A balanced lever has two weights on it, the first with mass 42 kg and the second with mass 14 kg. If the first weight is 2 m from the fulcrum, how far is the second weight from the fulcrum?
1 Answer
Did you know you can treat units of measurement the same way as numbers? I have shown this in my solution.
Explanation:
Tony B
For the system to be in equilibrium (not rotating or moving in any way) all the 'moments' have to cancel each other out.
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Equating LHS to RHS for equilibrium gives:
Remember that the units for
Divide both sides by
So