Asked by anonymous

You are a 70kg astronaut floating at rest in zero gravity holding your laptop. Your hard drive turns on (increasing from 0 to 5400 rpm). How fast do you spin in rad/s?

I'm not sure how to understand this problem. What procedure should I use to solve this?
Answered by bobpursley
It is a silly question attempting to demonstrate the conservation of angular momentum. To do that, one would have to know the momentu of inertia of the spinning part of the hard drive. You do not know that. It is not given. I have no explanation for what your teacher might be thinking.
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