Round and Round

It has become a tradition in the Bassett household to go to the fair as a family every fall. As a kid, I always knew we were on the fairgrounds when I could see the ferris wheel poking out for everyone to see. Well, being at boarding school, I missed the fair at home, but was able to go to the mountain fair in Asheville. Like always my mind was drawn to the ferris wheel that overtakes the night sky. Looking back on that day now, I see how I could have applied physics to this very scenario. As we learned, rotating objects will have both rotational velocity and tangential velocity. No matter where you are sitting on the ferris wheel, you will always have the same rotational velocity, which is equal to your rotations per minute. The ferris wheel will rotate the same number of times no matter what. But imagine that there was another row of seats, a row that was closer to the center, or, if you look at the picture, closer to the green area. These two different rows would have different tangential velocities. Tangential velocity measures the distance that you go in a certain time frame. Well, the row closer to the middle would have to cover less distance in a certain amount of time because it is closer to the axis of rotation. The outer row would have to cover a larger amount of distance in the same amount of time because it is much farther away from the axis of rotation. Now, every time the Bassetts go to the fair, all I will be thinking about is the Physics of a ferris wheel.