Bender

It depends on the college. If it is a combustion engine, a master thesis is probably most suited. One student or a team of students could make calculations, check the design, do simulations, strength and heat analysis...Of course, if a bad student is assigned to your project, you won't get anything useful. With any luck, there is an expert at a college near you who wants to take it up. NDA's are common for this (at least in some places) I would advice you to call an engineering college near you and ask. Be prepared to meet with the students regularly.

Well, if you rotate a laser beam in space fast enough, the individual photons could get separated more than 180° and aliasing will occur and the laser "spot" would actually slow down and reverse direction. So at a given distance, the maximum theoretical speed would depend on the time between consecutive photons. Still, 100 billion light year in a fraction of a second is pretty neat. I think something similar could happen for a shadow if the object causing the shadow is small enough and moves fast enough to pass between consecutive photons without blocking them.

It is possible to exclude at least some virtual particles by placing two conductive plates very close together.

First place to start is a patent search: if someone else has had the idea before, you don't need to bother trying to protect your intellectual property. If it is truly a worthwhile and innovative idea and you want to make money with it, don't show the design to anyone without having them sign a non-disclosure agreement. Patents are very expensive, so I wouldn't patent it unless you have a working prototype, but that's your choice, obviously. First thing I would do is find an engineer you can trust (have him/her sign an NDA, just to be sure), and have him check it for obvious mistakes. For a thorough study, you'll need to pay, and it won't be cheap. No offence, but I think it unlikely that a mechanic and a designer can pull off an optimal design, and if it isn't optimal, I highly doubt it will be an improvement over current technology. Without proper calculations/simulations, it might be hard to even guess things like efficiency and power output. Alternatively, you could contact a mechanical engineering college and ask whether they are interested in doing a master thesis or student project. Some schools will agree with an NDA and it is rather cheap. The output is not guaranteed, but as a feasibility study, it can be quite valuable. You could also ask a vocational school to build a prototype if you lack the machines yourself. Unless you just want to improve technology and are not interested in marketing it yourself. In that case just show it here

In that case, "anybody who has ever used a hosepipe" is wrong. None of the individual water droplets move faster than light, but the succession of water drops hitting the moon will be faster than light. When the water jet is observed on a given moment, it is curved, but none of the individual water droplets move along this curve; they all move in a different direction.

It is definitely not going to heat up your genitals as much as taking a warm bad, doing sports, wearing tight shorts or having a laptop on your lap.

I was indeed thinking of a sphere and hastily assumed it would be similar for a disk. Apparently it isn't. The gravity inside the ring would still be reduced, and in the particles might even be drawn towards the closest part of the ring rather than the cog.

The mass would indeed slow the rate of expansion, but not evenly across the radius, because each part is only affected by the gravity of the mass closer to the cog.

Here is a nice video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU5XkhUGzBs

I cannot think of a way the circular symmetry could be broken, unless the wheel itself starts asymmetrical.

I interpreted this as there not being sources of gravity outside the wheel. Since it was suggested the wheel would spiral, I elaborated how it could, and where that idea might come from.

Not after the magnets are switched off. The magnets don't really matter in this thought experiment.

Let's estimate the escape velocity [math]v_e = \sqrt{\frac{2GM}{r}}[/math] Let's say the mass is 10 kg and the radius is 10 cm, then the escape velocity is [math]10^{-4}[/math] m/s, which for that radius is [math]2 \cdot 10^{-4}[/math] revolutions/s or roughly one revolution every hour. (I must admit that this is higher than what my intuition told me) Several orders of magnitude faster than that, and the effect of gravity is hardly going to be noticeable. (until you get to relativistic speeds perhaps) This calculation holds for the parts at the outer rim. For those closer to the centre, it depends on the mass distribution. If most of the mass is concentrated in the hub, and the speed is below the escape velocity, you will indeed get a spiral, somewhat like the milky way.

Not at normal speeds and masses typically associated with magnets and lego. The spokes will remain straight (at least within realistic measurement accuracy), unless they are moving very, very, very slowly.

If it turns so slow that the parts approach the escape velocity of the combined mass of the parts closer to the centre, they would start spiralling noticeably. If below the escape velocity, they'll approach a circular orbit.

The spokes will seemingly rotate in the same direction, but slow down. They will never stop, but will never quite reach a 90° rotation with respect to the position they had when the magnets were released. The spokes will continue to elongate at a slightly increasing rate [math]r=\sqrt{r_0^2+(\omega t r_0)^2}[/math] (not sure what this has to do with relativity, though)

What is the wave thing an example of? The video doesn't even show a device as described that does need a human hand. The video shows some irregular floaters attached to a lever that is not shown. Some undefined blocks are displaced, which is clearly a mechanism that can only be repeated a handful of times at most. Where do you get the seemingly arbitrary value of 200000 dollar? Do you have a detailed design? I certainly wouldn't spend that much money (or any money, really) on a device that contradicts the first law of thermodynamics.

Math. Because a sine wave is the solution to this, very common differential equation, which describes a surprisingly large amount of physical phenomena: [math] \frac{d^2u}{dx^2} + \omega^2u = 0. [/math] Other common equations result in exponential functions or a combination of both, which can also be found everywhere.

short answer: all of it is energy

A wave is dynamic. It attempts to restore the pressure difference by moving water from high pressure to low pressure. If the pressure below the little waterhills was higher than around it, water would be moving. There could be deviations close to the affected surface, but not deeper underneath.

The second isn't. You don't take the relative acceleration of the particle with respect to the wedge into account. On closer inspection, the question seems to be missing information about the friction between wedge and particle. Ar you supposed to assume it is 0 then?

Intrigued, I thought about it some more. The pressure in the liquid depends only on its depth and the capillary action above it has no influence. That means that two identical stacks of cubes would float at the same level, because the pressure at the bottom of the stacks has to be identical, whether or not they are in a capillary.

Sometimes actually calculating it might be difficult, but remember that conservation of energy is never violated. For the example of the rotating ring, it is simple: since there is no change in potential energy between two positions, there are no net forces on the ring, and therefore it will not move.

1) draw a free body diagram for both the wedge and the particle 2) write down the equations for X and Y for wedge and particle, now you have four equations with four unknowns (S, R, a_wedge and a_particle) 3) solve

This guy is probably just trolling but let's try a proof by contradiction, just in case: According stupidnewton, the force exerted on the elephant and the force exerted on the mouse are nearly identical, since the sum of either masses with the mass of earth does not measurably diverge from the mass of earth. So either there is no difference between a mouse sitting on you or an elephant sitting on you, or stupidnewton is wrong. (in fact, according to stupidnewton, there is hardly a difference between a mouse sitting on you and the entire moon sitting on you)