Gravitation & Free fall&WPE Cogitare

Simple questions in Gravitation & Freefall

1. Derive expression for force of attraction between two bodies and then define gravitational
constant.
2. Define acceleration due to gravity. Derive an expression for acceleration due to gravity in terms
of mass of the earth (M) and universal gravitational constant (G).
3. A stone is dropped from a cliff. What will be its speed when it has fallen 100 m?
4. From a cliff of 49 m high, a man drops a stone. One second later, he throws another stone.
They both hit the ground at the same time. Find out the speed with which he threw the second
stone.
5. A stone is dropped from the top of a 40 m high tower. Calculate its speed after 2 s. Also find
the speed with which the stone strikes the ground.
6. Calculate the value of acceleration due to gravity g using the relation between g and G.
7. A stone dropped from the roof of a building takes 4s to reach the ground. Calculate the height
of the building.
8. A ball is thrown up with a speed of 0.5 m/s.
(i) How high will it go before it begins to fall?
(ii) How long will it take to reach that height?
9. Give three differences between acceleration due to gravity (g) and universal gravitational
constant (G).
10. In what direction does the buoyant force on an object immersed in a liquid act?
11. The volume of 50 g of a substance is 20 cm3. If the density of water is 1 g cm–3, will the
substance float or sink?
12. What is relative density and what is its Units. If the RD of a material X is 11, what is its actual
density?
13. State Archimedes principle.

Simple questions in Work Power Energy

1. List two conditions which need to be satisfied for the work to be done on an object.
2. Explain the following terms with one example each.
3. A coolie is walking on a railway platform with a load of 27 kg on his head. What is the amount
of work done by him?
Gravitation & Free fall&WPE Cogitare

4. What is the amount of work done by a man in pressing a rigid wall with a force of 400 N?
5. An object thrown at a certain angle to the ground moves in a curved path and falls back to the
ground. The initial and the final points of the path of the object lie on the same horizontal
line. What is the work done by the force of gravity on the object?
6. Certain force acting on a 20 kg mass changes its velocity from 5 m s–1 to 2 m s–1. Calculate
the work done by the force.
7. A mass of 10 kg is at a point A on a table. It is moved to a point B. If the line joining A and B is
horizontal, what is the work done on the object by the gravitational force? Explain your
8. answer.
9. What are the various energy transformations that occur when you are riding a bicycle?
10. Give any two uses of kinetic energy.
11. An object of mass, m is moving with a constant velocity, v. How much work should be done on
the object in order to bring the object to rest?
12. A certain household has consumed 250 units of energy during a month. How much energy is
this in joules?
13. Somansh says that the acceleration in an object could be zero even when several forces are
acting on it. Do you agree with him? Why?

14. An object of mass 40 kg is raised to a height of 5 m above the ground. What is its potential
energy? If the object is allowed to fall, find its kinetic energy when it is half-way down.

15. What is energy? What is unit of energy?

HOTS Questions in Gravitation & Free fall

1. Suppose that the radius of the earth becomes twice of its original radius without any change in
its mass. Then what will happen to your weight?
2. On the earth, a stone is thrown from a height in a direction parallel to the earth’s surface while
another stone is simultaneously dropped from the same height. Which stone would reach the
ground first and why?
3. Calculate the average density of the earth in terms of g, G and R.
4. Prove that if a body is thrown vertically upward, the time of ascent is equal to the time of
descent.
Gravitation & Free fall&WPE Cogitare

5. Two objects of masses ml and m2 having the same size are dropped simultaneously from
heights h1 and h2, respectively. Find out the ratio of time they would take in reaching the
ground. Will this ratio remain the same if (i) one of the objects is hollow and the other one is
solid; and (ii) both of them are hollow, size remaining the same in each case? Give reasons.
6. Show that the weight of an object on the moon is 1/6 th of its weight on the earth.Given Mass
of moon  7.4*1022 and Mass of Earth  6*1024 Kg and radius of the earth, Re = 6400 km and
radius of the moon, Rm = 1740 km
7. On the moon’s surface, the acceleration due to gravity is 1.67 ms -2. If the radius of the moon is
1.74 × 106 m, calculate the mass of the moon.
(G = 6.67 × 1011 Nm2kg-2)
8. Suppose the mass of the earth somehow increases by 10% without any change in its size.
What would happen to your weight? Suppose the radius of the earth becomes twice of its
present radius without any change in its mass, what will happen to your weight?
9. Two bodies of masses 3 kg and 12 kg are placed at a distance 12 m. A third body of mass 0.5
kg is to be placed at such a point that the force acting on this body is zero. Find the position of
that point.
10. What types of energy transformation takes place in the following:
(i) Electric heater
(ii) Solar battery
(iii) Dynamo
(iv) Steam engine and
(v) Hydroelectric power station?

HOTS Questions in WPE

1. Observe the diagrams I and II carefully. An object of mass m is lifted from A to B to height h
along path 1 and path 2. What would be the work done on the object in both the cases? Give
reasons for your answer.
Gravitation & Free fall&WPE Cogitare

2. A rocket is moving up with a velocity v. If the velocity of this rocket is suddenly tripled, what will
be the ratio of two kinetic energies?
3. Avinash can run at a speed of 8 ms-1 against the frictional force of 10 N, and Kapil can move at
a speed of 3 ms-1 against the frictional force of 25 N. Who is more powerful and why?
4. The velocity of a body moving in a straight line is increased by applying a constant force F, for
some distance in the direction of the motion. Prove that the increase in the kinetic energy of
the body is equal to the work done by the force on the body.
5. Show that when a body is dropped from a certain height, the sum of its kinetic energy at any
instant during its fall is constant.
6. A car of mass 900 kg is travelling at a steady speed of 30 m/s against a resistive force of 2000
N, as illustrated in figure.

(i) Calculate the kinetic energy of the car.

(ii) Calculate the energy used in 1.0 s against the resistive force.
(iii) What is the minimum power that the car engine has to deliver to the wheels?
(iv) What form of energy is in the fuel, used by the engine to drive the car?