SOLUTION: please help me solve this problem: A wheel turns 1,500 revolutions per minute.How fast does it turn in radians per second? HERE ARE THE POSSIBLE ANSWERS: a)15pi rad/sec b)30pi

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Question 242004: please help me solve this problem:
A wheel turns 1,500 revolutions per minute.How fast does it turn in radians per second?
HERE ARE THE POSSIBLE ANSWERS:
a)15pi rad/sec
b)30pi rad/sec
c)300pi rad/sec

Found 2 solutions by jsmallt9, solver91311:
Answer by jsmallt9(3758)   (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
The basic problem is to convert revolutions to radians and minutes to seconds. One complete revolution is radians. And 1 minute equals 60 seconds.

When converting units like this, if you are unsure of whether to multiply or divide, you can use what I call unit Algebra to help. Just make a fraction of your conversions and include the units. There will two ways to make these fractions depending on which unit you decide to put on top. Here are the possibel fractions for this problem:
 1 revolution
________________
radians


radians
__________________
  1 revolution


  1 minute
____________
 60 seconds


 60 seconds
____________
  1 minute

The tough part of this is understanding that all these fractions are 1's!! Although the numbers in the numerators and denominators are not the same as we would usually expect in a fraction that equals one, the numerators and denominators are equal. After all, isn't 1 minute the same amount of time as 60 seconds?

Now we just figure out which of the fractions to use. What we will be doing is multiplying
1500 revolutions
________________
1 minute

by two of these fractions and, since multiplying by 1's (no matter how weird they look) does not change the number, we will be able to get the answer we want.

Let's try
1500 revolutions     1 revolution       60 seconds  
________________  * _________________ * __________
1 minute            radians          1 minute

We want an answer that is radians/second. So we want the minutes and revolutions to disappear. We want them to cancel. But with the expression above, "revolution" is in 2 numerators and no denominators. So they will not cancel. Similarly the "minutes" are in 2 denominators but no numerators. So they do not cancel either. We want "revolutions" and "minutes" to appear in the numerator and denominator the same number of times so they all cancel out.

Let's see how the correct choice of fractions looks:
1500 revolutions    radians          1 minute
________________ *  _________________ * ___________
  1 minute           1 revolution       60 seconds

"revolutions" and "minutes" each appear once in the numerator and once in the denominator. So they will cancel out. The units that will remain are "radians" in the numerator and "seconds" in the denominator which is exactly what we are looking for. After canceling the "revolutions" and "minutes" we are left with:
 1500      radians              1
 ____  *   _________________ * ____________
   1             1              60 seconds

Since 1500/60 = 25 this simplifies to:
 25*radians
____________________
    1 second

which simplifies to
radians
____________________
    1 second

Although this does not match any of the answers you provided, it is the correct answer for the problem you described.

Answer by solver91311(24713)   (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!


Each revolution is radians. So 1,500 revolutions per minute is radians per minute. There are 60 seconds in a minute, so it is turning at radians per second. Sorry, but the correct answer is not in your list of possible answers.

John


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