The physics of circular motion sets an upper limit to the speed of human walking. (If you need to go faster, your gait changes from a walk to a run.) If you take a few steps and watch what's happening, you'll see that your body pivots in circular motion over your forward foot as you bring your rear foot forward for the next step. As you do so, the normal force of the ground on your foot decreases and your body tries to 'lift off' from the ground. A person's center of mass is very near the hips, at the top of the legs. Model a person as a particle of mass m at the top of a leg of length L. Find an expression for the person's maximum walking speed v_max.

Suppose a 1,800-kg car passes over a bump in a roadway that follows the arc of a circle of radius 20m. What
force does the road exert on the car as the car moves over the top of the bump if the car moves at a constant 9 m/s?

(II) At what minimum speed must a roller coaster be traveling so that passengers upside down at the top of a circle (Fig. 5–45) do not fall out? Assume a radius of curvature of 7.6 m.

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(II) A proposed space station consists of a circular tube that will rotate about its center (like a tubular bicycle tire), Fig. 5–47. The circle formed by the tube has a diameter of about 1.1 km. What must be the rotation speed (revolutions per day) if an effect nearly equal to gravity at the surface of the Earth, 0.90 g, is to be felt by astronauts walking inside? Which part of the tube do they walk on?

A pilot performs an evasive maneuver by diving vertically at a constant 310 m/s. If he can withstand an acceleration of 9.0 g’s without blacking out, at what altitude must he begin to pull his plane out of the dive (moving in a vertical circular path) to avoid crashing into the sea?

Suppose you swing a ball of mass m in a vertical circle on a string of length L. As you probably know from experience, there is a minimum angular velocity ω_min you must maintain if you want the ball to complete the full circle without the string going slack at the top. Find an expression for ω_min.

In an amusement park ride called The Roundup, passengers stand inside a 16-m-diameter rotating ring. After the ring has acquired sufficient speed, it tilts into a vertical plane, as shown in FIGURE P8.51. What is the longest rotation period of the wheel that will prevent the riders from falling off at the top?

A heavy ball with a weight of 100 N (m = 10.2 kg) is hung from the ceiling of a lecture hall on a 4.5-m-long rope. The ball is pulled to one side and released to swing as a pendulum, reaching a speed of 5.5 m/s as it passes through the lowest point. What is the tension in the rope at that point?

A 500 g ball moves in a vertical circle on a 102-cm-long string. If the speed at the top is 4.0 m/s, then the speed at the bottom will be 7.5 m/s. (You'll learn how to show this in Chapter 10.) What is the tension in the string when the ball is at the top?