Question

A girl on a spinning amusements park is 12m from the center of the ride and has a centripetal acceleration of 17 m/s^2. What is the girl's tangential speed?

Answer 1

Answer: 14.28 m/s

Explanation:

Assuming the girl is spinning with uniform circular motion, her centripetal acceleration $a_{c}$ is given by the following equation:  

$a_{c}=\frac{V^{2}}{r}$ (1)

Where:  

$a_{c}=17 m/s^{2}$ is the centripetal acceleration

$V$ is the tangential speed

$r=12 m$ is the radius of the circle

Isolating $V$ from (1):

$V=\sqrt{a_{c}r}$ (2)

$V=\sqrt{(17 m/s^{2})(12 m)}$

Finally:

$V=14.28 m/s$ This is the girl's tangential speed