Demo 06-02 Bike Wheel Angular Acceleration

This demonstration illustrates the rotational analog of Newton's second law, t = I a, using a bicycle wheel. The bike wheel is held fixed in space and allowed to rotate around its axis. The external torque that produces rotation is supplied by a rope that is attached to a spring scale so that the magnitude of the torque may be kept constant for each example, as shown in Figure 1. A digital clock is provided giving seconds and frames, and a point is marked on the rim of the wheel to facilitate measurement of angular acceleration. The wheel is accelerated using two different torques