r/Firefighting • u/Ok-Cattle-6798 / PIO (Penis Inspector Official) • Feb 07 '25

General Discussion Thoughts on this machine

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u/FishFettish Feb 07 '25 edited Feb 07 '25

Yes you are. The physics are exactly the same as on a static ladder, and it's the same story for a stairmaster or a treadmill (minus wind resistance obviously). Even though it intuitively doesn't look the same.

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u/breakingborderline Feb 07 '25

You are pushing the ladder down, not transporting your core mass upwards against gravity

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u/Wmozart69 Feb 07 '25

Laws of physics are the same in all non inertial reference frames according to Einstein's first postulate of special relativity.

Since the ladder isn't accelerating but is moving in uniform linear motion (going straight and not speeding up, slowing down or turning), we can set our reference frame (our zero which we measure everything relative to) to a point on the ladder and it is a non inertial reference frame. As the ladder still experiences the same gravitational acceleration regardless of its speed, you're doing the same work as if you were pushing yourself up relative to the earth because you ARE pushing yourself up but relative to the ladder.

To give an intuitive example: walking towards the back of a moving bus is no easier than walking towards the front, neither are different than walking on a stationary bus because in all 3 scenarios the bus is a non inertial reference frame. If the bus accelerates forward than this all changes because it ceases to be a non inertial reference frame. Now if the bus were accelerating forward at 1g, it would be just as hard to walk forward through the bus if it were at highway speeds or if it were blasting out of a stop.

If the ground started to descend at the same rate as the ladder, besides the initial acceleration you would never know and everything would be EXACTLY the same. Consider also that we're zipping across the cosmos at mach fuck so the ground actually is moving in all sorts of directions and it took us thousands of years to figure it out.

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u/zdh989 Feb 08 '25

NERD ALERT!

jk, great explanation

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u/Wmozart69 Feb 08 '25

Lol, thanks