How hot do you think the friction genarated from sliding down a climbing rope will be?

Question

lets say you slide down 100, 200, 500 feet

Answer 1

At those distances, the temperature will reach equilibrium depending on how fast you slide.

Let's say you slide at a constant 1 ft /second or .3 m/s downward

Let's look at power. Every second you would generate energy equal to m*g*.3 since your hands create friction to oppose the force of gravity and maintain a constant speed) Also, note that the faster the speed, the more energy converted to heat every second).

Let's say you weight 50 kg
and set gravity equal to 10 m/s^s
500*.3=150 J/second

This can be converted to calories, and then a thermal model of the hand can be created. The rate of heat generation and thermal conductivity will determine how much energy is still on the hand and causes an increase in temperature. Which is very complicated, but has been studied:

If you would like to see the effect of this energy on human skin, including the temperature rise, check this out

http://www.nature.com/jid/journal/v69/n3/pdf/5616682a.pdf
How they got someone to agree to hold their finger until burn blister is beyond me.

It's interesting. Good luck in creating a model and simulating the experiment.

j