A light spring has a 0.20 kg mass suspended from its lower end.
A second mass of 0.10kg is suspended form the first by a thread.
The arrangemet is allowed to come into static equilibrium.
Determine the tensions in the spring and in the thread.
Then the thread is burnt through. Determine the immediate
accelerations of the 2 masses when this happens.
In the 1st part where I took upwards to be +ve, the tension in
the thread and spring were 0.981N and 2.94N respectively.
Then for the 2nd part
to find acceleration for thread,
summmation of forces = ma
0.981 (0.10)a
a = 9.81 ms-2
However I do not know if its in the upwards or downwards
direction. Logically, the acceleration will be downwards but if I
abide by the direction I allocated for part 1, acceleration will be
UPWARDS since 'a' is a +ve value.
Similarly, I have a prob for getting the direction for the
acceleration of the spring. Not the magnitude, but yes direction. I
do think it's downwards acceleration. Or do I ignore the direction
I have assigned earlier?
Thanks