Lean on Me – Can Bill Withers stay true to his word?

Matthew PERKINS, Jake Morris

Abstract


This paper aims to calculate the amount of force that Bill Withers would have to exert in order to support the people that have listened, or are listening to his song, Lean on Me, based upon the analytics from YouTube and Spotify. This will consider two scenarios: one in which everyone who has ever listened to his song leaned at him all at once, and another where all the concurrent listeners are leaning on him at any given time. These will be modelled through the use of component forces. The force that Bill Withers would have to exert when everyone leans on him at once, is calculated to equal 2.27x1010 N. The total force for the listeners at any given time is determined to be 19560 N.


Keywords


Music; Physics; Mechanics; Material properties; Bill Withers; Lean on Me

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References


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