Nice. And I guess the reason it doesn’t work in tug o war is that there isn’t one side that is fixed; instead both sides are exerting roughly constant force and so it continues to cancel out?
That depends on how exactly the experiment was carried out. If both sides reoriented to pull at an angle, then you are not actually pulling sideways anymore, there’s just 3 sides now.
Nice. And I guess the reason it doesn’t work in tug o war is that there isn’t one side that is fixed; instead both sides are exerting roughly constant force and so it continues to cancel out?
That depends on how exactly the experiment was carried out. If both sides reoriented to pull at an angle, then you are not actually pulling sideways anymore, there’s just 3 sides now.