Question
A truck with 0.420-m-radius tires travels at 32.0 m/s. What is the angular velocity of the rotating tires in radians per second? What is this in rev/min?
Final Answer
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Solution video
OpenStax College Physics for AP® Courses, Chapter 6, Problem 7 (Problems & Exercises)
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Video Transcript
This is College Physics Answers with Shaun Dychko. The truck wheel radius is 0.42 meters and its linear velocity is 32.0 meters per second. We know that linear velocity is the wheel radius times its angular velocity and so we can solve for angular velocity omega by dividing both sides by r and then switching the sides around. We have omega is v divided by r. So that's 32 meters per second divided by 0.42 meters which gives 76.2 radians per second. Then the question asks us to convert this into revolutions per minute and so we multiply the radians per second by one revolution for every two pi radians. So the radians cancel leaving us with revolutions on the numerator of our units. Then we multiply by 60 seconds for every minute leaving us with minutes in our denominator. So this is revolutions per minute. For some strange reason, revolutions per minute is abbreviated rpm instead of writing revolutions per minute as a fraction. That's just the tradition. So we have 728 rpm.