Very fast spinning

A boy is spinning on a chair and holding a paper bag so that it is horizontal, and perpendicular to the axis of the rotation. What should be the angular velocity of the boy in radians/second so that the bottom of the bag breaks?

Details and assumptions

  • Assume paper breaks at an overpressure of 1.2 atm 1.2~\mbox{atm} .
  • The molecular mass of the air is 29 g/mol 29~\mbox{g/mol} .
  • The boy's arm is L = 70 cm L = 70~\mbox{cm} long.
  • When horizontal, the bag has a shape of a cylinder of length 30 cm 30~\mbox{cm} .
  • Outside pressure is 1 atm 1~\mbox{atm} and temperature 2 5 C 25^\circ \mbox{C} .
  • Assume that the boy won't get sick no matter how fast he is spinning. Hint: he whizzes around.


The answer is 513.95.

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2 solutions

Brian Duong
May 20, 2014

Consider an area A A of infinitesimally small thickness d r dr of the bag. We use Newton's Second Law to look at the forces of the two sides of the area. By doing so, we obtain an equation d F = ( p + d p ) A p A . dF = (p + dp)A - pA \ . By spinning, the pressure on the area closer to the opening of the bag will be greater than the pressure on the other side, as there will be more air particles pushing down. With Newton's Second Law, we have d F = a d m , dF = a\, dm \ , where a = ω 2 r a = \omega^2 r . Thus subbing in d F dF and d m = ρ A d r dm = \rho Adr gives d p = ω 2 ρ r d r . dp = \omega^2 \rho r dr \ . Because the density throughout the bag changes, we use the ideal gas law to write the density as a function of pressure, p V = n R T . pV = nRT\ . Subbing in n = m a i r M a i r n = \frac{m_{air}}{M_{air}} , where M a i r M_{air} is the molecular mass, we can rearrange the ideal gas law to yield ρ = m a i r V = M a i r p R T . \rho = \frac{m_{air}}{V} = \frac{M_{air}p}{RT} \ . With this, we obtain the equation d p = ω 2 M a i r P R T r d r . dp = \omega^2 \frac{M_{air}P}{RT} rdr \ . This is simply a separable first-order DE, so we can rearrange the equation and integrate, p 0 P d p p = ω 2 M a i r R T l 0 l r d r , \int_{p_0}^P \frac{dp}{p} = \omega^2 \frac{M_{air}}{RT}\int_{l_0}^l rdr \ , where p 0 p_0 is the outside pressure, P P is the pressure at the bottom of the bag, l 0 l_0 is the length of the boy's arm, and l l is the length of the boy's arm and the length of the cylinder. Thus by integrating and rearranging, we obtain ω = 2 R T M ( l 2 l 0 2 ) l n ( P p 0 ) . \omega = \sqrt{\frac{2RT}{M(l^2 - l_0^2)}ln\left(\frac{P}{p_0}\right)} \ . Subbing in the numbers, we get a final answer ω = 2 ( 8.314 ) ( 25 + 273.15 ) 0.029 ( 1 0.0 7 2 ) l n ( 2.2 1 ) = 514 . \omega = \sqrt{\frac{2(8.314)(25+273.15)}{0.029(1-0.07^2)} ln\left(\frac{2.2}{1}\right)} = 514 \ .

oh man ! i forgot about the units !

A Former Brilliant Member - 4 years, 7 months ago

Isnt that 0.7 rather than 0.07 at the last step?

Md Junaid - 3 years, 3 months ago
David Mattingly Staff
May 13, 2014

Since the centrifugal force acts on the air in the bag, the air creates an additional pressure on the bottom of the bag. Once that pressure reaches 2.2 atm 2.2~\mbox{atm} , the bag will break ( 2.2 atm 2.2~\mbox{atm} since the outside pressure is 1 atm 1~\mbox{atm} and the pressure difference has to be 1.2 atm 1.2~\mbox{atm} ).

If we take infinitesimally small cylindrical intersection of the width d r dr of the air in the bag, we can calculate the pressure it exerts on the rest of the air. Its mass is d m = ρ A d r dm = \rho A dr , so the force it exerts is d F = d m ω 2 r dF = dm \omega^2 r and the pressure d p = ρ ω 2 r d r dp = \rho \omega^2 r dr .

Since from the ideal gas law we have that ρ = p M R T \rho = \frac{pM}{RT} , we can plug it into the above formula, and we get d p p = M ω 2 r d r R T \frac{dp}{p} = \frac{M \omega^2 r dr}{RT} .

To obtain the formula for p ( x ) p(x) , we should integrate both sides, p p from p 0 p_0 to p p , and r r from L L to L + x L+x . We get that ln ( p p 0 ) = M ω 2 2 R T x ( 2 L + x ) \ln(\frac{p}{p_0}) = \frac{M\omega^2}{2RT} x(2L+x) . Plugging in x = 30 cm x = 30~\mbox{cm} and p = 2.2 atm p = 2.2~\mbox{atm} we get ω = 513.95 rad/s \omega = 513.95 ~\mbox{rad/s} .

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