Look at this picture of John Reynolds taking a curve.
Dont worry about air resistance or the motor's force,
for now we only want to consider the motorcycle moving at a constant speed
& radius through the curve.
Oops! I misspelled "provided". Oh well.
What is the maximum speed the bike
can take the curve?
Since F=ma, then Fc=mac.
Insert ac= v²/r to get Fc= mv²/r
Next, we account for static friction. Why static and not kinetic? Because the bike is not slipping along the radius; it maintains a constant radius. If we were talking about the forward motion, we would use kinteic friction. Anyway,
Fstatic= msN
If the bike went any faster, it would slide. This means it is moving at the maximum speed possible, so we set friction = centriptal force to get...
msN = mv²/r
solve for v... v = sqrt(rmsmg/m) =sqrt(rmsg)
At what angle must he lean to maintain this path?
We want the angle marked "q".
To find it, look at the vectors...
We have the adjacent side: Fc
We have the opposite side: N
The angle, then =
inv tan (N / Fc) = inv tan( g / (v2/r))