Question

A 140 kg traffic light is suspended above the street by two cables. What is the tension in each cable?
a)Draw a Free Body Diagram and label all the forces on the suspension point for the light.

b) Find the angles the cables make with the horizontal.

c) Draw a vector sum diagram by lining up all the vectors from tip to tail. Remember that since this is a static problem the tip of the 3rd vector should touch the tail of the 1st vector. Be sure to label all the angles and forces/lengths that are known.

d) Decompose the tension vectors for the cable into horizontal and vertical components. You won’t be able to get exact numbers here, but you can symbolically solve for Tx and Ty for each cable.

Answer 1

ok
now what?
how far did you get?