What is Circular Motion?:
Centripetal Force:
Universal Law of Gravity:
Important Equations:
Example Problems:
- Circular motion is the movement of an object around a the circumference of the circle. This could be represented in a person on a merry go round to an example of a space satellite.
- Uniform Circular Motion: It is an object in a circular path that has a constant velocity
- Angular velocity: The representation of a change in angle over time. Its symbol is the greek letter omega "ω" and its unit is radians per second
- Centripetal acceleration: Is when an object traveling in a circular path has acceleration pointing toward the center of the circle
- Period: Represents time it takes to make one full revolution
- Frequency: The amount of revolutions dine by an object in a second
Centripetal Force:
- Because centripetal acceleration moves toward the center of the circle that means that the net force of the object will always be Centripetal force. There is no such thing as a an individual centripetal force but rather the net force which sums up into the centripetal force
Universal Law of Gravity:
- It represents the gravitational action between 2 objects
- The equation is F= G(M1M2/r^2)
- F represents the force of gravity
- G represents the universal Gravity constant. This constant equals 6.67408 x 10^-11 nm^2/kg^2
- M1 is the mass of one of the objects in kilograms
- M2 is the mass of the other object in kilograms
- r is the radius ( the distance between the centers of the objects)
- Note that the universal gravity equation is the same as the gravity equation for earth (Force gravity = mass x 9.8) this is because the radius of the earth doesn't change grandly nor does its mass so these values were simplified down into 9.8.
Important Equations:
- Fc = mv^2/r
- Fc = 4π2mr/T2
- Fc = Mac
- V = 2πr/T
- V = rω
- V = Gm/r
- T = 2π/ω
- T = 2πr/v
- Τ = 2πr3/Gm
- ac=V^2/r
- ac = ω2r
- ac = Gm/r^2
Example Problems: