Thursday, February 23, 2017

homework and exercises - Time to fall in a non-uniform gravitational field


In an uniform gravitational field the loss in potential energy (the work done) by gravity is given by -mgΔh and the time to do so (assuming no friction and no initial velocity) is given my 2Δha, where a is the strength of the field as commonly referred to the local gravity.


Now, you can do the same for a non-uniform field. To get the work done you simply take the difference in gravitational potential energy: h1GMmh12h2GMmh22.


And here is my problem. I'm stuck. How does one calculate the time it takes to fall from h1 to h2 with respect to the changing field strength?




No comments:

Post a Comment

classical mechanics - Moment of a force about a given axis (Torque) - Scalar or vectorial?

I am studying Statics and saw that: The moment of a force about a given axis (or Torque) is defined by the equation: $M_X = (\vec r \times \...