Which do you suppose exerts more pressure on the ground—an elephant or a lady standing on spike heels? (Which will be more likely to make dents in a linoleum floor?) Can you approximate a rough calculation for each?

Respuesta :

Answer:

A woman with a spike heel

Explanation:

Since we're assuming here, we proceed to assuming that the mass of the elephant is 6000 kg, and the mass of the lady is 60 kg. Then,

a woman with a spike heel will exert more pressure on the ground than an elephant weighing 6000 kg. This is because, the force exerted by the woman is a 588 N and she has a, say 1 cm² spike heel. This puts half her weight on each foot, and if evenly distributed to half on her heel and half on her sole, the pressure being exerted by each heel is 147 N/ 2cm² = 147 N/cm². On the other hand, if a 58,860 N elephant with an 1000 cm² feet is exerting 1/4 its weight on each foo. Then it has 14715 N/1000 cm² = 14.7 N/cm²; which is exactly 10 times lesser pressure than what the woman is exerting. So, the woman with the hell exerts more pressure, than the elephant will.

ACCESS MORE
ACCESS MORE
ACCESS MORE
ACCESS MORE