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Physics Guru is an online education and competitive examinations preparation portal founded by Manish Verma, an IIT Madras alumnus, providing learning resources for competitive examinations.

The emphasis is on conceptual understanding, analytical thinking and problem solving rather than simply memorising formulas and standard methods.

The objective is to help students understand what they are learning and develop the ability to solve problems they have not seen before.

Zero Ground Velocity of a Thrown Ball

Four persons are placed at the vertices of ABCD square frame of side a mounted on xy-plane having its center as the origin. The square frame is revolving with angular velocity $\vec \omega = \omega \hat k$. With what velocity vector should A throw a light ball with respect to himself when the square frame has all its sides parallel to x and y axis with point A lying in the second quadrant, so that the ball just falls downward as seen from the ground as if it were free falling?

Solution

The square frame is rotating anti-clockwise. The velocity of person A w.r.t. ground = $\frac {a\sqrt 2}{2}\omega (-cos 45^\circ \hat i - sin 45^\circ \hat j)$

= $-\frac {a\omega}{2} (\hat i + \hat j)$

The person should throw the ball at velocity = $+\frac {a\omega}{2} (\hat i + \hat j)$

This way, the initial velocity of ball would be 0 w.r.t. the ground and it will just fall downward like a free fall.

Note that whether ABCD is labelled clockwise or anti-clockwise on square, it does not matter.