The circular Atwood machine
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[1] Universidad de la República
Universidad de la República
Uruguay
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[2] Universidad ORT Uruguay , Montevideo, Uruguay
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- Localización: The Physics Teacher, ISSN 0031-921X, Vol. 62, Nº. 2, 2024, págs. 150-151
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
The Atwood machine, a traditional device in physics, has been an invaluable tool for demonstrating and understanding the fundamental principles of Newtonian mechanics, especially Newton’s second law.1 Some time ago, we published in this column a proposal that makes use of the smartphones and their built-in sensors to implement an updated version of the experiment but keeping its essence unchanged.2 Now, we propose a circular Atwood machine designed to study the relationship between the external torque on a rigid disk and its angular acceleration mediated through the moment of inertia. In our proposal, quantitative measuments are achieved by means of a smartphone’s angular velocity sensor. The moment of inertia measured was successfully contrasted with the value obtained from the period of oscillations of the device hanging from a point at its periphery.
