Tension of a Rope with a Hanging Mass
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A ball of mass hangs at
from a rope of negligible weight extending between two posts; the tensions
and
in both parts of the rope are calculated.
Contributed by: Enrique Zeleny (March 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
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Details
The conditions of static equilibrium for forces are and
. In this case, this means
and
, where
and
are the angles between the rope and the horizontal line joining the ends of the rope,
and
are the tensions between the ends of the rope and the ball, and
is the weight of the ball.
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