Question

Workers who wash windows or paint the outside of buildings use an interesting contraption known as a painter's lift. This consists of a harness that the worker wears suspended by a rope. The rope runs through a pulley mounted on the roof of the building and back down to hang beside the worker. The worker simply pulls down on the hanging rope to raise herself up, and releases it to lower herself down (tieing the hanging rope to her harness keeps her at a constant height). What's neat is that the configuration also makes it easier for the worker to move up and down than if she was just hanging by a single rope. Let F1 be the force the worker exerts on the hanging rope in the painter's lift configuration to move upward at a constant speed. Let F2 be the force the worker would need to exert on a single rope to move upward at a constant speed. What is F1/F2? You can assume the rope itself doesn't have any significant mass.

Answer 1

Shame on you Keshav!!! Cheating on Brilliant!!! This site is meant to be a platform to practice your own skills, not to copy paste the questions and get free answers and then get incentives without effort. So either play fair and be honest or leave this site. People like you are shame to the Brilliant community. And to the others, please give the answer to this problem after Monday 10/6/2013, so that this cheat doesn't get the opportunity to cheat.

Answer 2

Thanks for noticing, Shame. As such we have started tracking keshav's and mathlover's account( i.e. we are searching which accounts got these problems, and we are searching which accounts entered exactly the answers posted here, even if they are wrong at moreorless the same time or date). Currently we have pinpointed about five possibilities for keshav's account. A few more posts and he will be ours. Thanks for your cooperation, Shame.

-Calvin Lin
Brilliant Maths Challenge Master