Unstable points
The above graph shows the potential energy of a particle in the region due to a one-dimensional force. At how many points in this region is the particle in an unstable equilibrium state?
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
1 solution
Points of unstable equilibrium are simply those where the potential energy reaches a local maximum. From the graph there are three points of local maxima and hence the answer is 3.