Name ____________________________________ Date __________________ Per _______
HW#33 Centripetal Acceleration
1.
A 0.5kg ball moves in a circle that is 0.4m in radius at a speed of 4.0m/s. Calculate its
centripetal acceleration.
2. A 50kg girl in a roller coaster with a speed of 30m/s is traveling around a horizontal circle
with a radius of 25m. What is the centripetal acceleration of the girl?
3. A 3kg ball is on the end of a 2m string. The ball is traveling in a circle with a velocity of
5m/s. Find the centripetal acceleration of the ball.
4. A Ferris wheel with a radius of 15m makes on complete rotation every 12 seconds
a.
With what tangential speed are the riders moving?
b. What is the magnitude of their acceleration?
5. After arriving at Victor Vector, brother of Hector Vector, Velma found him flying a model
airplane in a horizontal circle in his backyard. He told her the plane massed 500 grams and
that the string he was holding the plane in a circle with was 6.00 meters long. The plane
made a revolution in 4 seconds. Velma being the adamant physics student instantly told him
the centripetal acceleration of the plane. What value did she give him? 14.8m/s/s
6. NASA uses large centrifuges to study the effects of large forces on astronauts prior to
their going into space. A subject in the 20-G centrifuge, which has a radius of 8.9m, can
have a centripetal acceleration as large as 20.0g, where g equals 9.8 m/s/s. What is the
tangential speed of the subject?
7. For several decades the idea of an orbiting space colony has been discussed. The colony
would consist of a large hollow cylinder that rotates at a constant angular speed. Colonists
would live on the inner wall of the cylinder, where centripetal acceleration would simulate
free-fall acceleration at Earth’s surface. If the structure has an inner radius of 150m, what
would the tangential speed of a colonist standing on the cylinder’s inner wall be?
8. A model electric train moves along a circular track. The train has a tangential speed of
0.35m/s and has a centripetal acceleration of 0.29m/s/s. What is the radius of the track?
9. What is the minimum radius at which an airplane flying at 300m/s can make a U-turn if its
centripetal acceleration is NOT to exceed 4g’s?
10. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway has four banked curves, each of which forms a quarter of
a circle. Suppose a race car speeds along one of these curves with a constant tangential
speed of 75.0m/s. Neglecting the effects due to the banking of the curve, the centripetal
acceleration on the car is 22.0m/s/s. What is the radius of the curve?