Tough question

| Nature and universe

Just a bunch of scribbles...Alright so there is this positively charged ball hanging from a string, and the ball weighs 9.2 grams. To the right is a flat metal plate which has a negative charge, causing the ball to be pulled because of the attraction and to hang at a slight angle from perpendicular, e.g. when it is hanging loose without the charged plate there. The vertical distance is 71.7 centimeters and the horizontally displaced distance is 4.3 centimeters. How much force is pulling on the ball?

I assured my son that I could figure this out. Sure. He had been stumped the whole morning, and the fact that he even asked for my help was a sign that it was indeed a tricky problem. I struggled and strained my brain cells, but quickly realized I was not as intrepid nor sharp as I used to be in the good old student days. I got a headache and felt frustrated. Drats.

But I was not about to admit it nor was I going to give up. Never ever.

So I retired to my study, sat down at my desk and drew pictures with arrows and force vectors and so forth. I checked it and double checked it. The answer came to me in about thirty minutes or so. In the past I could have solved this trivial physics problem in no time. With age time slows down. But I had the answer, and it was right.

The answer is: 0.005407 N (= 4.3 cm / 71.7 cm x 0.0092 kg x 9.8 N/kg)

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Information

This personal weblog was started way back on July 21, 2001 which means that it is 7-21-2001 old.

So far this blog contains no less than 2498 entries and as many as 1877 comments.

Important events

Graduated from Stanford 6-5-1979 ago.

Kiffin Rockwell was shot down and killed 9-23-1916 ago.

Believe it or not but I am 10-11-1957 young.

First met Thea in Balestrand, Norway 6-14-1980 ago.

Began well-balanced and healthy life style 1-8-2013 ago.

My father passed away 10-20-2000 ago.

My mother passed away 3-27-2018 ago.

Started Gishtech 04-25-2016 ago.