The Physics of a Hanging Board

This is a picture of a 2.00 kg cork board that hangs above my desk. The ends of the string are attached to the two corners of the board and each string approximately forms a 23.6 degrees angle from the horizontal.

For the past two weeks, we've been learning about Newton's Laws and Forces. As I was finishing up my Physics homework, I happened to look up at the calendar on my cork board and realized that my hanging cork board reminded me of one of our homework problems where we had to find the tension of the wire holding up a picture of the professor hanging from the tree. So, I decided to find the tension of the string holding up my cork board in the same way that I solved the problem. First, I measured the dimensions of the board in meters, the length of the string also in meters, and found the mass of the board in kilograms. Then, I found the angle from the horizontal that the two strings formed from the two corners of the cork board. Then, I considered the forces acting on the cork board. Since the cork board is stationary, the net force is 0. The forces acting on the cork board involves tension and weight (mg). The net force equation involves the addition of the y components of both tensions and equating that with the weight (mg). Then, I used the resulting equation to solve for tension.