A Man, A Ladder And A Pulley

A pulley is fixed to a roof, it holds a ladder of some mass on which a man of mass 40 kg 40\text{ kg} is standing. The other end of the rope carries a counter weight of mass 60 kg 60\text{ kg} so that the system is at equilibrium. Now the man climbs up 15 m 15\text{ m} with respect to the ladder and stops.

Find the displacement in the center of mass of the system.

Details and Assumptions:

  • The pulley is frictionless and the rope is light.


The answer is 5.

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

Sravanth C.
Sep 5, 2016

Let us say that the rope moves some distance x x when the man climbs. So the net displacement of the man is 15 x 15-x . The ladder, whose mass is 60 40 = 20 60-40=20 kg moves a distance x x in the downward direction, thus it's net displacement is x -x .

The counter weight moves a distance x x in the upward direction. Hence the displacement of the centre of mass would be:

Δ r cm = 40 ( 15 x ) + 20 ( x ) + 60 ( x ) 40 + 20 + 60 = 40 × 15 120 = 5 \begin{aligned} \Delta \vec r_{\text{cm}}&=\dfrac{40(15-x)+20(-x)+60(x)}{40+20+60}\\ &=\dfrac{40\times 15}{120}\\ &=\boxed 5 \end{aligned}

0 pending reports

×

Problem Loading...

Note Loading...

Set Loading...