Assignment:
The claim that the acceleration of the falling mass is the same as the tangential acceleration of a point at the lever arm distance from the axis is : a = (r)(alpha), where a is the acceleration of the falling mass, r is the lever arm distance, and alpha is the angular acceleration of the turntable. Why is this claim valid? Use physical reasoning, not equations, to answer this question.
In the lab, we investigated rotational dynamics using a turntable with a string wrapped around it. The string looped over a pulley and attached to a hanging mass. We adjusted the string so that it was at a 90 degree angle with the turntable. We placed 6 different masses on the string, let them drop from a specific height, and recorded how long it took each mass to reach the ground.)