a) Imagine you are swinging on a vine, like a pendulum. If the coefficient of friction between your hands and the vine is 0.5, what must your grip strength be compared to your weight to not slip?

Question

b) Research on grip strength shows that males have an average strength of 490N per hand, and females around 290N per hand, could you hang on?

c) What is the longest vine you could swing from given you gender?

d) If you began to slip along the vine (assuming a longer vine), and re-gripped further down the vine, would it become easier or more difficult to hang on?

Please show the work too, thanks.

Answer 1

a) The maximum friction force is your grip strength mulitiplied by the friction coefficient. Actually, the required force will also be affected by the centripetal acceleration, which depends upon rope length and maximum velocity

b) Determine your weight in Newtons and answer the question, using the results of (a)

c) They need to provide information on the maxiumum pendulum angle to answer this question

For a given pendulum angle, the maximum velocity is proportional to sqrt R, and the centripetal accleration is proportional to V^2/R, which is independent of R. I would answer no to this question

Answer 2

He's wrong.