Question

Known mobster and gambler Larry the Loser is found dead, hanging at about the 7-story level from a bun- cord tied to the top of the 15-story (45-m) Prudential gee Building in downtown Chicago. Larry has a mass of 90 kg, and when the bungee cord is cut down, it is found to have a relaxed leng th of 5 stories. Detective Lestrade from the Chicago Police Department thinks that Larry must have been bungee-jumping from the top of the building and 109 just unluckily hit the ground, but you know that Larry was murdered. What is your evidence? (Notes: A bungee cord will not exert any force on the jumper until the jumper has fallen a distance equal to the bungee cord's relaxed length. Also, the force a bungee cord exerts actu- ally exceeds kₛ|x|in magnitude when it is stretched a lot.)

Answer 1

Analyzing the physics behind the bungee jumping evidence, including the relaxed and maximum stretch lengths of the cord in conjunction with Larry's mass, is crucial to understanding whether the death was an accident or murder.

Step-by-step explanation:

The situation described with Larry the Loser being found dead, hanging from a bungee cord at the 7-story level on the Prudential Building in Chicago suggests a case involving physics principles, particularly concerning the physics of bungee jumping. From the information provided, the relaxed length of the bungee cord is 5 stories, or approximately 15 meters, since a typical building story is about 3 meters. Larry's mass of 90 kg would significantly stretch the bungee cord, given typical spring constants for bungee cords, even if nonlinear elastic behavior occurs.

However, to determine if Larry's death was an accident or murder, we would need to analyze the maximum stretch of the bungee cord based on Larry's mass and the potential energy converted into elastic energy. Considering that bungee cords can typically stretch to four times their relaxed length and exhibit nonlinear elasticity, resulting in higher forces with greater stretch, the circumstance of Larry's body being found hanging 7 stories (approximately 21 meters) down, where the bungee cord is still exerting force (indicating it was stretched beyond its relaxed length), can lead to conclusions about the fall. If the stretch was beyond the maximum possible stretch of the cord, it would suggest Larry couldn't have simply hit the ground due to a miscalculation in jump length; rather, it would imply other forces or scenarios at play.

While precise calculations would require the spring constants at different stretches and the nonlinear behavior of the bungee cord, the evidence should relate to potential and elastic energy, stretch capacity of the bungee cord, and the expected behavior of such a cord if a 90 kg mass were to jump from the top of a building.