Movie Report Wild Walls Climbing Gym, Spokane,...

The photographs on the previous page were taken at Wild Walls Climbing Gym in Spokane, Washington. Photo #1 exhibits a climber while on the rock wall, supporting his own weight. Photo #2 displays the system employed by rock climbers to stay safe in the case of a fall. Two photos were taken in order to compare the system while the climber is on the wall and ascending against when the climber has fallen off the wall and is hanging by the rope. In the sport of rock climbing, the goal is, obviously enough, to reach the top. In other words, the challenge is ultimately to surmount the force of gravity. The power to do this is generated by the climber’s muscles, but friction forces also play a key role in making the ascent up a rock face. These†¦show more content†¦The equation for gravitational potential energy near Earth’s surface is U = m*g*h (Walker 395). In this equation, m is the mass of the object in question, which in this case would be the climber. The value g corresponds to the value for gravitational acceleration, which for Earth is 9.81 m/s2, and h is the height of the climber relative to the ground. It is important to note that for consistency within the equation, m is expressed in units of kilograms and height is in meters. This way, when the units are combined we get the answer in terms of kg*m2/s2, which is equivalent to a Joule, the SI derived unit of energy (Walker 191). During a climber’s ascent, the only one of these variables that change is the height value; their mass and the value of g remain constant. There may ostensibly be a very slight exception to this for climbers that achieve extreme heights, as the value of g does change the further an object gets from the center of Earth, but for our purposes this change is negligible. As is clear by evaluating our expression, the height and gravitational potential energy are directly proportional. This means that as a climber reaches greater heights, their gravitational po tential energy also increases. As an example, imagine a climber whose mass including their gear was 75 kilograms. If this climber is 10 meters off of the ground, their gravitational potential energy is