Assignment:
The exercise equipment shown is used by resting the elbow on the fixed pad and rotating the forearm to stretch the elastic cord AB. The cord behaves like a linear spring, and its unstretched length is 1 ft. Suppose you want to design the equipment so that the maximum moment that will be exerted about the elbow joint E as the forearm is rotated will be 60 ft*lb. What should the spring constant k of the elastic cord be?
1. Assume a spring constant of 1, and write a program to determine the moment about the elbow as a function of alpha. Plot your results. Use the graph to determine the value of alpha that gives the greatest moment. Use the maximum value for the moment that you obtained with k = 1, to determine the k value that would be associated with a maximum moment of 60 ft*lb. Turn in all of your calculations and your program.
2. Turn in your graph. Include title, axes labels, grid lines, and identify each curve on the graph.
3. Turn in a paragraph describing what the graph means in terms of the moment about the elbow as a function of the angle alpha.
