Modeling real-life situations is an important part of introductory physics. Here we consider the question “What is the largest weight of backpack a hiker can manage?” A quick perusal of the Internet suggests that as the weight of a healthy adult increases, the largest backpack weight also increases and should be about 25–30% of a person's body weight for a reasonably fit adult.1 We show here that a careful modeling of the hiker and backpack leads to a somewhat different result, with hikers of sufficiently large (but otherwise healthy) weight not being able to carry as much backpack weight as hikers of smaller weight.
References
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The quantity L is any linear dimension of the hiker and could for example be the height.
8.
Irving P.
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(Springer-Verlag
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R. J.
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We have assumed that when the human frame is scaled up, muscle and bone are scaled up by the same linear dimensions as the human frame. Evidence that this is approximately true comes from the fact that (muscle mass)∝(body mass)1.0 and (skeletal mass) ∝ (bodymass)1.08, with both exponents being close to or equal to 1.0. See Ref. 8, Table 1.13.
11.
A note on notation: the largest backpack weight for a particular weight is denoted by . The maximum value of as a function of is denoted by .
© 2014 American Association of Physics Teachers.
2014
American Association of Physics Teachers
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