Question

Your artist friend is designing a kinetic sculpture and asks for your help since she knows that you have had physics. Part of her sculpture consists of a 6.0-kg object (you can't tell what it is supposed to be, but it's art) and a 4.0-kg object which hang straight down from opposite ends of a very thin, flexible wire. This wire passes over a smooth, cylindrical, horizontal, stainless steel pipe 3.0 meters above the floor. The frictional force between the rod and the wire is negligible. The 6.0-kg object is held 2.0 meters above the floor and the other object hangs 0.50 meters above the floor. When the mechanism releases the 6.0-kg object, both objects accelerate and one will eventually hit the floor -- but they don't hit each other. To determine if the floor will be damaged, calculate the speed of the object which hits the floor.

Answer 1