The Giant Wheel at Cedar Point Amusement Park is a circle with diameter 128 feet which sits on an 8 foot
Question: The Giant Wheel at Cedar Point Amusement Park is a circle with diameter 128 feet which sits on an 8 foot tall platform making its overall height 136 feet. It completes two revolutions in 2 minutes and 7 seconds. Assuming the riders are at the edge of the circle, how fast are they traveling in miles per hour?
This problem is all sort's of FUN! I was working on this problem trying to figure it out. Everything that I tried I kept always getting the wrong answer. Here is the big problem that I was facing.
I was trying to convert two revolutions into 1 revolution and cut the time in half. My thought here was since a circle is $2\pi$ is a complete revolution so should 1 revolution and 1 minute and 3.5 seconds. This is where my logic was WRONG. I cleaned this up by representing two revolutions in seconds instead of trying to convert them to a complete revolution around the circle, in other words, the circumference of the circle.
$$speed=\frac { 2 }{ 127 } (\frac { rev }{ sec } )$$
After doing this the math works out perfectly!
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