Question

To test the effects of high acceleration on the human body, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has constructed a large centrifuge at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. In this device, astronauts are placed in a capsule that moves in a circular path with a radius of 15 m. If the astronauts in this centrifuge experience a centripetal acceleration 9.0 times that of gravity, what is the linear speed of the capsule?

PLEASE DRAW FREE BODY DIAGRAM

Answer 1

The situation can be visualized as

The free-body diagram for the capsule is

The centripetal force F is given by

And the equation of motion is

That gives us

Its given that

Putting the values in Si units in the equation

So, the linear velocity of the capsule is 36.37 m/s.