Traveling Along a Zipline

Abstract

The trajectory of a rider slowly traversing a zipline of fixed length and endpoints is computed, as a one-dimensional illustration of the curving of spacetime by a mass. As the rider?s weight increases from 0 to ∞, the trajectories uniformly interpolate between a catenary and an ellipse. These results are obtained by balancing forces in the horizontal and vertical directions, so that the treatment is accessible to undergraduate physics majors who have been exposed to finding the numerical roots of an algebraic equation.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 2011
Accession Number
ADA551170

Entities

People

  • Carl E. Mungan
  • Trevor C. Lipscombe

Organizations

  • United States Naval Academy

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Catenaries
  • Coordinate Systems
  • Electronic Mail
  • Equations
  • Fungi
  • General Relativity
  • Geometric Forms
  • Geometry
  • Gravitational Fields
  • Information Operations
  • Instructors
  • Lines (Geometry)
  • Mathematics
  • Molecular Mechanics Methods
  • Shape
  • Trajectories
  • United States Naval Academy

Fields of Study

  • Mathematics

Readers

  • Approximation Theory.
  • Brain and Cognitive Science; Experimental Psychology; Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Fluid Dynamics.