New subject: Swinging

6 Sep 2011

I'm with Chris on this one, each person exerts 20 pounds on the other 
person, and nobody is exerting 40 pounds.  (This is a clear example of 
Newton's 3rd Law, for those who are familiar with introductory physics.)

Mark

...
  Jeff Kaufman wrote:

 Chris Lahey wrote:
  I got the same 20 lbs in my calculations, but I
don't think you get to
 double it.  If I'm the gent, my hand is putting 20 lbs of force on the
 ladies back.  At the same time, her back is putting 20 lbs of force on my
 hand.  When we carry a 20 lb object, we're pulling up with 20 lbs of force
 and it's pulling down with 20 lbs of force, but we don't call it 40 lbs of
 force.  Sure.  The doubling comes from 20lbf per person.  It takes 20lbf to
 hold me in, and 20lbf to hold them in, so between us we need 40lbf to
 stay together.

  There's also the fact that despite some of
the radial acceleration
 coming from centripital force, I suspect some of it comes from the
 feet.
  That might be important.  I'm not sure how to measure that.

 If someone wants to bring a bathroom or similar scale to the concord
 scout house tonight, I would be curious to measure this.

 Jeff

Re: [Callers] Swinging