Practice portal › Laws of Motion › Blocks on Inclines and Wedges
Asked in NEET 2018 · Accelerating wedges
Given: block on a smooth wedge of angle θ, the wedge pushed horizontally with acceleration a.
Idea: work in the wedge's frame, where the block is at rest and feels a pseudo-force ma backwards, and balance forces along the slope, where the normal force has no component.
Along the slope, gravity pulls the block down with mg sin θ.
Along the slope, the pseudo-force pushes it up with ma cos θ.
For the block to stay put these must match: ma cos θ=mg sin θ.
The mass and cos θ cancel: a=g(sin θ)/(cos θ).
a=g tan θ.
Reading this solution needs no sign-in. You only sign in to practise against the clock and keep your progress.
Practise this with a timer