A bucket for collecting water from a well is suspended by a rope which is wound around a pulley. The empty bucket has a mass of 2.0 kg, and the pulley is essentially a cylinder of mass 3.0 kg on a frictionless axle. Suppose a person drops the bucket into the well.
Part A
What is the bucket's acceleration as it falls?
Solution: We will consider two different methods to obtain the solution.
Method 1
Systems: The pulley and the bucket are treated as separate rigid bodies. The pulley and the bucket are each subject to external influences from the rope and from gravity. The pulley is also subject to a normal force from the axle.
Model: Fixed-Axis Rotation