Question

A seat on a Ferris wheel is level with the center of the wheel.The diameter of the wheel is 200 feet. Suppose the wheel rotated 60°, causing the height of the seat to decrease. How much closer to the ground is the seat after the rotation

Answer 1

Answer: 86.6ft closer to the ground.

Step-by-step explanation:

The diameter of the wheel is 200ft

Then the radius, half of the diameter, is: r = 200ft/2 = 100ft.

Initially, the seat is at the same level that the center of the wheel.

And the distance between the center of the wheel and the bottom is the radius.

Then the initial position is at an angle of 0° from the x-axis. (where the (0,0) of this axis coincides with the center of the wheel=

Now, the wheel rotates 60°. (downwards, so we actually could use -60° measuring from the positive x-axis)

And thinking in this as a triangle rectangle, where the opposite angle is 60°, we can calculate the displacement in the vertical direction as:

y = sin(-60°)*R

y = sin(-60°)*100ft = -86.6ft

So the seat is 86.6ft closer to the ground.

Answer 2

The seat is $86.6feet$ closer to the ground

The seat will be closer by the height it drops when the Ferris wheel turns downwards by $60^{\circ}$.

The height, and the radius of the Ferris wheel form the opposite and the hypotenuse of a $60^{\circ}$ right-angled triangle. Since the diameter of the Ferris wheel is 200feet, the radius will be 100feet. So we have

$sin60^{\circ}=\frac{opp}{hyp}=\frac{h}{100}\\\\h=100\times sin60^{\circ}\\=100\times 0.8660\\=86.6$

So the seat is $86.6feet$ closer to the ground

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