This man really went down to the chemistry of rope fibres just for a video. I think we can all agree this man is goes above and beyond for us and he deserves more. Great video
@TheDanielscarroll11 ай бұрын
Ya amazing!!
@SushantYogi11 ай бұрын
Wasn't expecting a chemistry lesson in a climbing video but I absolutely love it. This is the type of in-depth detail I come for
@HardIsEasy11 ай бұрын
My pleasure as well :D
@exicx11 ай бұрын
I'm most impressed with Mammut that they would show these details out in the open like this. That should be the norm, but of course companies are reticent to show actual performance numbers of their products for fear of turning off customers from data that looks "bad" to untrained eyes.
@x_isaka11 ай бұрын
Exactly.. mammut testing is legit..
@kilianjobin70311 ай бұрын
Always impressed by these videos. It's difficult to go so much into detail, while still making it entertaining to watch. Also, kudos to mammut for being so open about what they do and allowing you to use their facility
@bikespike415011 ай бұрын
Sometimes you come across a video like this and it restores your faith in the internet again and makes you double check you are subscribed.
@Oetzmann1211 ай бұрын
As a engineer and a passionate climber I just love this video. This is really the type of research I‘m interested in.
@jordi9511 ай бұрын
Amazing Video! The effort you put into the videos shows. Thanks to Mammut for letting you go into their facilities, it is always great when companies are involved with the comunity
@thecolaa11 ай бұрын
Crazy how much more confidence I got on my climbing equipment after watching your videos. That’s something about science huh! Great video!
@benw162011 ай бұрын
I ended up buying a Mammut rope after viewing your last video, it was confidence inspiring to see that testing was actually being done. Thx!
@FCJxfelp11 ай бұрын
lol you think other manufacturers dont conduct tests as part of product development and quality assurance?
@benw162011 ай бұрын
@@FCJxfelp You think every manufacturer has a drop tower where they apply a dynamic load instead of a regular static load?
@oldclimber550211 ай бұрын
@@benw1620. Yes I do, If they don’t how will they get past UIAA tests ?
@benw162011 ай бұрын
@@oldclimber5502 Those tests are on new ropes, mammut is testing "worst" case senarios. That's what I find confidence inspiring.
@StephaneDubois-ie3tb11 ай бұрын
Love your videos. Science and fun for safety climbing! Brilliant! Thank so much Mammut for this collab, from my point of view "meeting" the team and feeling the passion is the little difference that could make me choose Mammut over another brand.
@x_isaka11 ай бұрын
What about bd ropes ? 😂😂
@blancheit469611 ай бұрын
Wow! Awesome! This is how a book must be written. Deeply detailed but simple and complete. Very nice to see a great collaboration from a branded lab on this kind of topics (why should i ever follow the instructions on my gear :-)).
@kira37711 ай бұрын
Very interesting video! Would be interesting to know if wet rope fully recovers its strength when dried or if some of the water remains bonded to the polymer chains in the amorphous sections of the fiber.
@Astilath8 ай бұрын
I'm a North Wales based climber. We almost always are dealing with puddles of water around crags and our winters are more often than not, only cold enough to freeze at higher levels in the hills. So winter ropes can get a little wet before you reach the colder temperatures. Almost everyone I know who climbs here uses dry treated ropes outside and most have a short classic rope purely for indoor use. Having dragged my ropes through many puddles and muddy cracks and grooves (despite best efforts not to!) I will only ever use dry treated ropes here. A classic rope on a wet belay ledge low down will soak water up instantly just running through a puddle at lead climbing speed. Every pitch after that your rope weighs much more and pisses muddy water as it runs through a belay plate. On the odd occasion I've used (and seen used) classics outdoors here, every time they owner says they wish for a dry rope (or that they wish they remembered their dry rope!).
@thomascee11 ай бұрын
Man I don’t know how much time you put into this video, but the editing and layout is _AMAZING_
@maxdilcon567911 ай бұрын
The production quality here is mental
@blagovestivanov834611 ай бұрын
Great video Ben. As always extremely intelligible and helpful. In my opinion, there is still room for thought and research regarding the long-term damage sustained by a rope from frequent wetting. For example, I am a caver. The environment in which cavers use their ropes is extremely humid. This includes almost one hundred percent air humidity as well as dousing the rope with water directly. We are used to this fact, and in general, the topic of the long-term impact of water is not often discussed. The way we use ropes creates much smaller loads than dynamic catches during climbing. In our case, it is only a question of moving along the rope by rappelling and climbing by ascenders. However, it is not excluded that a dynamic load may occur in the system in the event of anchor failure. I would be very happy if you could continue the discussion about the effect of wetting the rope. Especially when Mammoth are ready to help with expertise and equipment. If the long-term effect of frequent wetting of the rope is significant enough, this may necessitate more frequent replacement of the ropes and more strict monitoring of their use.
@EricA-kl7xk11 ай бұрын
Another great video! I really love all the stuff you've been doing with Mammut and really nerding out on ropes. One small tip that would make your data presentation more clear would be to color code things. Like using light yellow for dry untreated and dark yellow for wet untreated, and light blue for dry treated and dark blue for wet treated. That way it's very easy to tell how the data is related in the plots. Keep up the great work though!
@HardIsEasy11 ай бұрын
Thanks for the tips! data presentation is always kinda tricky :)
@KIVagant11 ай бұрын
What a channel!.. Thank you for being there, testing those things for others. I hope each manufacturer carefully watches the results and does the same and even better testing in their facilities.
@creativecraving7 ай бұрын
Your intro explains the rope really well at several different levels of abstraction. Wow! You are making hard look easy!
@walterwadlow943811 ай бұрын
Thanks! This is an amazing amount of excellent information that took a lot of work and time! Thank you ever so much!!!
@HardIsEasy11 ай бұрын
Thank you so much, Walter. I really appreciate it!
@Spinsser11 ай бұрын
It's always a treat to see a new video. Thank you for your amazing efforts. It definitely shows in the quality of your content. Looking forward to the next highly informative video ❤
@cls947411 ай бұрын
You really got into the climbing technology rabbit hole :) Good stuff!
@HardIsEasy11 ай бұрын
Yea got even crazier stuff coming :D
@user-jc3nz7eb6t2 ай бұрын
Thank you for getting into the samllest detailes of things. It really helps to understand how it all works, and what to expect out of the gear!
@k2thah28611 ай бұрын
Mammut gets a huge shout out for product transparency. This video is great! 💯
@alexandresignoret106311 ай бұрын
Haven't even seen the video yet but I can already congratulate you for your work which is constantly amazing
@perplexedon983411 ай бұрын
I think this is your highest quality video so far! So cool to see that you sre still steadily imrpoving the quality. One thought I have is that showing that the force the rope sees is greater in wet ropes doesnt mean the strength that the rope would break at would be lower, just that you'd be more likely to see that force. Pretty much the worst case would be a crazy hard fall with a fall factor greater than two, like if while belaying off a multipitch anchor the belayer takes hard to keep them off the belay ledge and the first and only piece rips, shock loading the anchor on a short section of rope. Maybe the climber is 4m above the anchor, and during the freefall the belayer takes in a bit over 1m of slack. Total fall factor would be (4+3)/3=2.3. I calculated the peak force for the mammut 9.5 classic I climb with and it'd be about 8.6kN for a 80kg climber. Based on your tests, a wet rope would then see just over 10kn, which is getting into worrying territory for a used rope, or a rope thats seen many falls that day. Brilliant practical stuff. Takeaways: wet rope catches will be harder and less comfortable, belay device performance will change, and even though wet ropes are almost always safe, there are realistic (but extreme) scenarios in which a soaked rope might make you reconsider.
@DarioPicaTips11 ай бұрын
These lessons are awesome, the climbing theory you didn't know you need. I also wanted to ask you if you've ever used a rope brush to clean the ropes (the helicoidal ones), it makes me wonder whether the dirt goes out or inside the rope. It looks cleaner but some micro particles maybe will be pushed through the outside layer
@HardIsEasy11 ай бұрын
Honestly I have a brush but never used it :)))) So can't say much, normally I just throw my rope into washing mashine
@maltekoch163211 ай бұрын
Thanks for neerding around. Tank's for the help to mammut. Seems like the engineers had there fun as well.
@ISipti11 ай бұрын
These videos are simply amazing! Thank you for all the time spent for these experiments!
@Moriibund41910 ай бұрын
I'm always impressed with these companies that respond to youtuber's e-mails, have transparency with their customers, and welcome these tests to create safer products.
@starfilmsanimation11 ай бұрын
It’s interesting, I’ve never thought of elasticity changes with rope getting wet, only weight. Using them in waterfalls is relatively common. With caving, we want our ropes to be static so maybe getting them wet is a good thing!
@NPC-fl3gq11 ай бұрын
Dang, and I thought the Grigri physics ep was great!! Dude, you've outdone yourself with this one!!
@samaelm.66311 ай бұрын
Wow, the quality of your videos really is getting insanely good
@JustinMayfield11 ай бұрын
This was incredibly informative and well executed. Chapeau!
@FrogRolls11 ай бұрын
It would have been interesting to test ropes that had been saturated and then allowed to dry first, and use this as a control versus the rope that was left to dry in the video.
@tomgnyc11 ай бұрын
Water being squeezed out of the rope probably absorbs some of the energy (pumping loss), which would reduce the force somewhat.
@gavinnewall17211 ай бұрын
I have been wondering about this for such a long time. I'm so glad that this video went into so much detail!
@MrFrankieb111 ай бұрын
I really enjoyed these videos, great work and very appreciated.
@elremito11 ай бұрын
If I remember well, in an other video you said that a dirty rope would wear out faster. I was wondering if it was a good idea to machine wash a rope and if yes, how long would it take for it to dry enough for it to be safe? Would the water damage it even if it was not used while wet? Thanks for the science!
@sig_nessuno11 ай бұрын
I was thinking the same thing. Based on his previous video with a dirty rope, I would say that a washed rope is still better than one full of dirt, both for climing and for the lifespan of the rope itself. Now we also know that washing a rope doesn't make it new and perhaps weakens it a little, so it's better to change it after some years. Consider also that he's making his experiments on multiple very hard falls, something quite unrealistic for the average climber (or at least for me).
@xp896910 ай бұрын
As long as you dry yer ropes out properly before using them getting a rope wet won't damage it and washing them with a mild detergent in the washing machine on th gentle cycle (or in a tub by hand) is th normal way to clean dirty ropes, when you dry them you want to leave them laid out with no knots and no tangled sections that create sharp angles in the rope because ropes have "memory" and sharp angles while drying them out can damage the internal fibers
@bmz110 ай бұрын
... and thank YOU for such great videos! Always a pleasure to watch and at the same time learng lot's of interesting stuff!
@Legion249411 ай бұрын
You really have a great way of simplfying these theoritical concepts! Awesome work, keep it up!
@AB-fh9zh11 ай бұрын
Some top level nerding out here, nice one!
@mpqrstv424211 ай бұрын
This goes beyond climbing content. These videos are fantastic science education!
@x_isaka11 ай бұрын
6:09 lmfao that lady is doing 50/50 on your questions.😂😂
@MEECAHjh11 ай бұрын
loving this content
@HardIsEasy11 ай бұрын
Aaah nice, thanks for support and the message :)
@freescape08Ай бұрын
1:51 That was Epic! I've never seen such pride in a belly-flop!
@chw011210 ай бұрын
Another great deep dive. Thank you! I really don't see why anyone would buy a non-treated rope that they will use outside. How many places can you climb outside where there is no risk of dirt, abrasion or water? Dry treated ropes help in all of these situations, and not just safety but lifetime of your rope.
@nanuri88446 ай бұрын
I have a theory about the rope that has dried overnight (14:50). In tap water, as well as in rainwater, salts are always dissolved. These salts enter the rope with the water, and when the rope dries, they remain between the nylon fibers, increasing friction there. Another experiment would have been interesting: to test the experiment with seawater/saltwater. Once wet and once wet and dried. This way, a large amount of salt would remain in the rope.
@beansmalone130511 ай бұрын
Great job. You've really stepped up every aspect of your videos.
@nlrkk11 ай бұрын
Great video as usual! Thank you :) Are there any plans to create a video about how to safely clean a route and what to do if you cannot finish it? Essential skill for newbies like myself. I am always nervous when I need to do that. I usually go for a method when you need an extra quickdraw or sling and a locking carabiner. What method would you recommend?
@HardIsEasy11 ай бұрын
yeap all of those are on my todo list :D
@simonh389111 ай бұрын
Great video. Thank you!
@jorgenv11 ай бұрын
Excellent video as always
@HardIsEasy11 ай бұрын
Thank you so much!
@anorangewithadvil11 ай бұрын
Ty for all of the content you have been putting out. As always, I think it's top notch!
@freescape08Ай бұрын
As someone with some experience in 3d printing, i know how much water plastic can absorb from humidity, and im curious what happens if you dry the ropes fully, as in dehumidify the fibres themselves, and not just the water from between the fibres. (Also I'm not convinced that a rope would dry overnight without being in quite the warm draft)
@gabrielegiolo88611 ай бұрын
It would be vital to know after how many falls a wet rope breaks compared to a dry one!
@DiegoGonzalez-ei8qu11 ай бұрын
Awesome research and video
@jorgesc823411 ай бұрын
9:27 is amazing! Everyone is looking with awe. That's what science (should) be about, and same with climbing. Honestly, this is so inspiring. I just had to teach physics today and this is the vibe I try to share. Science is interesting and fun! And of course climbing as well!
@TheMegaMrMe11 ай бұрын
Amazing video as always. So with all of this new information, do you still wash ropes? What about ones with dry treatment? Does the interval change?
@HardIsEasy11 ай бұрын
Thanks, Yes water is not a problem, heavy loading under water might be :D So washing is no problem - do it on gentle program
@thejazzyelm11 ай бұрын
Great video, super informative and well produced! Thank you! As others have mentioned, I would be intrested in the effect of washing on rope longevity. I have previously thought washing is actually good for the rope (since it removes small particles like sand and dirt that caus micro friction within the rope) - but how often can you wash it before it might potentially have an negative effect on the rope's structural integrity?
@henkfermeul372011 ай бұрын
Again, a very enjoyable nerdy video ! Thanx for your work !
@davidtrigili942311 ай бұрын
Increíble trabajo de producción y documentación 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
@MrBerry140410 ай бұрын
I really love those physics videos about what will change in certain conditions with your equipment. It really forms you to have more trust in it! Btw. maybe you have the time in the future for a video idea. It's about all the differnt manufactures giving you special carabiners for their belay devices, rather than just features the biner must have. Would be nice for you to have closer look what the fuse is all about ☺
@konel839 ай бұрын
Hi Hard Is Easy :) I love your content, I'm waiting for next one episode :)
@Rlaay11 ай бұрын
High quality content, as always.
@Macialao11 ай бұрын
2:09 Hey, little info from puritian chemist. What you showed is single mer, which is a part of many (poly) mers. You can synthesize polymer by reaction between monomers, which are single molecules. (For Nylon 6 it is caprolactam it polymerizes in ring opening reaction)
@gergopokol767811 ай бұрын
Please, please, share the error bars!!! It is crazy that you do all the work with statistics and then do not claim the glory! ... Great content, btw!
@matthieu794311 ай бұрын
Very interesting video !! Thank you for your amazing content !!
@jskemp411 ай бұрын
I’m loving your content so much lately!!! It’s always so well made and I learn something every time :) Sounds like can’t use the “it’s raining” excuse anymore 😂
@zigajelavic143711 ай бұрын
Please keep it up, it’s super informative and inspiring! Thank u! 😁
@CuriousGeorge160311 ай бұрын
Sorry, that i took two days to klick. I love your stuff! Keep up the great work❤
@konkers53846 ай бұрын
For the permanent damage test, I would have also liked to see the results of the dry rope the next day also, to compare if the dry rope would have shown any wear at all from the tests or account for any unseen variance
@KOKO-uu7ydАй бұрын
That belly flop had me CRINGING, like a guy watching another guy get hit with a little league bat 😂
@oldclimber550211 ай бұрын
Lovely and nerdy 😂 thank you Hard is Easy and Mammut
@user-le1ts4gp7e10 ай бұрын
@14:15 I'm hoping you're not misreading the graph, I'm no expert at anything. However if you're only looking at the peaks doesn't that only represent the downforce? When you're considering the bounce what you're looking for is the upforce, while that might not be measurable with your setup you can simply look at the trough and determine how much time between rises occurred. Doing a napkin calculation looking at the graph it seems to indicate that you had twice the amount of time in between bounces. Which is actually greater than the 64% increase of bounce that you calculated. From 0.35 seconds to 0.7 seconds.
@lukasskymuh591011 ай бұрын
One mistery we could use some science: what makes your hands turn black wen belaying older ropes? Is it dirt? Is it wear of your gear? I also heard the theory that it is rope internal lubricant.
@alexl6611 ай бұрын
So how does the advantage of washing your classic rope weigh against the loss of elasticity even after drying it?
@adrianr544211 ай бұрын
Great video!
@FF2W9 ай бұрын
One question that remains: Does a rope wear down if you wash it with water (when its dirty) due to the chemical interaction of fillaments with the water molekules? A test setup could look like: take new rope (untreated - no dry rope), soak in water, let it dry, test Underlaying question would be: better keep your rope a bit dirty but no water(-damage), or clean it from time to time
@BigBigFlo11 ай бұрын
Adriana seems to be such a cool person!! Great video, thank you for your work Ben!
@Darick198811 ай бұрын
thanks for sharing all this knowledge.
@userunknown27719 ай бұрын
Love your videos! A comparision on what Belay-Device you prefer on what kind of climb for what kind of person would be a great inside for me as a beginner climber
11 ай бұрын
Thank you again and again for a great informative movie
@colasdavid95311 ай бұрын
New drinking game idea : watch a hardiseasy video and have a shot everytime Ben says "however" ! :) Great video !
@theK17411 ай бұрын
so much love this videos and how quality of your presentation consistently increases. keep up the good work. Here's a twist on this topic: washing the ropes with detergents and their impact on longevity and performance ;)
@RachelMcDonald-uh2srКүн бұрын
This makes me wonder how canyoning would impact ropes? Ive definitely had ropes soaked for over 40mins but I would imagine abseiling wouldn't have the same impacts as climbing, would be super interesting
@doughobbs770611 ай бұрын
Intersting stuff, Scottish winter climbing is certainly one area where you are cimbing with fully saturated ropes (granted many people use icelines)
@gustcevallos11 ай бұрын
Great explication this is science in real expression (yes you could have more vars and test but make this help a lot) thanks!!! 🔥🔥
@cmrosell11 ай бұрын
Great video. Does the rope getting water logged make it have permanent damage, or waterlogged and an impact is what creates the permanent damage? I ask because of the washing ropes.
@falkrybak365411 ай бұрын
Very interesting test !
@KriegerdammerungАй бұрын
Mountain Jesus got us covered! We must thank him tenfold!!!
@andymateos11 ай бұрын
Nice video! All the nerd bits and the science behind everything (from chemistry, to textile, to testing machines, to force graphs) is just awesome. It is very interesting to see that not only the intensity of the rebound is higher in wet ropes, but the frequency of it falls a bit too. Is this change significant? Is this because the wet rope becomes larger and it just change the frequency as it is for a pendulum? I would love to have the data base to play and run some models. Thank you again for the super high quality video ✨
@EduardoWalterdaSilva11 ай бұрын
I love your videos! Thank you for one more video!
@mirkodf216211 ай бұрын
Thanks Ben, amazing video that goes into the atomic structure of things! Mammut is super knowledgeable Company that does tye utmost for the sake of technological clarity; this is one of the reasons why a MAMMUT rope who I own makes me very comfortable once climbing! Thanks Mirko
@ShurikB9311 ай бұрын
@14:56 I think it is more accurate to compare to the 6th fall of the dry rope and not the first. It is clear that the 6th fall of the wet (now dry) rope is lower than the 5th dry
@x_isaka11 ай бұрын
Will 12kn carabiner brreak if wet rope force exceeds 13 kn in falls?
@tiboregresi929511 ай бұрын
Great video !! Thanks a lot!!
@charanvantijn54111 ай бұрын
Thanks. Very interesting. Question: How long does it take for a treated rope to dry back to its original performance?
@HardIsEasy11 ай бұрын
Drying is one thing which you can feel your self when the rope is dry... How long does it take to fully recover is a bit of a mystery that I want to test in the future =]
@daviddelille14437 ай бұрын
Here's my questions for a follow-up experiment: 1) Does soaking a rope have an impact on performance, if the rope is allowed to dry fully before use? (In other words: can you avoid damage to your wet rope by drying it, or is it damaged regardless?) 2) How long does it take to fully dry a rope? I imagined you could test this by taking sets of 2 identical samples, saturating one of them and then letting them dry fully, before doing the comparative drop test. I have a suspicion that dry-treated rope might take longer to fully dry if the treatment prevented the water from escaping. Perhaps there's even a nice relationship between time needed to saturate and time needed to dry.
@HardIsEasy6 ай бұрын
1 yes once dry it performs like... Dry ;) 2 until it's dry? :)
@daviddelille14436 ай бұрын
@@HardIsEasy Thanks for the response. It's good to know that getting your rope wet doesn't cause permanent damage. My second question was more around whether dry treatment could somehow trap water inside, making it take longer to dry than normal rope.
@nothf11 ай бұрын
Great video, but as a chemist the single bonds to oxygen in some of the drawings of the amide carbonyl make me real sad. 🤣
@simonebei549211 ай бұрын
👏👏👏 great video
@100.-.clim_bing10 ай бұрын
Hello @HardIsEasy! How do kN compare to G-forces, and/or do they compare at all? Absolutely great video(s), and to all the haters/complainers: try to make this high-quality and free content yourself. ❤🧡💛💚💙💜