**49. A skier starts from rest at the top of a hill. The skier coasts down the hill and up a second hill, as the drawing illustrates. The crest of the second hill is circular, with a radius of

r = 36 m. Neglect friction and air resistance. What must be the height h of the first hill so that the skier just loses contact with the snow at the crest of the second hill?

 

Free body diagram for the skier at the top of second hill is

Sum of the forces at the top of the second hill are

 

Just Loses contact implies N = 0 and the equation above becomes

 

Rearranging we get

Which means

 

Now skier starts from rest so initial kinetic energy is zero.  Make the zero of potential energy be the height of the second hill.  Again we are ignoring non-conservative forces so we have mechanical energy is conserved.

 

 

 

Now plug in what figured out above

 

Solve for h

 

 

 

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This page last updated on January 11, 2020