Question

nown mass, mu. You wish to find the mass of this object. The room is a meterstick, a fulcrum to balance the meter stick on, 2) You have an object equipment you have in the some string, and a small electronic scale. The scale is meterstick, ms, error able to get the mass of the ut the unknown mass exceeds the limit of the scale and reads as an a) Explain the procedure you would use with the meterstick, fulcrum, string, and ect to potentially get the mass of the unknown object. Include a a description of what you would measure, the measurements labeled un kown obj agram, on the diagram. b) Show what equations you would then use and how you could utilize those equations to solve for the mass of the unknown object c) Assuming the meterstick wouldn't break, what would be the limit of mu in terms of m, that you could obtain using this method. Why is there an upper limit to m, that can be found in this situation?

Answer 1

(a) The rod may be balanced under the action of the weights m_u g and m_s g as shown in figure And then by taking the moments as these weights about the fulcrum m_u can be calculated (b) For equilibrium rightarrow m_u g times d^' = m_s g times d so m_u = m_s times d/d^' (c) For the maximum limit of m_u we can shift the fulcrum and weight m_u g in the left most of meter stick as shown in figure, so d = 49 cm and d^' = 1 cm