Question : basic physics - pulleys on a hill

Hi

I was hoping someone would look at the following question for me. I have tried to derive equation 1 below (the show derivation link isn't working so i can't check) in their solution below. I have scanned in my working out. When i did the problem i got the correct answer a totally different way so I wanted to check i could do it  their way too.

It might look a lot but it will only take you experts a couple of minutes I'm sure :)

thanks
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Answer : basic physics - pulleys on a hill

A piece of advice: You really ought to try to be consistent with your notation, specifically with the subscripts.  m1g is not the same as mg1.  The first implies more than one mass with a fixed value for g.  The second implies a single mass with multiple values for g.  While it is possible to realize that you mean the first when you write the second, such looseness has a much higher chance of leading to mistakes or miscalculations (which are even harder to find when the notation is inconsistent).

As to your derivation, I find it logical and relatively easy to follow (ignoring the notation inconsistencies).  In essence, you have defined equations for all elements of your system and then merged them into a single equation representing the entire system.  This basic approach is very repeatable, so it's a good approach to know.  Other approaches may be faster in some cases, but they often rely on a little more intuition (e.g., knowing how to quickly determine the net force as you did in ID:33530299) and/or are not generally applicable to all systems (e.g., consider if there were 3 or more masses or if the inclined plane was not a straight line or if the system was initially in motion).
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