Weight Suspended by Two Cables
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This Demonstration calculates the tension forces in two cables that support a weight.
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Contributed by: Rachael L. Baumann (September 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
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For equal cable lengths, a force balance in the direction is done to determine the cable tension:
,
rearranging to solve for tension:
,
where is tension (N),
is the angle (degrees),
is the mass of the ball (kg) and
is acceleration due to gravity.
When the cable lengths are unequal, force balances in the and
directions are done to calculate the tension forces in each cable:
,
where and
are the tensions in the left and right cables (N), and
and
are the angles of the left and right cables (degrees).
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