Gravitational Potential energy of a system of particles
What is the gravitational potential energy of a system of 8 masses of 10 kg each placed at the corners of a cube of length 0.25 meter apart.
Original post by roshanhero
What is the gravitational potential energy of a system of 8 masses of 10 kg each placed at the corners of a cube of length 0.25 meter apart.
Gravitational potential energy = mass x gravitational field strength (9.81 on Earth) x height above ground
Assuming the cube is on the ground, the four masses on the base corners have no gravitational potential energy as their height above ground is 0m.
The other four masses are 0.25m above the ground so the total gravitational potential energy of the system is:
Ep= 8 x 10 x 9.81 x 0.25 = 195.2J
Original post by roshanhero
What is the gravitational potential energy of a system of 8 masses of 10 kg each placed at the corners of a cube of length 0.25 meter apart.
One possible method:
It's the sum of the PE of each of the object pairs.
Each pair has PE= -Gm1m2/d where d is the separation.
As all the masses are the same then this is the sum of -Gm2/d for each pair
This method would require you to identify all 28 pairs with their corresponding values of d.
It's made easier by the fact that there are only 3 different values of d, so you can just multiply up all the similar ones.
(edited 10 years ago)
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