A tight rope is supporting tension forces without breaking.
Force is an action that can change the state of rest or movement of a body; Therefore, it can accelerate or modify the speed, direction or sense of movement of a given body. Tension , for its part, is the state of a body subjected to the action of opposing forces that attract it.
The force that, applied to an elastic body, tends to produce tension is known as tension force ; This last concept has various definitions, which depend on the branch of knowledge from which it is analyzed.
Ropes, for example, allow forces to be transmitted from one body to another. When two equal and opposite forces are applied to the ends of a rope, the rope becomes taut. Tension forces are, in short, each of these forces that the rope supports without breaking .
Mechanical tension, surface tension and electrical tension
Physics and engineering speak of mechanical stress to refer to the force per unit area in the environment of a material point on the surface of a body. Mechanical stress can be expressed in units of force divided by units of area.
The surface tension of a liquid, on the other hand, is the amount of energy it takes to decrease its surface area per unit area. The liquid, therefore, exerts resistance to increase its surface area.
Voltage is also a physical quantity that drives electrons through a conductor in a closed electrical circuit, causing the flow of an electric current. In this case, the tension can be called voltage or potential difference .
It is possible to determine a tension force through a calculation.
How to find the tension force
Knowing that the tension force is that with which a line or rope pulls, it is possible to find the tension in a static type situation if the angles of the lines are known. For example, if a load rests on a slope and a line parallel to the slope prevents the load from moving downward, the tension is solved knowing that the sum of the horizontal and vertical components of the forces involved must equal zero.
The first step to carry out this calculation consists of drawing the slope and placing a block of mass M on it. Towards the right the slope increases and at one point it runs into a wall, from which a line extends parallel to the first and ties the block, keeping it in place and generating a tension T. Next, the angle of the slope must be identified with a Greek letter, which can be "alpha", and the force that it exerts on the block with the letter N , since it is the normal force .
From the block, a vector should be drawn perpendicular to the slope and upward to represent the normal force, and one downward (parallel to the y axis) to graph the force of gravity. Then, you start with the formulas.
To find a force, we use F = M. g , with g being its constant acceleration (in the case of gravity, the value is 9.8 m/s^2 ). The unit used for the result is Newtons, which is expressed with the letter N. In the case of the normal force, it must be decomposed into its vertical and horizontal vectors, using the angle it forms with the x axis: for the calculation of the upward vector, g is equivalent to the cosine of the angle, while for the upward vector left, within it.
Finally, the left component of the normal force must be equated with the right component of the tension T, finally solving for the tension.