Tuesday, November 24, 2015

BFPM Challenge Problem

This is a diagram of our setup, with  the mystery weight attached to the ceiling by two points on the ceiling. It might be hard to tell, but the angles of each line are not the same. 
This is what my setup looked like when broken down into a free body diagram with every force acting on the object. I broke the two tension forces up because every force has to be on the axis of the  diagram to be equal to another force. This diagram shows that it is balanced, as every force is accounted for on the axis. 
Once I had my free body diagram, I could begin to find my predicted weight, or the Force of Gravity that is acting upon the mystery weight. I first measured the angles at which the lines were holding the weight, and they showed Line A to have an angle of 35 and Line B to have an angle of 70. With this information, I could then use Soh Cah Toa to find the exact amount of force in Newtons that FTenAy and FTenBy have. I'll start with FTenBy. Since 20+70 is equal to 90 degrees, I can use the cosine of 20 to find the amount of force in FTenBy. My math is as follows:
Cosine(20)= FTenBy/ 2.2 (N)
FTenBy= Cosine(20)(2.2 N)
FTenBy= 2.1 N
To solve for the amount of force in Newtons for FTenAy, I chose to use sin(35) to solve, because sin is equal to opposite/hypotenuse. The following is my setup and solved answer:
Sin(35)= FTenAy/0.8 (N)
FTenAy= Sin(35)(0.8 N)
FTenAy= 0.46 N
Even after all that work, I'm still not entirely finished. The two force amounts that I found still need to be added together, as both of them come together to equal the force of gravity on an object, or more commonly known as the object's weight. 
FTenBy+FTenAy=Fgravity
2.10 N + 0.46 N= Fgravity 
Fgravity= 2.56 N

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