Home › AP Physics 1 › Physics › Rotational Motion and Angular Momentum › A bicycle turned upside down and spun does not t…
A bicycle turned upside down and spun does not travel, but on its wheels the same angular acceleration would first produce:
AAcceleration along ground
BAn immediate full stop
CMotion straight upward
DNo motion at all here
Answer & Solution
Correct answer: A. Acceleration along ground
1. Angular acceleration of a wheel becomes linear motion when the wheel grips the ground.
2. If the bicycle in the example had been on its wheels instead of upside-down, it would first have accelerated along the ground.
3. It would then come to a stop as the wheel slowed.
4. Upside down, the same spin produces no translation at all.
5. The link between the two is the tangential relationship at the rim.
_Source: OpenStax College Physics for AP(R) Courses 2e (CC BY 4.0), Ch 10 'Rotational Motion and Angular Momentum', sections 10.1-10.7_
Related questions
Earth keeps spinning because, absent a net external torque, what is conserved?Radians can be dropped from a final answer because their units are:Two wheels of equal mass differ in rotational inertia because they differ in:Doubling the time a given average torque acts changes the change in angular momentum to:A skater pulling her arms in reduces her rotational inertia, so her angular velocity must:A skater's moment of inertia is measured about which axis?The magnitude of a skater's angular acceleration is described as proportional to her spin Conservation of angular momentum is used to explain why which body keeps spinning?