- #106
Doc Al
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As long as you stick to an inertial frame, there's no need to consider pseudoforces. (You certainly don't need to use a non-inertial frame to discuss your "demon drop" platform example!) But the choice of frame in which to analyze a problem is up to you. If for some reason you choose to analyze things from the non-inertial accelerating frame, you must include the inertial forces. (Measured from that accelerating frame, you are at rest thus the net force on you must be zero. You need to add pseudoforces to keep Newton's laws working in that frame.)cabraham said:I understand where you're coming from, but still see a problem. So when the demon drop platform and passengers are in free fall, the normal force disappears, and in Doc Al's words because "You are accelerating". Not to nitpick but that is where I see the problem. I have no issue so far. But, if I am accelerating, then we don't need a pseudo force "inertial" to balance gravity. Were my physics and ME profs wrong when they taught me that the summation of forces goes to zero when a body is in static equilibrium, i.e. at rest. But if the body is "accelerating", which I have no dispute with, why do we need a counter force to gravity? The inertial counter or pseudo force is brought into the picture to balance out the gravity to keep the summation of forces at zero. Again, was I taught wrong that the sum of forces is NONZERO in acceleration?
These concepts are common knowledge among physics students (and physics professors!), but I can easily imagine them not being used much in mechanical engineering. Go to your university library and browse the physics sections for intermediate/classical mechanics books. Or go to the web: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/HBASE/corf.html#cent".Yes, Doc Al, I am well aware that "centripetal" is a term indicating the direction of a force being radially inward. The part about the string, friction, or gravity providing the centripetal was something I was about to post when you just did. I agree completely.
Maybe now is a good time to check outside resources. I visited MIT physics site, and found a lot about bodies in ucm. Centripetal is discussed in every lecture note, but centrifugal is not mentioned. I asked 2 ME people here at work, BSME education, about it, and they said that centripetal acts inward, and velocity is tangential, but centrifugal is something they don't use. I'll find a Ph.D. physics prof at the university I go to, but school is out for the summer, so it may take a while.
Most definitely!The only thing I'm sure of is what I've believed for years, that accelerated ref frames are very tricky to deal with.
That's why I chose this example.I'll think about the railroad car with the object dangling from a string. But, the gravity in this case is vertical while the train's acceleration is horizontal. The gravity is of course fully present in both R and S ref frames. But in the demon drop, the acceleration is vertical as is gravity, no coincidence.
Sure, but since this thread is about pseudoforces and non-inertial reference frame, I thought you might like to understand how one would analyze the problem from a non-inertial frame. You sure don't have to use a non-inertial frame to analyze such a simple problem--I never would, except to illustrate the concepts of inertial forces.I've thought about it. When at rest, the dangling object is pulled down by gravity and the string tension counters the g force keeping the object in static equilibrium. When accelerating, the horizontal force is forward coincident with the acceleration, vertical force is still downward due to gravity, and the tension in the string where it is attached counters the horizontal accelerating force and gravity which is vertical. The string angle, I would expect, would be the result of vector summation. Just an off the cuff 2 minute analysis.
The point of my comment was that the outward force that you feel when twirling the rock is not what we call "centrifugal force". That outward force that you feel is a "real" force caused by tension in the string--nothing "pseudo" about it.Doc Al, further back in this thread, was you stated that when a rock is twirled on a string, the outward force you feel is something you just call as "tension".
Again, the point of the train problem was not to solve the problem--which is trivial--but to show how you would have to introduce an inertial force if--for some strange reason--you wished to do the analysis strictly from the reference frame of the train.That is my position precisely. In the train case, I see it as the tension always acting counter to the force.
Maybe I, or others, is just making too much out of it and should let it rest.
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