A testing laboratory wants to determine if a new widget can withstand large acceleration and decelerations. To find out, they glue a 5.0kg widget to a test stand that will drive it vertically up and down. At 0 seconds the widget is at an acceleration of 19.6m/s^2. It reaches 0 at 1/2 a second and drops to -19.6m/s^2 by 1 sec The widget decelerates at 39.2m/s^2 every second.
a) Identify the forces acting on the widget and draw a free body diagram.
I'm already stuck here. I know there's a normal force and a gravitational force.
b) Determine the value of ny, the y-component of the normal force acting on the widget during the first second of motion. Give your answer as a graph of ny versus t.
Why is there a y-component to the normal force? Since it's accelerating vertically wouldn't there be no x-component, therefore the y-component would be the whole normal force?
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