Question

A bicycle wheel of known rotational inertia is free to rotate about its central axis. With the wheel initially at rest, a student wraps a string around the wheel and pulls the string with a spring scale, causing the wheel to rotate. The student records the tension in the string and the time for which the string was pulled. Without measuring the wheel’s final angular speed, can the student find the magnitude of the wheel’s final angular momentum, and what is a correct explanation?.

Answer 1

Yes but the student also needs to measure the wheel's radius to calculate the torque exerted on the wheel.

How to calculate final angular momentum?

Mathematically, angular momentum is calculated by using any of these formulas:

L = Iω

ΔL = τΔt

Where:

• L is the angular momentum.

• I is the moment of inertia or rotational inertia.

• ω is the angular speed.

• τ is the torque.

• Δt is the change in time.

• ΔL is the change in angular momentum.

Since the torque wasn't provided, the student would have to measure the radius (r) of the wheel and multiply it by the tension (T) in the wheel. Thus, this is given by:

τ = rFsinθ = rT

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