Chapter 6: Q9CP (page 240)
If a system contains four particles, how many potential energy pairs U12, etc., are there? List them.
Short Answer
The system has six potential energy pairs (U12 , U13 , U14 , U23 , U24 , U34 ) .
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Chapter 6: Q9CP (page 240)
If a system contains four particles, how many potential energy pairs U12, etc., are there? List them.
The system has six potential energy pairs (U12 , U13 , U14 , U23 , U24 , U34 ) .
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Use energy conservation to find the approximate final speed of a basketball dropped from a height of m (roughly the height of a professional basketball player). Why don't you need to know the mass of the basketball?
Suppose that you throw a ball at an angle to the horizontal, and just after it leaves your hand at a height its velocity is. Assuming that we can neglect air resistance, at the top of its trajectory, when it is momentarily traveling horizontally, its velocity is. What is the heightat the top of the trajectory, in terms of the other known quantities? Use the Energy Principle.
Turn the argument around. If the object falls to the Earth starting from rest a great distance away, what is the speed with which it will hit the upper atmosphere? (Actually, a comet or asteroid coming from a long distance away might well have an even larger speed, due to its interaction with the sun.) Small objects vaporize as they plunge through the atmosphere, but a very large object can penetrate and hit the ground at very high speed. Such a massive impact is thought to have killed off the dinosaurs.
A particle moves inside a circular glass tube under the influence of a tangential force of constant magnitude F (Figure 6.78). Explain why we cannot associate a potential energy with this force. How is this situation different from the case of a block on the end of a string, which is swung in a circle?

You pull a block of mass macross a frictionless table with a constant force. You also pull with an equal constant force a block of larger mass M. The blocks are initially at rest. If you pull the blocks through the same distance, which block has the greater kinetic energy, and which block has the greater momentum? If instead you pull the blocks for the same amount of time, which block has the greater kinetic energy, and which block has the greater momentum?
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