How to use physics to escape from the ice bowl

I don’t know Who invented this crazy challenge, but the idea is to put someone in a sculpted ice bowl and see if they can get out. check it out! The bowl is shaped like a ball on the inside, so the higher the sides go, the steeper it becomes. If you think the icy sidewalk is slippery, try getting on the icy sidewalk.

What do you do when you encounter a problem like this? You’re building a physical model, of course. We’ll start by modeling how people walk on flat terrain, and then apply it to a slippery slope. There are actually three possible escape plans, and I used this model to create an animation so you can see how they work. So, first things first:

How do people walk?

When you move from the front door to the mailbox, you probably don’t think about the mechanics involved. You solved this problem when you were a little kid, didn’t you? But that’s what scientists do: we ask questions that no one has stopped asking.

Speaking of which, have you ever wondered Why is ice slippery?? Believe it or not, we don’t know. The direct cause is the presence of a thin water layer on the surface. but Why? This liquid film exists even below the freezing point. Physicists and chemists have been arguing about this for centuries.

However, in order to begin walking, there must be force in the direction of movement. This is because changing motion is a type of acceleration, and Newton’s second law says that the net force acting on a body is equal to the product of its mass multiplied by its acceleration (F = on). If there is acceleration, there must be a net force.

So what is that force that drives you forward? Well, when you take a step and push off with your back foot, your muscles forcefully impact backwards on the ground. Newton’s third law says that for every action there is a reaction equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. This means that the Earth exercises a forward– The force that is directed towards you, which we call the force of friction.

The magnitude of this friction force depends on two things: (1) the specific materials in contact, which are captured in a coefficient (M) – a number usually between 0 and 1, with lower values ​​being more slippery and less stable. and (2) how forcefully these surfaces push together, which we call the normal force (n).

Normal force is a foreign concept to beginners in physics, so let me explain. natural It means perpendicular to the contact surface. It is an upward momentum that prevents you from falling to the ground under the force of gravity. If you were standing on flat ground, these two forces would be equal and opposite, canceling each other out, so there is no vertical acceleration.

Final note: There are two different types of friction coefficients. The first is that you have two fixed objects, such as a beer mug on a bar, and you want to know how hard you can push it before you move. This limit is determined by fixed Friction coefficient (M_Q).

Then, when the bartender moves your cup down the bar, the frictional resistance – which determines how far it advances – is determined by Kinetics Friction coefficient (M_your). This is usually less, because it is easier to keep something moving than to start moving.

So now we can measure a constant (F_Kh) and kinetics (F_fk) Friction forces: