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jazze916
Oct 27, 2008, 11:26 PM
Hi can someone please help, I am trying to answer a physics problem, I neeed to find the tension of massless rope with a 2 paintbuckets that each way 3.2 kg. I know that a=0 but I can't figure out how to find the force of tension on bothsides of the rope.

sabujohn
Oct 27, 2008, 11:36 PM
In what areas have you developed

ebaines
Oct 28, 2008, 02:15 PM
It's impossible to answer your question without seeing a diagram of how the two buckets are suspended. However, as a place to start - keep in mind that if the system is in equilibrium (i.e. the buckets are not moving) then the sum of forces serving to lift a bucket must exactly equal the weight of that bucket. If you have one rope lifting a bucket then the tension in that rope equals the weight of the bucket. This is because the sum of the forces acting on the bucket must be zero. Here's wghy: if the sum of the forces on the bucket was not zero then from F=ma you can see that a (acceleration) would be non-zero and the bucket would move. So usually in these types of problems the tension in the rope (or ropes) suspending an object equals the weight of the object. Hope this helps.