A simple pendulum is suspended from the ceiling of a car taking a turn of radius 10 m at a speed of 36 km/h. Find the angle made by the string of the pendulum with the vertical if this angle does not change during the turn. Take g = 10 m/s2.


The speed of the car is not changing. So, there is no force acting in the tangential direction of motion.


Let us discuss the free body diagram. Due to the circular motion of the car the pendulum is going to some face centrifugal force. Also, the bob is pulled by the force of gravity and tension will reinforce the effect of all these forces. So, the bob of the pendulum will get shifted towards the exterior of the rotating circular path.


Resolving tension along the reference axes we get the following balance conditions.




Simplifying these equations,






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