Asked by Bob

Climbing to the top of Mount Everest is hard. But, it's slightly easier than you might think as people weigh less as they climb to the top. Let WE be a person's weight on top of Mount Everest and WS be their weight at sea level. What is the value of 1−WE/WS?

Details and assumptions:

+ Assume the earth (other than Everest) is a sphere of mass 6×1024 kg and radius 6,370 km.

+ The top of Mount Everest is 8,848 m above the surface of the earth.
Answered by drwls
Weight is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the center of the Earth.

WE/WS = [6370/(6370+8.85)]^2
= 0.9972

1 - (WE/WS) = 2.77*10^-3

0.27% of the person's weight is "lost" at the summit of Everest.
Answered by Mathsfreak
Still a simple careless mistake :
1-9972=0.0028 nt 27.:)
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