Question

A 975-kg sports car (including driver) crosses the rounded top of a hill at determine (a) the normal force exerted by the road on the car, (b) the normal force exerted by the car on the 62.0-kg driver, and (c) the car speed at which the normal force on the driver equals zero

Answer 1

There are missing data in the text of the problem (found them on internet):
- speed of the car at the top of the hill: $v=15 m/s$
- radius of the hill: $r=100 m$

Solution:

(a) The car is moving by circular motion. There are two forces acting on the car: the weight of the car $W=mg$ (downwards) and the normal force N exerted by the road (upwards). The resultant of these two forces is equal to the centripetal force, $m \frac{v^2}{r}$, so we can write:
$mg-N=m \frac{v^2}{r}$ (1)
By rearranging the equation and substituting the numbers, we find N:
$N=mg-m \frac{v^2}{r}=(975 kg)(9.81 m/s^2)-(975 kg) \frac{(15 m/s)^2}{100 m}=7371 N$

(b) The problem is exactly identical to step (a), but this time we have to use the mass of the driver instead of the mass of the car. Therefore, we find:
$N=mg-m \frac{v^2}{r}=(62 kg)(9.81 m/s^2)-(62 kg) \frac{(15 m/s)^2}{100 m}=469 N$

(c) To find the car speed at which the normal force is zero, we can just require N=0 in eq.(1). and the equation becomes:
$mg=m \frac{v^2}{r}$
from which we find
$v= \sqrt{gr}= \sqrt{(9.81 m/s^2)(100 m)}=31.3 m/s$