mooeypoo

Hey that's a really neat idea! I was thinking of something simliar - to divide the problem into two "systems", the inner one (mass exchange between the upper step and lower step) and then the movement down the stairs -- but this might be better, in a way. It won't represent the entire slinky, but it might be good enough to start. I'm going to think about it, and try to post a description of the system so maybe I can try (with help, hopefully) representing it mathematically.

No, it can't be, indefinite is indefinite. I suggest you go over our rules of conduct. Quickly.

You have a lot of flawed assumptions here (Einstein did not believe light is a 'thing of matter', light is 'thing of energy', if anything), and evolution has nothing to do with living off water and light, specifically if the life is inside the light.. so.. this entire assumption is very messy. On the other hand, as iNow said, there is some potential in this assumption - but I see it from a different angle - information. You could, theoretically, deliver information within light (or rather, more generally, an electromagnetic wave). That isn't biological life, and it isn't really "living" inside the light, but it can travel within the light wave. Think of a stream of information of AI program delivered from one place to another. That isn't living inside the light, but it's being delivered in it, and if we create an AI that is humanlike enough to be indistinguishable from human consciousness, we can discuss how life is delivered in a light wave. Light isn't made of matter, though, so there's not much biology to discuss there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gram Gram is a unit that describes mass. Empty space has no mass. Energy has no mass either. The use of the term in this context is meaningless.

Center of gravity ? you mean center of mass, I assume? Center of mass does not depend on having actual mass in there, it just defines the point which you would relate to as if all the mass is accumulated there, when you calculate its movement or what and how it affects other objects. For example, if you look at an L shaped object, the center of mass might be at the corner of the L, but towards the 'center' (not 'inside' the material).. that doesn't mean there's MASS there, it just means that when it rotates, or moves, it will go by its 'center' point. I don't understand the question. Curve of space inside the sphere? There's zero net gravity inside the sphere..

Not if they have nowhere to flow to.. if the windows are closed, the air is trapped. If the windows are open, the fly will be blown out.

The air is trapped in the car, it's moving along with it. On top of that, as I said before moment of inertia is dependent on mass. Air molecules have very little mass.

Can you hold her in your arms and give her a kiss? I guess distance is not that irrelevant, is it?

If you created a bubble in the center of the earth, (that has no matter in it, obviously), then you would theoretically have the same amount of mass all around you, and the forces of gravity will cancel out - you would, essentially, float.

This gets even better, what would happen if you stop your car suddenly? Would the fly stay in place, or maybe it would be thrown forward to splat on the front window? After all, your body would (which is why you should wear a seat belt). The answer has to do with moment of inertia which is dependent upon mass. [math]\text{Moment of Inertia I} = \int r^2 dm[/math] Where dm is a small unit of mass. The Kinetic energy of the object is dependent upon its moment of inertia, too, so the object will continue its motion relative to the moving/stopping environment in relation to how MASSIVE it is. Here's a nice visual experiment to show how different masses are affected: http://users.hubwest.com/hubert/mrscience/science18.html Your body's mass is large enough to get you to continue the motion of the car even if it stops rapidly. The fly's mass is tiny, so it would be barely affected. On top of that, the air in the car is standing still compared to the car itself. It's trapped in the "box" of the car and moves along with it. If you would open a window, allowing for the air to move *through* the car the fly would likely to be pushed backwards towards the rear window (or outside with the air flow). It's a neat way of looking at momentum and inertia, btw ~moo

You are wrong, and your sources are worthless because they're just sites someone posted stuff in. You are the one ignoring our points, not the other way around. If you take a look at the forum threads, you will see that we DO conduct quite interesting debates with people who offer all kinds of new theories. We do not make it our habit to participate in fruitless discussions, no matter how insistent the poster is. I recommend you go over the rules AGAIN. This thread is closed pending moderator review.

BAC, you're not in a mythology/crap forum, you came to a scienceforum, and as such, there are two things you need to remember: 1. We have rules. Read them. There's a largfe part about what is and isn't a theory, what is and isn't a valid link, and how to speak to other people. I suggest you go over them before you continue this conversation the way you have been in the past few posts. 2. You came to us, not the other way around. The burden of proof is on you. The current theories are proven by observation, prediction, mathematics and are supported by other interconnected physical theories. Can a new theory be found to be better than the existing ones? Of course. Will it be better? It must. For it to be better, though, it must be - at the very least - as good and as valid and as *proven* as the current one, plus the extra that would make it a BETTER theory we (and the scientific community as a whole) will accept. Trust me, as a physicist, there's nothing I would love more than a new groundbreaking theory that shatters what we know. It means that much more potential for research, grant money and *WORK* for me. A potential to discover stuff related to the new theory and a potential to win nobel prizes for following discoveries. I *want* new theories. But I am not going to just throw aside everything I know because you feel like you want to be a revolutionary. You need to work for your theory to be accepted. There's a reason resources are peer-reviewed, and yours aren't. I, too, can post a theory about the invisible pink unicorn and the color of their sneakers. I can make it very believable, too. I would even have a link or two. Would that make my invisible pink unicorns real? Hardly. You would require much more than that to accept my theory; don't be surprised we ask so much more from yours. ~moo

Where are they? the sites?

First off, I would appreciate a readable sentence. I am assuming you're asking what counts as valid sources; in this case, valid sources would be peer-reviewed sources. That's not asking for a lot, considering the counter threory this thread is attempting to disprove has quite a large number of them.

The gay acceptance specifically is less of a problem for this thread, I was just wondering specifically about raising the claim about "obvious" gay behaviour. That's not your claim, it's coke's claim, and I am wondering if he could explain how this relates to the matter of gays and social acceptance.

Oie, Oie. Sources, my dear friend, sources. You're saying quite a lot of claims that are proven otherwise in scientific publications (The "Big Bang" theory, for example, is well proven in both observation and predictions as well as in math). If you claim otherwise, you need to supply sources. References. Proof. Otherwise your "theory" is as good as any other unfounded hypothetical myth. ~moo

If Gays are suffering from social unacceptance (which I agree they do, some places more, some places less, but they do in general), and the discussion ends up talking about "obvious" gay behaviour, it sounds as if this is used as an excuse for why there is social unacceptance. I am not sure if that was the purpose of raising this issue, which is why I was wondering about it, but it seemed that way to me, so I am wondering if coke can, perhaps, explain the purpose of raising the issue in a thread about social accpetance, that's all.

I was just wondering if the way people acted ("obvious" thing) was an excuse of society's non-acceptance of gays. That's not a very good excuse.

It's also worth mentioning that the first source is from 1974 (Plasma Testosterone Levels in Homosexual Men) - The common psychological concepts about homosexuality went through EXTREME changes through the 1980s. That, by itself, is not to say that the source is unreliable, but it does shed some light about the common thought that was at the time - one that the psychological community ended up admitting as probably wrong. It's bigottry in all three cases, but your comparison is slightly lacking: being fat and drinking are two things that are usually considered as choices (whether being fat is a choice or not can be debatable, but that doesn't change the fact it's usually thought of as being a *changeable* 'property' of a person). Homosexuality is not, by most common thoughts of the day, a choice. Either nature or nurture, most psychologists and scientists agree it is not something you can just decide to change. Ignore, maybe. But not change. Just like you can't really change the color of your skin, you can't change your sexual orientation. If "making fun" of black people is racist and bigotted, so is "making fun" of homosexuals. I see no difference. "Obviously" Gay? Seeing as I am part of this community, I can tell you straight up (pun intended) that I have quite a lot of friends - male and female - whom you would *never* -- ever ever in your wildest dreams, and some do dream about it -- that they're gay or bisexual. I even know a transgendered whom you would seriously never know the difference until you look in her pants. "Obviously" is not a parameter. Is that how you define manly? That said, read my previous point. Maybe you should go out to more gay bars and see some of those "manly" gays for yourself, if you think personal incredulity is a valid argument. Again, read up. Personal incredulity is not a valid argument, coke. The fact you don't KNOW of any "manly" homosexuals (perhaps because most gay people don't wear their sexual preferences on their t-shirts and wave the pride-flag, and when they're not "obviously" gay you would never know. Ironic, eh?) does not mean those don't exist. Other than that, I must ask -- isn't this thread about social acceptance? What does this have to do with sexual acceptance?

Hey Tracker, Your post title is your solution.. look at certain inverse trigonometric functions whose derivatives fit this format, and you will get much closer to a solution.. you might have to use a u-substitution on top of the inverse-trig, but it's working. Take a look here, for starters: http://www.math.com/tables/integrals/tableof.htm Does that help?

What do you mean they were able to transcend time? And what do you mean they use this increase in knowledge to expand itself exponentially compared to us-- sorry, I lost, you, expand whatself? knowledge? It's a bit unclear, can you explain?

That's a very good point, but that does not mean we can't estimate or perform educated guesses (as long as we are aware that their value is no more and no less of an educated guess), and these *are* valuable. Our knowledge of the universe might be limited, but we do know and see how things operate and behave in it, and that allows us to estimate many hypothetical properties (including its hypothetical shape). Such estimations then allow us to go on with further theories and devise more ways to explore things we do - and don't - know. For that matter, if we go into a forest and see a stump of a tree and the rest of the tree lying on the ground next to it, we assume that the tree fell. Can we know for certain? No. But when we take into account everything we know about physics and the physical world, and trees, and the trees we did see fall, we can safely assume it did fall. For all intended purposes, the tree fell down, whether we saw it or not. That assumption allows us to continue on to more valuable assumptions or experiments that might show us more things that we wouldn't have otherwise explored. It's very wise to remember where the limits of our knowledge end, but that doesn't mean we can't still use assumptions and estimations for our beneft, we just need to remember that they're not as "valuable" as facts and observations. ~moo

I'd love to have help in formulating the answer and figuring out what comes where, but seriously, posting a one-liner links about forces - without even the shred of explanation on where and how it might be used in this formula I'm trying to get - is utterly unhelpful. The movement of the slinky is non linear, so it's hard, but that's why I was thinking lagrangians. I think my main problem here is that along with the movement I have a changing "mass" -- as the slinky "falls" from one step to the other, we're transferring its bulk from the top stair to the bottom stair, and I"m not entirely sure how to do that. I need to rummage through my notes from last semester - we learned something about changing mass but it was more with the relation of a rocket burning its fuel; I wonder if I can use that to the slinky too... then, perhaps integrating the dm/dt of the mass that is "falling" from the top stair in relationship to gravity (so I know how fast it takes to "finish" the movement) -- but anyone has any clue how do I represent the continued movement to the NEXT step? It doesn't just drop off from one step to another, it's supposed to have some momentum forwards that allows it to CONTINUE the movement.. Hm.

Okay, seriously, I'm asking about how to represent the movement of a slinky. Hooke's law is a used to see how much force a spring exherts on an object connected to it.. it's not the same.

Right. Now hwo do we represent this mathematically, is the big problem.