Jupyter notebook Assignments/A Pendulum Saves a Life/APendulumSavesLife.ipynb
A Pendulum Saves a Life
Click on the image below. Your task in this problem is to model the motion of both the person and the kettlebell (the red thing on the other end). Determine analytic expressions for and for both the person and the kettlebell. Then simulate the motion. I have provided some starter code for you. (Ignore the fact that the rope gets shorter as it wraps around the pole, and ignore friction between the rope and the pole. This will make your result somewhat different from the video.)
Solution
Assumptions
*The person and the kettle bell is a point mass.
*There is friction between the rope and the pole. (BUT IGNORE IT)
*Initial conditions start at rest.
*The rope gets shorter as it wraps around the pole. (BUT IGNORE IT)
*The person lives in the end.
Diagrams
Include interaction diagrams and free body diagrams with axes indicated. 

Draw the free body diagram for the kettle bell at some angle so that you can determine the components of the forces acting on it.
Analysis
Newtons Second Law in polar coordinates person and the kettle bell.
Sum of Forces: Kettle Bell
Also check special cases.
Check
To check these solutions you must set equations equal to one another to find the shared tension force.
There is an implicit assumption here (which was not stated), that .
For :
For :
For :
Interpretation
The weight was released and the person dropped. The rope tightened around the pole as the person dropped safely. Thus proving that things rotate faster when they approach a central point.
The simulation ends up looking different since we ignored the fact that the rope got shorter.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NameError Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-1-f6072558345f> in <module>()
2 rb=10 #r-coordinate of bell
3 drb = 0 # initial velocity of bell
----> 4 phib=-pi/2 #angle of bell relative to vertical with counterclockwise positive
5 dphib = 0 # initial angle of bell
6 rp=2 #r-coordinate of person
NameError: name 'pi' is not defined
You need to import some packages to get this to work.
Rubric
| Section | Points | Max Points |
|---|---|---|
| Assumptions | 1 | 1 |
| Diagrams | 0 | 1 |
| Analysis | 3 | 3 |
| Check | 0 | 1 |
| Interpretation | 0 | 1 |
| Code | 2 | 3 |
