A sinker on a string travels in a circle of radius1.00 m with a constant speed of 2.75 m/s. What is its acceleration?

Question

A sinker on a string travels in a circle of radius1.00 m with a constant speed of 2.75 m/s. What is its acceleration?

Answer 1

This is a problem in centripetal acceleration.  We will assume that the circle is in a horizontal plane.

 

Recall that F_c=mv²/R, where F is force, m is mass, v is velocity and R is the radius.  But also recall that F = ma_c, where a is the centripetal acceleration.  We don't care about eithe F or m, so we ignore them.

 

Now we calculate a_c = (2.75)²/(1)= 7.56 m/s²