Weekend Whipper: Eureka! Gear Testing Keychain Carabiners
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Eureka! Keychain carabiners marked “Not for Climbing” are, in fact, not so good for climbing. But like a true scientist, Austin Sobotka
put the theory to the test on Eureka (5.13a), Mt. Lemmon, Arizona.
“I wanted to test a ‘not for climbing’ carabiner and I knew that the fall would be safe even if it failed,” he tells Rock and Ice. “It did.”
He climbed above a “standard keychain biner,” with a line of climbing-rated biners below, and took a whipper for Newtonian physics. Under Newton’s law
of universal gravitation, acceleration of gravity equals 9.81 meters per second per second. Taking the height of the fall and Sobotka’s mass into account
… and a bunch more science and stuff, his fall produced enough joules to snap the keychain biner like a parakeet would a cracker. There you
have it.
Happy Friday and don’t climb with keychain biners this weekend!