by Isabel Hwang
11th Grade at St. Andrew’s School (Middletown, DE)
Third Place
Everyone knows the story of Rapunzel, but no one gives her sister, Jane, the credit she deserves. In a tower not too far away from her sister’s, Jane, with her jaggedly, spotty hair and scratchy singing voice, didn’t attract a dashing prince.
Since Rapunzel’s escape, the witch seemed to have forgotten all about Jane. Jane didn’t mind the witch’s absence, but she was growing concerned about her diminishing food supply. She harbored three dozen eggs, but that wouldn’t last very long. Abandoned and hungry, Jane scrunched her nose, squinted her eyes, and let the waterworks flow. She watched mice run up and down an ancient oak tree grounded in between her and Rapunzel’s towers. She cried harder, wailing in envy of their freedom.
After the last tear stained her face, Jane decided that she needed--not wanted--to leave her tower. As she stared at Rapunzel’s empty tower, an idea hit her. What if she bedazzled herself and attracted a young prince to save her?
No, no, no, that wouldn’t work. Who knew when the next young, dashing prince might come along? Another idea came to her: what if she free fell out of her window in a padded suit that would cushion her fall? If there was enough material, the suit could neutralize gravity’s force against the ground’s normal force. But if she used herself as the subject, there could only be one test run. She needed to experiment with something as fragile as human bones, if not more so, to assure success. A light bulb dinged when she saw her pile of raw eggs. If these fragile eggs could survive her experiment, so could she!
Jane’s eyes darted to her thick, albeit short, curtains, and she promptly designed a padded suit for a single egg. Jane wanted the egg to fall proportionately to her future fall: she stood at 160 cm while the tower stood at 100 meters, a 1.6100proportion. The egg’s stood stoutly at 5cm, and she found the corresponding height for the egg to be 3.125 meters, truncated to the hundredth place, also a 1.6100proportion. When Jane dropped the egg, the suit failed to keep it safe; runny yolk stained the ground.
To distract herself from her failed experiment, Jane sat down at her spinning wheel. As she watched the wheel spin around its axle, she wondered: what if she could construct this wheel into a pulley system to descend to the ground? Now, this plan seemed more reasonable than attracting a random prince or flying down in a padded suit. She realized her bulky curtains could be tied together like a tire to counter her weight.
However, she needed to identify her weight to adjust the tire-curtain. Without a scale of any sort, Jane needed to use the principle of displacement, or Archimedes’ principle, to measure her weight. She filled up her large bathtub and marked evenly spaced tick marks along the side of the tub, starting from the very bottom. The current water level, V i, read as “50cm”. She then fully entered the tub, reached out her hand and approximately marked the water level with her in it, V f, as “75cm.” Jane planned on taking the difference between the two water levels to deduce her own weight:VfHbtWbt-ViHbtWbt1.01.
The result came out to be 60700g or 60.7kg. There was a high chance of systematic error, but Jane decided that ten trials would be enough to find a comfortable range.
After such trials Jane averaged her weight to be 60kg, so she planned to make the weight at the other end of the automatic belaying system slightly lighter to travel downward at a very slow rate.
Taking apart her spinning wheel, she examined it to ensure that it was free of dents. Looking outside her window and noting a big, sturdy hook, she knew she could thread the wheel to create a smooth belaying system. But there was one component missing. Clearly, the witch had thought of this before and left no rope-like material for Jane. Jane lied in her bed, thinking and pulling her sheets up to her chin to protect herself from the drafty air. Tugging at the sheets, she thought, this could work! She pulled out all fabric she could find: her bedsheets, dresses, tablecloths, and even the same curtain from the tire curtain. Jane triple knotted their ends’ together, creating a long chain of fabric approximately 110m long. She made two more such chains and braided the three, bulky strands together for maximum safety.
One last thing– Jane couldn’t simply hold onto the fabric cable. She needed a full, secure harness to ensure she made it out of the tower alive. Looking back at her reliable curtains, Jane ripped off a long strip about 30cm wide. She looped the strip around her right thigh, stomach, and her left thigh, then repeated these motions twice more. Although it resembled a cast more than a harness, it was secure, which was all that mattered.
After days of preparation, Jane stood at her window and checked her equipment. It was now or never.
She triple knotted the tire-curtain to one end of the cable-fabric and wrapped the other end around herself before jamming a heavy metal water bottle into her pocket. The extra weight prevented her from accidentally getting pulled out of the tower and falling to her doom. She carefully draped the triple-knotted tire curtain over the wheel and lowered it 100-meters to the base of her tower. Planting herself firmly on the ground, Jane discarded the water bottle and immediately felt the tension from the pulley system. Jane darted her eyes around the room to take in her home for the last two decades. As she took a deep breath, she prepared to belay down. She jumped.
Jane dangled from the hook, immobile. She didn’t descend as planned. What had gone wrong? She checked her harness and the cable– both functioned perfectly well. Did she gain extra weight? A plethora of questions flooded Jane’s mind when she heard a squeak.
Looking down, she found a family of plump mice comfortably resting on the tire-curtain. They added extra weight onto the other end of the cable which prevented her descending. The once 55kg tirecurtain now conspicuously increased its mass to more than 60 kg. This variable troubled her, as she never fathomed this to happen. Despite the new challenge, Jane collected herself, as all engineers do. She hoisted herself back into her tower and began thinking.
Jane first tried to scare the mice away. She yodeled and screeched. After all, her scratchy singing voice had frightened away princes. But nothing worked. These creatures preferred the comfort of the tirecurtain even if they had to endure her terrible voice. Realizing the need for a new solution, Jane knew she had to rely on her engineering instincts.
Jane needed to make herself heavier to lift both the tire-curtain and the mouse family. However, if she made herself too heavy and the mice jumped off of the tire-curtain, Jane would crash to her doom. She, instead, distributed the weight so she could drop it according to the situation. Darting back to her bathtub, Jane used the principle of displacement to weigh the metal water bottle she previously had. When the bottle was filled to the brim, it approximately weighed 6kg. Now weighing 66kg against a 55kg weight with a roughly 5kg rodent family, Jane stood at her window again and took a deep breath. She jumped.
Jane began descending at her ideal speed, if not just a bit slower. She was comfortably enjoying the ride when, suddenly, a few mice jumped off of her counterweight. Jane started accelerating much faster, but because she anticipated this variable, she quickly began draining her water bottle. She squeezed the harness tightly and closed her eyes to keep calm. Jane reached a slow velocity, then suddenly, the rest of the mice jumped off. Jane began accelerating faster again, as a 63kg weight against a 55kg one. Jane threw her water bottle in mid-air and finally reached a safe, slow velocity. She closed her eyes and didn’t open them again until she felt the grass underneath her bare feet. Jane beamed from pure joy, ready to tackle the outside world.
With the utmost care, Jane carefully unstrapped herself and sprinted out of the way before the counterweight of the tire curtain landed with a thud. Looking back at her previous unsuccessful plans to seduce a prince and jump from a window in a padded suit, she understood that engineering a successful project does not happen overnight. Yes, Rapunzel got out the easy way, but Jane loved knowing that she earned her freedom without relying on a man to save her. All she needed was her tenacious spirit and engineering principles.
Annotated Bibliography
Archimedes' principle
Britannica, T. E. (2018, December 05). Retrieved January 12, 2019
Britannica’s resource explains Archimedes’ principle, also known as the principle of displacement.
How to Check Your Weight Without a Scale
(2010, November 01). Retrieved January 12, 2019, from
The online website, EHow, offers a method to measure one’s weight without a scale. Using a bathtub, the article offers step by step directions to transition the displacement to grams.
Engineering: Simple Machines - Lesson
(2018, March 20). Retrieved January 12, 2019, from
This resource regarding engineering demonstrates six types of simple machinery. The source offers paragraph-long explanations for each kind as well as everyday examples.