Rappelling

As shown in the figure, Cindy is rappelling down a cliff. Her downward motion is at constant speed, and she takes little hops off of the cliff, as shown by the dashed line. Analyze the forces in which she participates at a moment when her feet are on the cliff and she is pushing off.

force acting on Cindy	force related to it by Newton's third law
planet earth's downward gravitational force on Cindy	Cindy's upward gravitational force on earth
ropes upward frictional force on Cindy (her hand)	Cindy's downward frictional force on the rope
cliff's rightward normal force on Cindy	Cindy's leftward normal force on the cliff

The two vertical forces cancel, which is what they should be doing if she is to go down at a constant rate. The only horizontal force on her is the cliff's force, which is not canceled by any other force, and which therefore will produce an acceleration of Cindy to the right. This makes sense, since she is hopping off. (This solution is a little oversimplified, because the rope is slanting, so it also applies a small leftward force to Cindy. As she flies out to the right, the slant of the rope will increase, pulling her back in more strongly.)