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?

Question

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!

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

To find the acceleration of a passenger at the lowest point of the ferris wheel ride, you need to consider the centripetal acceleration. Centripetal acceleration is the acceleration directed towards the center of the circular path.

In this case, as the ferris wheel completes five turns every minute, we can determine the angular velocity (ω) of the wheel.

Since the period (T) is the time for one complete rotation, we can calculate the angular velocity using the formula ω = 2π/T. Here, T = 1 minute, which is equal to 60 seconds when converted.

So, ω = 2π/60 = π/30 radians per second.

Now, to calculate the centripetal acceleration (a_c), we use the formula a_c = ω^2 * r, where r is the radius of the circular path.

Here, the radius (r) is not given explicitly, but we can assume it to be the distance from the center of the ferris wheel to the lowest point. However, since this information is not provided, let's assume the radius for the sake of calculation.

Once you have the radius value, you can substitute it in the formula to calculate the centripetal acceleration. Remember to square the angular velocity (ω) before multiplying it with the radius (r).

The question specifically asks for the acceleration at the lowest point of the ride, so you need to find the centripetal acceleration.

Note: Linear acceleration refers to the acceleration in a straight line, while centripetal acceleration is the acceleration for objects moving in a circular path.

I hope this clarifies the issue and helps you in finding the correct answer.