In Experiment 4, you investigated torques applied to the balance beam, and discovered that when the torques about the point of rotation are balanced, the beam remains balanced. However, all the forces in that experiment were parallel to each other and perpendicular to the balance beam. What happens when one or more of the forces is not perpendicular to the beam.
Fortunately, it turns out that the formula for torque that you determined in Experiment 4 () can be generalized to account for this more general case. The generalized formula is:
where F is the magnitude of the applied force, d is the distance from the pivot point to the point at which the force is applied, and ... is the angle between F and d (see Figure 5.1).
In this experiment,you will investigate the will investigate the validity of this definition for torque.