Cable Tension Needed to Support Platform

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A woman is standing on a platform attached on the left and supported by a cable on the right. Use sliders to change the distances from the left of the woman and the cable. Set the mass of the woman with a slider. A moment balance is done to determine the tension force in the cable that keeps the platform from rotating.
Contributed by: Rachael L. Baumann (August 2017)
Additional contributions by: John L. Falconer
(University of Colorado Boulder, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
Snapshots
Details
A moment balance is done about the left point of the platform:
,
where is the tension force in the cable (N),
and
are the distances of the cable and the woman from the left of the platform (m),
is the mass of the woman (kg), and
is the acceleration due to gravity (
).
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