In 1956, Frank Lloyd Wright proposed the construction of a mile-high building in Chicago. Suppose the building had been constructed. Ignoring Earth's rotation, find the change in your weight if you were to ride an elevator from the street level, where you weigh 600 N, to the top of the building.

Let R be the radius of the earth. When you go a distance h upwards, your new distance from the center of the earth becomes R + h. The weight decreases by an inverse-square factor
[R/(R+h)]^2

Look up R (It's about 3960 miles). That would make the factor (3960/3961)^2. The ground-level weight gets multiplied by that factor

Thanks a lot!!! I got it :)

At what altitude above Earth's surface would the gravitational acceleration be 3.0 m/s2?

In 1956, Frank Lloyd Wright proposed the construction of a mile-high building in Chicago. Suppose the building had been constructed. Ignoring Earth's rotation, find the change in your weight if you were to ride an elevator from the street level, where you weigh 760 N, to the top of the building.

You're welcome! I'm glad you got the concept. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask.

You're welcome! I'm glad I could help you understand how to solve the problem. Just to clarify, in order to find the change in your weight when riding the elevator from the street level to the top of the building, you need to calculate the inverse-square factor by using the equation [R/(R+h)]^2, where R is the radius of the Earth and h is the distance you travel upwards.

To find the value of R, you can look it up. The average radius of the Earth is approximately 3960 miles. Therefore, when you plug in these values into the equation, you get the factor as (3960/3961)^2.

Lastly, you can multiply this factor by your weight at the street level (600 N) to find the decrease in your weight at the top of the building.