Nice Short Week

We'll pick up education again on Monday, so enjoy your long weekend...

B Block conducted their centripetal force lab, investigating centripetal force, tangential velocity and rotational radius. From our discussion of centripetal force and acceleration, the results should not have been surprising. For a given force, a larger radius requires a larger velocity and as force increases, greater velocity is required to maintain constant radius. On Monday, we'll go over the lab, the homework problems on centripetal force and gravity and review for Tuesday's exam.

C Block worked through tangential velocity and acceleration, with centripetal acceleration and force thrown in for fun. Remember to use the correct units for angular variables and linear variables and that tangential acceleration has a different job than centripetal acceleration. Tangential acceleration reports rate of change of direction, centripetal acceleration reports rate of change of speed. That tangential velocity vector has two components and each acceleration measures rate of change in one of them. It stands to reason, then, that centripetal force produces change of direction of velocity, and you would be right. We'll review these ideas on Monday before starting to work on gravity.

E Block did their own force work today with centripetal force and gravity. Remember that many forces can act as centripetal forces, including gravity, but do not always serve that function in all situations. Work on those homework problems and pay special attention to the gravity piece - that formula gets people into trouble if they forget about the /r² piece.

F Block reviewed tangential velocity/acceleration and centripetal acceleration before moving in to centripetal force. We took time to discuss the basic job of centripetal force and looked at examples of how various forces can take on that role. On Monday, we'll take a special look at gravity - a force produced by all matter.