Sunday, January 25, 2015

New Year - New Material

The beginning of this year we started off with some new things to learn and discuss about. We talked about torque and rotational inertia. Here are two videos that help explain them both:


In this torque video it explains the basis. Torque is based on two things: force and lever arm. Torque is, in basic terms, the force to turn/rotate an object, like a screw. Door stoppers also help explain this; the reason why we put them farther from the hinges is because the door stopper can only hold so much force, so it needs a bigger lever arm to proportion it.



In this video it shows two discs racing, one disc has mass farther from the centre axis and one with it closer. As you can see the one with the mass closer wins, this is a proof/example of rotational inertia. Rotational Inertia is how much an object wants to move/rotate with the mass closer or far from its centre axis. If mass is closer, then the rotational inertia is less, farther then bigger. If objects want to be rotated easier, then they would want their mass to be evenly spread out its body, which makes it have a low rotational inertia.

1 comment:

  1. These videos were very helpful. I was struggling with connecting torques and lever arms. It was nice to see a basic explanation of this concept. You also summarized it very well. I found it to be short, sweet, and to the point.

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