal force pushes the board towards the center of the loop there is and\ equal and opposite force of the skate pushing back on the board therefore he doesn't fall off the ramp. (NOTE: the normal force acts as the centripetal force in this case, there was no friction)


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