anonymous 5 years ago Can anyone explain forces and vectors... to me ... if i give problem can someone show me how to set it up and stuff ?

1. anonymous

two equal forces act on a body at an angle of 80 degrees if the resultant force is 100 nwtons find the value of one of the two equal forces to the nearest hundreth of a newton

2. anonymous

a resultant force can be thought of as the sum of its individual forces acting in (in this case) two directions. that is, the x direction and y direction. these are usually denoted by i(hat) and j(hat) respectively.

3. anonymous

is that angle of 80 degrees with respect to the x axis or y axis?

4. anonymous

Im not quite sure what that means but i think its in relativity to the X axis.. For this problem i picked looking at it now i think i only need to do law of sines to find one side and since its equal sides ive found them both correct....?

5. anonymous

i'm not too familiar with the law of sines, i was just thinking of just using a simple trig identity. you're right about only needing to find one and then multiplying your answer by 2.

6. anonymous

just make sure your initial equation makes sense

7. anonymous

if this picture is what your problem is, then your equation would be: $2F(\cos 10) = 100$

8. anonymous

Well im not really sure but i set mine up as a parallelogram... but not thinking the sides have to be equal could it still be a parallelogram or no... it would have to be an equaliatiral triangle ... but im not fimiliar with setting it up as a triangle ive never done that