Mass Motion under a Variable Force

Initializing live version
Download to Desktop

Requires a Wolfram Notebook System

Interact on desktop, mobile and cloud with the free Wolfram Player or other Wolfram Language products.

A cart of mass initially at rest at at time is attached to a mass hanging from a pulley. The pulley and the floor are assumed to be frictionless. The experiment gives a case of motion under a variable force because the angle varies with time. The resulting equation of motion has no simple analytic solution, so the solution is integrated numerically.

[more]

Plots of position , velocity , and acceleration versus time are shown.

[less]

Contributed by: Enrique Zeleny (August 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA


Snapshots


Details

The length of the table is and the height of the pulley is ; then, from the geometry of the problem, it can be shown that the equation of motion is

.

The tension is ; if , the cart does not lift off.

The initial conditions used here are , , , .

Problem taken from F. Y. Wang, Physics with MAPLE, Weinheim: Wiley-VCH, 2005.



Feedback (field required)
Email (field required) Name
Occupation Organization
Note: Your message & contact information may be shared with the author of any specific Demonstration for which you give feedback.
Send