Puzzle Description:

Well if you aren't going to set that ladder back a bit, at least give me a few seconds to get my camera out.

#1: Norma Dee (norm0908) on Apr 1, 2019

An accident waiting to happen. Fun little puzzle.

Found to be solvable with moderate lookahead by valerie.

Good one.

Someone should be holding the bottom, at least. Or stand it on a stepladder, for extra height and peril!

This is actually the *correct* angle. For every four vertical units, it should come out one horizontal unit. (~75 degrees)

This ladder has a height of 28 pixels and a horizontal spread of 7 pixels. 4:1

Kristen, ask and you shall receive:
https://www.ehstoday.com/node/14585/

That's quite a link, Joe. Unbelievable the danger some people will voluntarily put themselves in.

Those pictures are giving me anxiety. :)

It doesn't even have the picture I was originally trying to re-find: a man holding the bottom of an extended ladder over his head -- with a man on the ladder.

Joe. That's interesting because as I was making this puzzle, I kept making the ladder steeper and steeper until it looked like I would feel uncomfortable climbing it.

One of the most common mistakes is to make the angle too low. That puts a lot more stress on the ladder (especially extension ladders) and also greatly increases the chance that the ladder slips backward.

Of course, the most important bit of ladder safety is DON'T REACH. Moving the ladder takes much less time than the line in the Emergency Room.

The guy who cleaned my house's gutters last summer had a ladder with two big bars at the top that interlocked with my roof, to hold it solidly in place. I thought that was brilliant!

It might have been something like this ladder stabilizer:
https://www.amazon.com/Werner-AC78-Quickclick-Stabilizer/dp/B00004RKD1

This is the ladder I use to clean my gutters. It also has extensions to make it more stable, but they're at the bottom
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/702090843775041618/894376294144434206/20211003_201052.jpg

For scale, the pole with the red top leaning on the ladder is my height

That is really tall!
What is the white blob at the bottom?

That is some sand to weigh it down. It is so tall that if I try to put it up by myself, after a certain angle the bottom will kick upward due to the lever action of the weight of the top. The extra weight keeps the feet on the ground.

Oh! That makes a lot of sense!

As a single parent, I try to be a little extra judicious about doing risky things, so I never go up on roofs. So ladder arms and counterweights are entirely outside my personal experience.

Goto next topic

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