Mechanics Minilesson: Solving the Atwood Machine

In this Mechanics Minilesson, I describe how to solve the motion of two weights connected by a massless string over a light flywheel - an idealized Atwood machine. We go through the steps of establishing a coordinate system, writing down the initial conditions, drawing force diagrams, writing down the equations of motion, finding constraint equations, solving for the unknowns, and checking out our solution.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• education
• physics
• mechanics
• atwood machine
• newton's laws
• science

[taekwonjeff]

thx for the explanation. wen i was 1st introduced to this problem i was certain that unless the masses were equal then the acceleration wud be constant (9.8)

[RMARME1]

Thanks Professor, I have listened to your UCSD podcasts also. They are helping me a lot.