LogFAQs > #896682508

I'm a math tutor, but I just got contacted by a student who wants help with physics in less than an hour, and sent me some questions he wants to look at. Basic physics, I'm usually fine with, but this is rotational garbage. We did some torque last week, and now he has moment of inertia questions. I was able to reason through what the first few questions require, but then I hit these two, that don't compute to me:

1. In the caber toss, a contest of strength and skill that is part of Scottish games, contestants toss a heavy uniform pole, landing it on its end. A 5.9-m tall pole with a mass of 79 kg has just landed on its end. It is tipped by 25 degrees from the vertical and is starting to rotate about the end that touches the ground. Determine the angular acceleration.

2. A baseball bat has a mass of 0.82 kg and is 0.86 m long. It's held vertically and then allowed to fall. What is the bat's angular acceleration when it has reached 20 degrees from the vertical? (Model the bat as a uniform rod.)

Okay, so I know there's formulas I can use for moment of inertia. I understand that if I knew the net torque, I could use that to find angular acceleration. But I see no mention of torque anywhere. Force due to gravity, sure, but that's not rotational.

The only other way I know to find angular acceleration would require comparing rotation to time. We have rotation, I guess?, but we don't have any time component. So what am I missing?
---

http://imgur.com/ekqlssN