The other two people on my branch were Mark and Shireen. Mark is approximately 67 kg and was about 1.4 meters off the ground so his potential energy was 919.24 J. Shireen is approximately 45.5 kg and was about 1.55 so her potential energy was about 691.15 J. I am about 50 kg and about 1.7 meters off the ground so my potential energy was about 833 J.
The only problem with this situation is that out of the three I was probably the least agile/athletically talented. After the picture was taken, I was sort of stuck in the tree like a cat. It was really sad.
However, I was able to get off of the tree by standing and then sitting on Mark's shoulders. By getting onto his shoulders, I lowered my potential energy to about 490 J.
Of course, he thought it would be funny if he started spinning while I was still sitting on his shoulders. The spinning added kinetic energy to the system (I don't know his velocity so I cannot calculate the kinetic or total energy).
This picture is after Mark stopped spinning. As you can see, I was crouching and didn't really want to be there.
While all of this energy was going on, our awesome chaperone lay happily in the warm sun, absorbing another sort of energy :)
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