Awhile back I helped pull a couple of guys who’d gotten their truck stuck in the sand out using a couple of heavy cargo straps that I had in my truck.
One of the guys put a blanket over the straps and said it would dissipate the energy should the straps snap. It sounded plausible to me, but curious if it’s a legit claim.
In: 72
When a cord snaps, the newly free end moves *very* quickly, as all the force the cord was under is transferred into motion at that one free end. This is what makes it dangerous, because even though the cord is very light, with that much speed it can still hurt you.
With a blanket on top, if the cord snaps, the free end will collide with that big piece of fabric when it tries to move, and all that force will be distributed to that fabric, which will probably just ripple. It’s the same amount of force, but it doesn’t generate the same speed now as it’s acting on the whole blanket rather than the very end of the cord.
[Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/uo0ooa/oc_velocities_of_different_parts_of_a_whip/) is a nice simulation of what’s going on at the end of a whip. You can see that if anything was impeding it’s movement, it wouldn’t gain nearly so much force at the tip.
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