It's holiday time and a nice idea to visit an amusement park. ever thought about how the force is used in the rides? now is the time to do so
a. you have studied the effects of forces ,observe how the forces are acting on any five of the rides and jot down your observation in a tabular column under the following headings-different forces acting on the rides, the effect of each force, speed of each ride, type of motion.
Answers
Answer
Balanced and unbalanced forces :
A balanced force results whenever two or more forces act upon an object in such a way as to exactly counteract each other. As you sit in your seat at this moment, the seat pushes upward with a force equal in strength and opposite in direction to the force of gravity. These two forces are said to balance each other, causing you to remain at rest. If the seat is suddenly pulled out from under you, then you experience an unbalanced force. There is no longer an upward seat force to balance the downward pull of gravity, so you accelerate to the ground.
Centripetal force :
Motion along a curve or through a circle is always caused by a centripetal force. This is a force that pushes an object in an inward direction. The moon orbits the earth in a circular motion because a force of gravity pulls on the moon in an inward direction toward the center of its orbit. In a roller coaster loop, riders are pushed inwards toward the center of the loop by forces resulting from the car seat (at the loop's bottom) and by gravity (at the loop's top).
The two most important forms for amusement park rides are kinetic energy and potential energy. In the absence of external forces such as air resistance and friction (two of many), the total amount of an object's energy remains constant.
Force:
A force is a push or a pull acting upon an object. Forces result from interactions between two objects. Most interactions involve contact. If you hit the wall, the wall hits you back. The contact interaction between your hand and the wall results in a mutual push upon both objects. The wall becomes nicked (if hit hard enough) and your hand hurts. Bumper cars experience mutual forces acting between them due to contact during a collision. Some forces can act from a distance without actual contact between the two interacting objects. Gravity is one such force. On a free fall ride, there is a force of gravitational attraction between the Earth and your body even though the Earth and your body are not in contact.
Friction :
Friction is a force that resists the motion of an object. Friction results from the close interaction between two surfaces that are sliding across each other. When you slam on your brakes and your car skids to a stop with locked wheels, it is the force of friction that brings it to a stop. Friction resists the car's motion.
Kinetic energy :
Kinetic energy is the energy possessed by an object because of its motion. All moving objects have kinetic energy. The amount of kinetic energy depends upon the mass and speed of the object. A roller coaster car has a lot of kinetic energy if it is moving fast and has a lot of mass. In general, the kinetic energy of a roller coaster rider is at a maximum when the rider reaches a minimum height.
Momentum :
Momentum pertains to the quantity of motion that an object possesses. Any mass that is in motion has momentum. In fact, momentum depends upon mass and velocity, or in other words, the amount of "stuff" that is moving and how fast the "stuff" is moving. A train of roller coaster cars moving at a high speed has a lot of momentum. A tennis ball moving at a high speed has less momentum. And the building you are in, despite its large mass, has no momentum since it is at rest.
Period :
A motion that repeats itself in cyclic fashion is said to be periodic. The time for one complete cycle is known as the period of the motion. The motion of a second hand has a period of 60 seconds. The periodic rotation of the earth about its axis is 24 hours. The periodic motion of an amusement park pendulum ride may have a period as high as 10 or 15 seconds.
Potential energy :
Potential energy is the energy possessed by an object because of its height above the ground. The amount of potential energy possessed by an object depends on its mass and its height. A roller coaster car is initially hauled by a motor and chain system to the top of a tall hill, giving it a large quantity of potential energy.
Weightlessness :
Amusement park rides often produce sensations of weightlessness. These sensations result when riders no longer feel an external force acting upon their bodies. At the top of the tower of a free-fall ride, a 100-pound rider would feel 100 pounds of force from the seat pushing as an external force upon her body. The rider feels her normal weight. Yet, as she falls from the tower, the seat has fallen out from under her. She no longer feels the external force of the seat and subsequently has a brief sensation of weightlessness. She has not lost any weight, but feels as though she has because of the absence of the seat force. In this context, weightlessness is a sensation and not an actual change in weight.
I HOPE IT HELPS YOU. . .