Find a use for an infinitely slippery rope

Ubbquittious

Since it is infinitely slippery any knot you put in it will just come undone and any clamp you put on it won't hold. The only hope as far as I can see is if you can put each end into an airtight cylinder closed on one side. The vacuum in the cylinder would mean you could use it for light loads such as a skipping rope but surely the Boardsian community can come up with something else to use it for

Jim_Hodge

How do you put it in a cylinder if it's infinitely slippery - you couldn't hold it to move it anywhere?.

mickdw

Learn some proper knots

wench

I'd just buy a different rope

Capt'n Midnight

Put it in a bucket. Then if you drop it from orbit it would have the kinetic energy of 4 times it's weight of TNT.

Bicyclette

Get a large crochet hook and make a nice rug with it. Use a flame to seal the end loop to itself to stop it unravelling.

Quantum Erasure

ah, the slippery rope argument...

dybbuk

1) Vacuum cylinders on each end and use it as a landing on a slippery slope.

2) Chop it up and sell as sex toys

3) Go hunting poultry with it like Muenchausen

4) Combine 2 and 3 to all unsavory purposes imaginable.

5) Have it run for office.

Jim_Hodge

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118811933#Comment_118811933

How do you attach the vacuum cleaners?. If it's infinitely slippery it can be neither tied, clamped nor glued. The chopped up pieces would be too slippery to even pick up.

goldenmick

Unravel it and start a new thread with it.

dybbuk

Use the cylinders as defined by the OP.

Pick'em up using your body's cavities as such cylinders.

Move over KY! No washing required.

6) Put a camera on the vacuum cylinder and use as an endoscope.

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118811971#Comment_118811971

It isn't weightless so it will eventually slip down to the lowest point and then you should be able to bagsies it

Gregor Samsa

The correct term for your "infinitely slippy" rope is frictionless.

This guy has done knotting simulations on "perfect ropes", that is frictionless ropes that don't deform and can be bent without any effort:

http://piotr.pieranski.pracownik.put.poznan.pl/Tightening%20of%20practical%20knots.html

The last knot doesn't require friction to stay tight. So you could tie some of them in your infinitely slippy rope.

HeidiHeidi

Bowline ftw

Alun

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118814693#Comment_118814693

There's a variant of the sheepshank knot in his second example, where you place a small wooden peg in each of the two loops to prevent them pulling out, that'd still work with frictionless rope I suspect. There's another variant, which can only be used if the two ends of the rope are free, where you thread the two rope ends through the loops. Not very useful though as the most probable reason you'd be using a sheepshank in the first place would be that you don't have access to the ends of the rope.

I knew having been a boy scout would come in useful on a boards thread one day :)

Feisar

Given as said above it's frictionless could one even pick it up, even if one picked up a length of it in the middle wouldn't it slip through one's fingers given the weight difference on one side? With no friction a dowel no matter how tightly squeezed would slip though?

KieferFan69

I’d drop a loaf on this

Gregor Samsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118814946#Comment_118814946

It depends on what the rope is made from. For instance, it if was permeated with certain metals, it could be held and manipulated magnetically without the need for friction.

It could also be handled by a spike or pin piercing the rope, and then closing on itself to prevent it from coming off: a safety pin, for instance.

Realistically, as a rope is made from individual fibres twisted or braided together, it would be impossible to have a frictionless rope; in order for the entire rope to be frictionless, the constituent fibres would also need to be - and therefore it would be impossible to hold them together in a rope. Unless the rope itself was a regular one with some kind of frictionless coating on it (which in turn gives you the problem: how do you sick a frictionless coating onto a rope?).