Weighing The Options

   
Recent changes
Table of contents
Links to this page
FRONT PAGE / INDEX

A Challenge Question ...

Weighing The Options

images/ScalePicture.gif
Consider a good, old-fashioned spring-balance. The more you hang from it, the larger the reading. Suppose it's been calibrated, and when you hang one kilogram from it the dial reads 1kg.

images/ScaleQuestion.gif
Now look at the arrangement we have here on the right. We have two frictionless pulleys and a light, inextensible string such as is only ever found in a physics textbook. We put the (effectively massless) spring balance in the middle, and we hang a kilogram from each end of the string.

What reading do we get?


Contents

 

Links on this page

 
Site hosted by Colin and Rachel Wright:
  • Maths, Design, Juggling, Computing,
  • Embroidery, Proof-reading,
  • and other clever stuff.

Suggest a change ( <-- What does this mean?) / Send me email
Front Page / All pages by date / Site overview / Top of page

Universally Browser Friendly     Quotation from
Tim Berners-Lee
    Valid HTML 3.2!