Frictional Force on a Car in a Turn

Initializing live version
Download to Desktop

Requires a Wolfram Notebook System

Interact on desktop, mobile and cloud with the free Wolfram Player or other Wolfram Language products.

A car of mass making a turn on a curve of radius with a velocity experiences a centripetal acceleration . In order to keep moving without skidding, a frictional force needs to act toward the center of the curve, with a minimal value for the coefficient of static friction.

Contributed by: Enrique Zeleny (March 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA


Snapshots


Details

The centripetal acceleration is . The force must be equal to the maximum static friction force , where is the gravitational acceleration.



Feedback (field required)
Email (field required) Name
Occupation Organization
Note: Your message & contact information may be shared with the author of any specific Demonstration for which you give feedback.
Send