Conceptual Physics (12th Edition)

Published by Addison-Wesley
ISBN 10: 0321909100
ISBN 13: 978-0-32190-910-7

Chapter 8 - Think and Discuss - Page 158-159: 104

Answer

It will rotate less.

Work Step by Step

This is discussed in Check Point #2 on page 145. When the car's front wheels are off the cliff but the rear wheels have not yet left the ground, rotation occurs because the front wheels have no upward support force from the ground while the rear wheels still do. The torques are no longer balanced about the CM. If the car travels quickly, the unbalanced torque has less time to act, and the car rotates less. By using the principle of exaggeration, one can feel that if the car drove off very, very slowly it would turn about 90 degrees or more before plummeting hood-first (see what we did there) toward the ground below, whereas if it shot off the cliff as fast as it could, its orientation would be almost unaffected.
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