If 2 boxes on a frictionless surface are connected by a rope, will they approach each other and collide? This is what I am thinking: there is a tension force acting on each box, and so the net force on EACH box is non-zero, and acceleration will occur, and the two boxes will approach each other and collide. But I am not sure if this will be true or not.
Unless the volume of the rope is neglected, the rope would occupy much of the space between the two boxes, and so the boxes might not collide. Once you neglect one variable, in this case the coefficient of friction, it begs the question as to which other variables are to be neglected. We also do not know where the ropes are attached (top or bottom of the boxes). Edit: Kingwinner's interpretation is probably all that their text book is looking for, but I treated it as more of a 'trick question'.
By intuition, it doesn't seem to me that there is a net force acting on each box. I think the boxes will be stationary and remain stationary. Consider 2 boxes at rest on a frictionless surface, if you connect them by a rope, nothing really changes, right? I don't know...
Depends on whether the rope is slack or not. Ropes act just like springs, just with much higher spring constants.
If a box is at rest, and you connected it to a fixed point by a rope, and if the rope is tight, will it exert a tension force on the box, accelerating the box? *By the way, I want to thank you and many others who helped me...for all your help and explanations throughout these few months that make physics very understandable & interesting. I ace my final year (high school) physics. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Yes, but not much because the force won't act for long. If you want to know the final velocities of the boxes, try seeing how much PE is stored in the rope. For a given tension force F, how does the elastic potential vary in terms of the rope's spring constant, k? Well done Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!. You decided where you're headed next year?
