Wandering into an unguarded CANDU reactor in Chalk River, a mild-mannered spider drinks the heavy water and becomes irradiated. Her new-found super power is the ability to make a perfeectly symmetric web, which she does in the shape of a hexagon, mounted parallel to the ground (as shown).
Upon completion, the web is unstretched and does not sag vertically.
After the spider (mass m) crawls to the centre of the hexagon for a rest, the centre sags by h=1cm.
If each strand of web is a spring with constant k=1000 N/m and length l=10 cm in the unstretched state, find the mass of the spider.
(Answer in grams)
(a) 0.188
(b) 0.377
(c) 1.13
(d) 2.26
(e) 3.39
