Ferris Wheel problem, please help.

Question

A Ferris wheel with a radius of 15 m rotates once every 100 s. Riders board the Ferris wheel using a platform 1 m above the ground.

a) Draw the graph for two rotations of the Ferris wheel

b) Write an equation that gives the height of the rider as a function of time

c) Calculate the height of the rider after 2 min of the Ferris wheel. Round to 2 decimal places

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

Answer 1

Try to think of this in terms of the following:

1) sine or cosine?

2) what is the amplitude?

3) what is the equation of the midline?

4) what is the period?

If you can answer those questions it will make it fairly easy to do part b).

For example, the ferris wheel completes a revolution every 100 seconds.

If f(x) = Acos(Bx) + D (ignoring phase shift), then the period is 2pi/B. We want the period to be 100, so B = 2pi/100 or pi/50.

Remember in the above definition for f(x), y = D is the midline. Can you picture where the center of the ferris wheel is located?

Here is a graph representing the ferris wheel. This might help answering 1,2,3 above.

desmos.com/calculator/ebqdqcch9q

Give the above some thought and comment with your insights and remaining questions.