Motion - AP Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism

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Question

Atwood's machine consists of two blocks connected by a string connected over a
pulley as shown. What is the acceleration of the blocks if their masses are and .

Assume the pulley has negligible mass and friction.

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Answer

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From the force diagram above, we can see that tension is pulling up on both sides of the string and gravity is pulling down on both blocks. With this information we can write 2 force equations:

If we add the two equations together, we get:

where

Solving for , we get

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