You know you've been a customer too long when you start to think of physics and mechanics when watching a dancer. I've always been this way though, not just at strip clubs. It’s been a compulsion of mine to always need to know how things work. The Dilbert clip on my MySpace profile page is so accurate it’s painful. Fortunately I've been able to take a personality disorder and turn it into a career in engineering. This time I happen to notice that a pole trick was a really nice demonstration of the conservation of angular momentum. She could control the speed at which she spun by changing how much of her body was extended away the pole. She could speed up and slow down at will, much like an ice skater. This was on the really “spinny” pole on the back stage at D2. I bet physics classes would be a lot better attended if they had video clips of strippers for demonstrations.
Another thing that struck me was the amount of force being allied to the skin during some pole tricks. The move consists of the girl wrapping one leg around the pole and hanging upside down with the other leg and both arms extended. I made a quick estimation that she had approximately 18 inches of the pole had contact with the leg. I estimate that 50% of the pole was exposed. Assuming a 2" pole, that would mean she had 28 square inches of skin in contact with the pole. I'd guess she weighed about 125lbs. That means each square inch of skin would have to support 4.5lbs. Ouch, that's a lot of weight to hang off a section of skin that normally doesn't support any weight.
When I mention this to a dancer she pointed out to me that when a girl first starts dancing or returns from taking time off they tend to get bruises on the inside of the leg then after a while they build up some resistance to bruising. I did some investigations on this. Not surprisingly, there isn't a lot of ongoing research on dancer physiology. I really could find much information in general about resistance to bruising. Lots of remedies for helping bruises heal, but nothing with any solid medical data. Just researching the only theory I could come up with is the skin becomes thicker. Skins response to constant pressure or friction is to grow faster. This is how calluses form. Bruises occur when the capillaries directly below the skin are damaged and start to leak; my guess is that the skin becomes thicker over time, providing more padding and protection the capillaries underneath the epidermal layers. The more pole tricks you do the thicker your skin becomes.
Another thing I wanted to research is the cold brass poles are slick, warm brass poles the sticky effect. I've heard this from multiple dancers over the years. I did a fair amount of research into this. I consulted a couple of material properties hand books and spent a lot of time reading about brass on the internet. The property of brass doesn’t change at all over temperature you would encounter inside a building. Brass does have some interesting properties, one of which is it is antimicrobial. It will kill off bacteria, fungus, and other nasty creatures that touch its surface. It takes about seven hours though. The pole will have to still be cleaned between sets. But after the next day the brass pole will have killed off all the microbes after the club closes. Steel poles definitely need to be cleaned. The copper in the brass (brass is an alloy of zinc and copper) will naturally disinfect itself. On thing I discovered is that clubs shouldn’t use Windex to clean the poles. Windex is probably the worse thing you want to clean a brass pole with. Even diluted ammonia will eventually make brass brittle. Having the base of the pole break is probably not a desirable thing while you’re spinning upside down.
Getting back the cold/slick hot/sticky properties, I could not find anything about brass that changes its surface at temperatures you’d find inside climate controlled building. I don’t think the brass its self actually changes. What is probably going on is the skins reaction to temperature. Brass conducts heat very well (I bet you didn’t think you’d be reading a material science report when you log into my blog). When skin feels cold the sweat glands shut down, your hands will dry out. A small amount of moisture on the skin will create a slight suction when it fills in the irregularities of the surface. When the pole warms up, the physical exertion of doing pole work will keep a layer of sweat on the skin. Which help maintain a reliable grip. A quick test would be to breath on your hands next time you are faced with a cold pole. Your breath is really humid and will coat your skin with moisture. This should make your initial grip good, but you’ll probably crash when you change grips. So maybe you should wait unit the pole warms up.
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