In the Grimms\' fairy tale Rapunzel, she lets down her golden hair to a length o
ID: 1985494 • Letter: I
Question
In the Grimms' fairy tale Rapunzel, she lets down her golden hair to a length of 20 yards (we'll use 20 m which is not much different) so that the prince can climb up to her room. Human hair has a Young's modulus of about 490 MPa, and we can assume that Rapunzel's hair can be squeezed into a rope about 2.0 cm in cross-sectional diameter. The prince is described as young and handsome, so we can estimate a mass of 60 kg for him. (a) Just after the prince has started to climb at a constant speed, while he is still near the bottom of the hair, by how many centimeters does he stretch Rapunzel's hair? (b) What is the mass of the heaviest prince that could climb up, given that the maximum tensile stress hair can support is 196 MPa? (Assume that Hooke's Law holds up to the breaking point of the hair, even though that would not actually be the case).Explanation / Answer
Elongation = FL/AE
F = mg = 62*9.81 = 608.22 N
E = 490 MPa
A = 3.14/4*dia^2 = 3.14/4*(2.1*10^-2)^2 = 0.000346185 m^2
Elongation = 608.22*20/(0.000346185*490*10^6) = 0.07171 m = 7.171 cm
Stress = F/A
F = A*stress = 0.000346185*196*10^6 = 67852.26 N
Mass = F/g = 67852.26/9.81 = 6916.64 kg