A ferris wheel has a diameter of approximately 50 meters. The wheel rotates once every 10 minutes. Find the linear speed at the outer edge of the ferris wheel in meters per hour.? The linear speed is approximately ____ meters per hour.

I've tried a million times to get this right, but I am so confused with this math problem. Can anyone help?

1 Answer
Mar 22, 2018

I tried this:

Explanation:

Let us think in angles first:
the weel describes an entire #2pi# angle (one rotation) in #10# minutes.
This gives us an Angular Speed:

#omega=(2pi)/(10*60)=pi/300"rad/s"#

Let us go to linear now; to get the Linear Speed we need to include the radius as:

#v=omegar#

or:

#v=pi/300*25=pi/12m/s#

we know that:

#1h=60xx60=3600s#

and:

#1s=1/3600h#

so for our velocity:

#v=pi/12m/s=pi/12m/(1/3600h)=pi/12xx3600m/h=300pim/h#