The pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.
If I am watching a movie or TV and my boyfriend isn't in the room and he hears me laugh, he automatically assumes that someone in the movie or TV show got hurt. Heh. He's usually right.
Being a science geek and a sadist, I've come up with this math problem:
If an up escalator has a slope of 30 degrees and a hight of 16 feet, and a person on the escalator weighs 150 pounds, at what point on the escalator does the person have to clutz out for me to enjoy watching their sorry ass fall down forever? How clumsy do they have to be? Keep in mind that gravity has a constant acceleration of 32.2 ft/s^2.
0 feet. The trip alone would trigger the laughter.
ReplyDeleteIf you want us to figure out where on the escalator he has to start falling such that the length of time between the trip and hitting the bottom of the escalator is infinite, it's less a matter of escalator height, and more a matter of speed and coefficient of friction of his clothes and the steps. As long as the stairs move fast enough to cancel out his fall (which isn't 32 ft/s^2 because he's falling diagonally and being stopped by each step) then he'll fall forever as long as he's high enough to hit the next step down when he falls.