Say I’ve got a bottomless chasm with a conveniantly located pole across the middle and up high enough I can reach it with the kangaroo hide whip I always carry.
Now, given that this is real life and not a movie can I whip the pole, have the end of the whip wrap around and stay there, have it be strong enough to take my weight while I swing from one side of the chasm to the other, and then undo when I shake the whip at the end so I can place it back on my belt and continue my quest for a cheesburger?
I’m not concerned about long term damage to the whip, mind, just crossing the chasm.
Is this at all possible to do in real life? If so, how does it work?
I doubt that a whip wrapped around a pole in that manner could support the weight of a person. The only force that holds the person-whip system up is friction between the whip and the pole. Meanwhile, the weight of the person (and the whip, for what it’s worth) are pulling the system down.
Yes, but if the whip wraps properly, the weight of the person holds the whip tight to the pole. The trick would be to make sure the whip wraps over itself. It would work as a crude hitch knot and hold the weight for enough time to get over the chasm. Try it with some string and you’ll see.
Yes, and also increasing the force of the friction. Provided you have enough surface area of the whip touching, and a high enough co-efficent of friction, then the whip will hold, whether a whip has these properties I don’t know.
Are whips made out of leather?
Yes. Or at least, the Indiana Jones whip is. Um, a friend told me. I didn’t compulsivly research in the hopes I could afford one for myself or anything.
Very easy to take the end of the whip in your hand and wrap it around the support so it will hold your weight.
Very hard to cause this to happen as Indiana Jones did - by manipulating only the handle of the whip.
I don’t see it as particularly difficult. You just need to angle the strike left or right and when the whip hits the beam you move the handle opposite the direction you angled it. THat should make the tip of the whip cross over. I bet you could get it down easy with the right wrist flick with some practice.
I have tried something like this when younger and it did work, but only up to a point. Dunno the physics of it but the whip wrapped itself quite handily and I was able to pull on it with quite a bit of force, but it would suddenly release, and I never was able to figure out the how or why’s of it.
Note: There were no chasms of any form involved, I would whip a 2x4 that was standing perpendicular attached to concrete base (which wasn’t attached to anything), pulling the whole thing towards me. Could usually manage to move it about 2 or 3 feet before it would uncoil. (at least when it didn’t just tip back and forth).
Note (part the 2nd): It was cow and not kangaroo hide for the sake of accuracy.
Provided the co-efficients of friction for leather and leather, and for leather on wood (provided the whip wrapped around twice) add up to greater then 1, the whip will hold. However, Indy doesn’t just hang, he has some downward acceleration (greater then gravity) which would mean that the co-efficients would have to be higher.
Friction is a force, it opposes you pulling the object towards you. This is the friction between that object and the ground. Provided the firction between the ground and the object is less than the friction between the object and the rope, you will be able to pull it towards you. However, if you pull too hard, you will overcome the force of friction between the rope and the object and the rope will start to slip. The trick is to pull hard enough to overcome the force of friction on the object and the ground, but not hard enough to overcome the force of friction between the rope and the object.
I hope that made sense
I’m not sure this properly takes into account the concept of a “knot”. For many knots, the harder you pull the more they tighten. Failure comes when the rope breaks (typically just outside the knot), not when friction is overcome.
The principle is the same. There’s nothing magical about knots - it’s just that as the load on them increases, the contact force increases in proportion so the friction can never be overcome, whatever the load. (Okay, there’s a bit more than that - the cord deforms under the contact forces, etc. But try tying knots in cling film and you’ll discover that pure friction is very important.)
Even a simple wrapped whip is quite difficult to analyse. The weight of the free-hanging end (not the end you hold onto- the other one) sets the limit of the tension at the end of the coil, while your weight (plus a bit for the swing) sets the tension at the beginning of the coil, and the coil itself is trying to contract onto the shaft. Maybe the tension (and contact force) varies linearly along the coil, or maybe it’s more complicated than that. It’s already at the stage where I’d want an experiment rather than a calculation!
If, after snapping your coil around the shaft, you flip a wave up the whip so that the first coil now lies atop of the others, you have something that may indeed behave like a knot, and the game changes. (I’m calling the “first coil” the one connected to the length of whip in your hand.)
In the classic, “give me the whip” swing from Raiders, Indy didn’t bother to flip a wave up the whip. He didn’t have to. If you advance frame by frame when the Treacherous Assistant makes his swing back across the pit, you can see that the end of the last coil has helpfully slipped itself under one of the others, forming a veritable knot - a single hitch.
If anybody could do it, I think it would be me. My last name is Jones, and I once whipped a chip put of someones hand. I also used a rolled up measuring tape as a whip and whipped the milk out of my sisters spoon as she was bringing it towards her face to eat her cereal. Now who is gonna top that???
I realise it would be easy to top and both instances were luck.
yes, it is possible because i have done it. Doing what youre referring to is called a “wrap” which occurs when the popper and flail continue in a circular motion around an object of solid mass. The trick to doing a whip swing is, after you do the wrap, you wanna flick the whip over the wrap, so the whip is overlapping the wrap which creates a sort of lock, at which point you can swing to where ever you need to go. REMEMBER TO MAKE SURE THE WRAP IS AROUND THE OBJECT THREE TIMES TO ENSURE A SAFE LOCK!
If youre going to use a Roo hide whip to swing, you want to use at least a 10 plait whip, the higher plait amount, the stronger the whip.
I take no responsibility for bronken or damaged whips.
