Physics question

Question

an air track glider with mass m1 moves on a level, frictionless air track in the physics lab. it is connected by a light, flexible non-stretching string passing over a small frictionless pulley to a hanger of mass m2. (a) find the acceleration of each body. (b) consider constructing a graph of the force of the hanging weight as a function of the acceleration of the glider. would such a graph be linear? if so, what is the slope of such a graph? if not, what would the functional dependency be?

Answer 1

I'm guessing the m2 mass is allowed to fall from rest, and that motion is what drags the glider along the track (if that's not the case, I'm afraid I'll need more information to solve part a of the problem).

 

(a) If m2 is falling from rest, it is only subject to gravitational acceleration g. m1 is being pulled along at the same rate due to the string, so its acceleration should have the same magnitude. The acceleration vectors would be

• a1 = 9.8 m/s² oriented along the table (i.e. to the left or right)
• a2 = 9.8 m/s² oriented down

 

(b) We know from Newton's 2nd law that F=ma. If we graph force as a function of acceleration, where y=F and x=a, we would get a linear graph with a slope of m, the mass in question.