Use turns to measure travel and size
Convert tire dimensions and road distances into consistent units. Find accumulated angular distance, count revolutions over a warranty journey, and infer a rolling ball’s diameter from its travel.
AP Physics 1 · Unit 5 · Rotation
Rolling Motion Practice Problems
Connect forward travel with tire rotation, follow a coin to its first stop, and find a ball’s diameter from its turns. Then compare touching rollers and combine translation with rotation to find rim-point velocities.
12 questions6 conceptual · 6 calculation
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What you’ll practice
Connect ground travel, rotation, and contact motion
Analyze rolling acceleration and stopping
Connect center acceleration with angular acceleration while maintaining a consistent clockwise sign. Find a braking coin’s first-stop distance and time without extending the model into a reversal.
Compare velocities at the contact and rim
Match the tangential velocities of externally touching rollers. Add center translation and rotational velocity at the top, bottom, and side of a rolling wheel in the ground frame.
A question from this set
What makes rolling no-slip?
A wheel rolls to the right on stationary ground. Which condition distinguishes rolling without slipping from a wheel that is also sliding?
Try it in the practice setKey ideas
Rolling without slipping is a condition at the contact
The center moves while the bottom point is momentarily at rest
At ground contact, the wheel’s translational and rotational velocity contributions cancel. At the top they reinforce, while at the side they form perpendicular components. The material point at contact changes continuously.
Friction responds to contact motion
Kinetic friction opposes sliding at the contact, which can differ from the center’s direction. When contact does not slide, friction is static if a force is needed; an ideal wheel can also roll steadily with zero friction.
See the physics
Compare measured travel, spin, and point velocities
After attempting a question, run the prepared wheel. Compare center travel with rim arc and watch contact velocity approach zero in the slipping trials. The warranty animation uses a short measured sample to project the full distance; the coin pauses at its first stop, and the tire has a final-interval close-up.
Use a hint for a starting point or open a worked solution to follow the reasoning. Your progress saves in this browser, so you can return to unfinished questions.
Ready for rolling motion?
Begin with a conceptual question, then work through the calculations.