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April 16, 2014

# Homework Help: Physics

Posted by Kinematics on Monday, January 14, 2013 at 5:19pm.

A carnival ferris wheel completes five turns about its horizontal axis every minute. What is the acceleration of a passenger at his/ her lowest point on the ride?

I understand that 1/f= T which is how you find the period and that minutes must be converted to sec, but I'm getting really strange answers for the centrip. acceleration. Is the question asking for the linear acceleration or both? Any help would be really appreciated!

• Physics - drwls, Monday, January 14, 2013 at 6:17pm

You are going to need the ferris wheel radius R to compute an actual number for the acceleration. The angular velocity is w = 10*pi/60 s = 0.524 rad/s

The acceleration is R*w^2, always toward the center of the wheel. It is centripetal. There is no tangential acceleration if the wheel rotates at constant speed.

• Physics - Kinematics, Monday, January 14, 2013 at 6:59pm

thanks for your help!! The radius was 15 m so ac was 4.11 m/s^2 if you were wondering :) thanks again!

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