When Does a Sliding Ladder Lose Contact With the Wall?

This started as a calculus problem. The question said that the top of a ladder moves down with some constant speed and asks about the speed of the contact point with the floor. <a href="https://youtu.be/BmkLXf08Qr4" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">You can see my solution here</a>. Of course my initial thought was not about derivatives of x and y, but instead I thought: I don’t think the top of a sliding ladder would move down with a constant speed. You know what comes next, right? Yes, a physics problem. In fact, if you have a ladder on a frictionless floor leaning up against a frictionless wall (which is NOT OSHA approved), the ladder will actually slide down in such a way that it will lose contact with the wall at some point. So, let’s find the angle at which this happens — using physics. It’s going to be fun. <a href="https://rjallain.medium.com/when-does-a-sliding-ladder-lose-contact-with-the-wall-0f2346548b76">Visit Now</a>