You are travelling downward in an elevator and are slowing to a stop. How does the normal force on your feet c
Dec 23
mike asked:
You are travelling downward in an elevator and are slowing to a stop. How does the normal force on your feet compare to your weight at this time? How do you know?
Tour guide
You are travelling downward in an elevator and are slowing to a stop. How does the normal force on your feet compare to your weight at this time? How do you know?
Tour guide
you weigh more right now than you normally would. when you slow to a stop, your body is moving, and the floor is slowing you down. it is slowing you down faster than you are falling, and your momentum creates more force. as you slow down, your body keep moving due to inertia, and thus you produce more force, thus weighing more.
hope this made sense
Assume you were first travelling at a contant downward velocity before you started decelerating.
Initially the force of gravity on your body was -mg, and a normal force from the floor of +mg with no other forces because you were travelling at a constant velocity.
As the elevator slowed down, from -v0 to 0, with say an acceleration of a, you had a new force exerted by the floor of the elevator = ma. So the total normal force would be m(g+a) where a was the rate at which yo were decelerating expressed as a positive value.