Abstract

There is a long tradition of using geometry to solve problems from mechanics. Unfortunately this tradition is not practised much in schools and university any more.With this exposition we would like to demonstrate how elementary properties of ellipses can be used to solve a problem related to the conical pendulum. The problem of the conical pendulum is to consider a mass attached to one end of a light inextensible string of length with the other end attached at the top of a vertical rod. The mass is moving about the rod in uniform circular motion in a horizontal plane. Given the angular velocity of the mass, the question is to determine the angle the string makes with the rod.

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