Acceleration of a pulled spool

Physics Teacher

Volumn 39, Issue 8, 2001, Pages 481-485

  Mungan, Carl E ^a  

^a UNITED STATES NAVAL ACADEMY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85007569702     PISSN: 0031921X     EISSN: 19434928     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1119/1.1424598     Document Type: Article

References (6)

1. For example, see R. Ehrlich, Why Toast Lands Jelly-Side Down (Princeton University Press, NJ, 1997), p. 65.
2. A. Pinto and M. Fiolhais, "Rolling cylinder on a horizontal plane," Phys. Educ. 36, 250 (May 2001) and references therein.
3. In a practical demonstration, pulling at an angle much beyond 180° is impossible unless the string passes through a groove cut in the track on which the spool rolls. For simplicity, in this article I will restrict θ to the range from 0° (forward) to 180° (backward).
4. The wound string should be included in the determinations of m and I. However, the linear mass density of the string is assumed to be small enough that the length of string pulled off the spool has negligible mass compared to γm.
5. c is characterized in P. Chagnon, "Animated displays III: Mechanical puzzles," Phys. Teach. 31, 32 (Jan. 1993).
6. Forward, zero, and backward directions of the frictional force at a 180° pulling angle can be nicely demonstrated using the three rollers described in R.E. Berg, "Traction force on accelerated rolling bodies," Phys. Teach. 28, 600 (Dec. 1990).