What+Happens+at+a+Turn


 * What have you felt when your car took a sharp turn at a higher speed?


 * How would you take a bend while riding your bike at a higher speed?

Did you remember holding on to the steering wheel tightly and leaning your body to a side while taking the turn at a higher speed?

If you were just a passenger in the car, you may remember pulling against the door handle when you feel the car is taking the bend

An experience rider knows he has to tilt the bike to take a turn while moving at a higher speed.



Look at the runner when she is on a straight track



Recognize that he body is straight along the direction she is moving

Now look at the picture below that shows the runners taking the bend while moving fast.

Do you notice their bodies are tilled towards the center of the circle?

What can we recognize contemplating on the changes to the posture in taking a turn?

Is this a behavior limited only to humans?

Look at the horses running in a track.

It is possible to observe that they are running along a straight segment and the bodies of the horses and jockeys are all straight along the perpendicular direction to the ground.

Now look at the horses when they are taking the bend;



It is possible to recognize the inclination of the bodies of the horses and the jockeys towards the center of the circle.

What are all these patterns suggest you?

From all these examples it is clear that one cannot take a turn or move in a circle the same way he was moving along a straight line.

Let’s examine a simple object that is making circular turns.

The following video is showing a hammer throw event in slow motion.

Watch the video and recognize the circular motion of the hammer before it is thrown out

media type="youtube" key="GZsplhHXQy0" height="315" width="420"

Replay the video many times as required and see if you can recognize all the points indicated below
 * 1) The hammer was in circular motion before it was thrown off
 * 2) The hammer is in circular motion as long as the chain tied to the hammer is connected to the thrower. Hammer flied off when the thrower released the chain
 * 3) The chain connecting the hammer to the thrower is under tension, while the hammer is in circular motion
 * 4) The chain is kept under tension due to the pull applied by the thrower at the end connected to his hands
 * 5) Immediately after the throwing off, the hammer is following a straight path along the direction where hammer was heading at the moment of release.

If you carefully observed the above action, you would have realized that when the thrower whirl the hammer around his head, he kept on pulling the chain. This pull made the string to be in tension. Just at the moment he released the chain, the tension of the chain is gone as he do not pull it anymore. . That means it was the pull of the thrower that helped the hammer to move in the circle!

Let’s investigate this idea little further.

The diagram shows how the thrower is applying the pull on the chain. This pull is then transmitted to the hammer.



The direction of the pull is towards the hands of the thrower or in other words towards the center of the circle along which the hammer is moving.

From hereafter let us use the general term ‘Force’ to indicate the pull.

Our observation indicated that, while the hammer was in circular motion, it was subjected to a force (pull from the thrower along the chain) which was directed towards the center of the circle the hammer was moving along.

Let us now investigate if this is a common feature for all the types of the circular motion examples discussed earlier.