Rock climbing

QuteBlue

Me and a couple of my classmates are trying to convince our physics teacher to do an "excursion" to a local rock gym for a day. He said only if we could come up with a GOOD HARD problems based on the physics of the climbing and the belaying. Now, i have a basic understanding of physics and it being an AP PHYSICS Highschool Class, i'm probably not quite up to par with most everyone that's going to read this, but my main issue is i'm having trouble coming up with "GOOD HARD" problems. Does anyone have any suggestions at all?


[:D] Blue [:D]

Chi Meson

Think tension.

Climbing ropes have breking strengths, which is the tension at which they will snap. You could calculate what kind of screamer you would have to take before a rope would snap.

Consider the rope to act like a spring in that it will follow hook's Law. Figure out the effective spring constant for 25 meters of the rope. By how much will the rope lengthen for a fall? OR how much will it lengthen when a guy is lowered?

THink about anchors. If you placed two bolts 80 cm apart and connected them with a sling that was 140 cm long, (and the rope goes through a biner clipped to the sling so that the biner and two bolts form a triangle) what force would be on each bolt? (It's a statics problem.)

And more basic: how fast is that biner going when it hits the belayer's shoe?