Recent content by sidis

Phil Watts of Northern Michigan University (I'm not sure he's still there (we only climbed together once)(he wrote this book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0873228146/?tag=pfamazon01-20)) did some work on friction of hands, etc in climbing. It would be easy to set up your own experiment with a...

I'd be glad to help. Are you a climber? There's a lot to think about in analyzing climbing...is there anything you are especially interested in? How mathematically intense do you want to go?

Friction is a continuous phenomena represented by a curve like this one: http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/211_fall2002.web.dir/Ben_Townsend/frictiongraph.JPG ...it's also good to remember that the old, irregular surfaces (aspertes) model isn't thought to be true anymore...

This PDF (very slow link) gives a very good analysis, including some open questions: http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Special-Programs/SP-255Spring-2006/8B6C146C-3AE1-48DA-8A5A-37FF2ADA231A/0/rope_behav_edtd.pdf