Question

A magician wants to do the trick in which he pulls a tablecloth from a table, leaving the items on the table behind, unmoved. It turns out that this isn't magic at all, but simple physics.

Let's assume that the tablecloth has to be slide horizontally a distance of 50 cm before it has slipped out from underneath a dish that lays on top of it. If the tablecloth's mass is 2 grams and the dish has a mass of 5 grams, and the coefficient of friction between the dish and the tablecloth is 0.236, determine the horizontal force with which the magician must pull the tablecloth if he wants the dish to only move an imperceptibly small 1 mm during while the tablecloth is being removed?

Assume the coefficient of friction between the tablecloth and the table is 0.5.

Answer 1