Today I was in a car with Zalman and Max on the way to Zalman's viola lesson. Zalman's parents dropped us all off at Mrs. Hafner's house. Max and I were going to be picked up by my parents there, but we had some time to kill. After realizing that doing absolutely nothing was slightly boring, our eyes wandered onto a plant with some roots hanging down from the top of a high wall. Immediately the obvious question came into our heads: "Can we climb up with that?" In the traditional scientific problem solving method, we decided to test our question.
After Max started to climb up by holding the plant's roots, I realized that he was exerting a force (in the form of tension) upon them. The angle from the wall to the roots could be represented by "theta," and using Max's weight to calculate the force gravity was exerting upon him, I could calculate the amount of force that the roots were withstanding. If only I was carrying a protractor! Unfortunately, the best I could do was draw a simple free-body diagram. Next time I will be sure to come prepared.
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