JohnF

I watched a TV programme, many years ago, about this guy that built two suits, one for man and one for a woman. These suits were designed to fit in such a way that a couple could have sex remotely from each other and it was supposed to feel right. You can imagine how specific male and female parts of the suits worked I'm sure. But considering how the sex industry works I would expect they will be the first to introduce some interesting forms of virtual reality to the market.

That's it Thanks. I might buy one for my son now I know what it's called. So it's air molecules bouncing off, not ions.

Apparently, LaserQuest is very exhausting. I've not tried it but my wife has. From the way she described it you tend to forget that it's just a game and it becomes a very real experience. I suppose this will be different from one person to another though. Perhaps when you play a game like that it's the moment that counts rather than the scenery. You are about to go around a corner and you can hear someone; are they going to shoot you; your adrenalin levels are going up, fast. The addition of scenery as you described might be better suited to a non-action game where exploration was the object rather than killing, etc. I would think that the introduction of 3D goggles in something like LaserQuest would be a step in the direction you want though.

I used to have a glass ball that had a partial vacuum in it. Inside the ball on a needle was a rotating arrangement of vanes. One side of each vane was painted white and the other side painted black. When sunlight shone on it these vanes rotated, away from the black side. I think it had something to do with ions being repelled from the black side with more energy than those repelled from the white side. This caused more oposite force to the black side of the vanes.

http://www.laserquest.com/pages/about/LQ_About.html or in the UK... http://www.laserquest.co.uk/index.asp

Would the heat from the lamp on the tin have an effect?

This sounds like LaserQuest or Paintball with 3D goggles. Not sure I understand why you need the VR Suit though. Wouldn't the gloves and perhaps sensors on your boots be enough?

We arrived at different figures because... Your first calculation is for the volume of the stone whereas it should be for the surface area. 12 x 64 = 768 sq feet 768 x 144 = 110592 sq inches 14 x 64 = 896 sq feet 896 x 144 = 129024 sq inches I chose the surface area that would translate to the most weight per square inch to give a wost case. The next part you will need to decide, as from what I read the 33 foot stones weighed 300 tons but the 64 foot stone weighed 800 tons. But at 12 x 14 x 64 giving 10752 cubic feet At 800 'short tons' that gives 1600000 lbs I'm in the UK and a ton here is 2240 lbs (a long ton) So each cubic foot weighs in at almost 149lbs which comes much closer to what you say the density of limestones is. This would indicate your original estimates on size and weight are correct. So that leaves us with 1600000 lbs spread over 110592 square inches giving almost 14.5 lbs per square inch. This was a bit of a cheat on my side though because what I am suggesting is that they turned the rectangular profile of the stone in to a more rounded one, probably an elipse. Any wood that is attached won't cover the whole surface area. The wood needs to be fixed so that each layer covers less surface area than the one before. The following will give you a guide as to how the weight distribution changes... 12 x 64 = 14.5 lbs per square inch 8 x 64 = 21.7 lbs per square inch 3 x 64 = 58 lbs per square inch ...this is static weight though. As soon as you start rolling the stone other stresses will become apparant and also the downward force on the wood will reduce. If this method was used then I would expect they chose to make an elipse of the profile rather than a circle. This would give them an advantage when pushing it up an incline. As long as the incline was not too steep and the elipse was the right shape then they would have 2 rest areas per rotation where the stone will not roll back. The method also allows for ropes fixed at the top of an incline to run down the hill, under the stone, over it and back up the hill. This gives them the opportunity to pull from above and push from below.

YT2095: That was bugging me too. Your balancing penny analogy is a good explanation though. I did come up with another idea on that. Could the Earth's magnetic field influence the direction of positive and negative ions? Perhaps just a little at first, but enough to always start the 'penny tipping' in the same direction. What do you think? Before that I considered a magnet at the T junction. But then he wanted his students to explain what was going on and he hadn't mentioned a magnet; that would have been cheating. Then I wondered if the turbulance at the T junction could create a magnetic field that would aid seperation.

So if it's a static charge then could this be what happens... As the water passes through the tube it becomes charged by friction. Some of it gets a positive charge and some a negative charge. Could this effect which path it takes at the T junction? I assume this has something to do with ions. As the water flows in to the collectors you have one collector with mostly positively charged water and the other with mostly negatively charged water. The connection by wire to opposite tunnels causes the water on one side to be attracted to the tunnel (sprays out) whilst on the other side it is repelled (squashed in). The charge in each collector increases until it can spark at which point the charge in both containers is insufficient to effect the water through the tunnel.

It was supposed to be a 'What If' scenario. The idea being that if you did separate the public and private rights it would not necessarily lead to people committing crimes in their own home. And as for rights being guaranteed, that's not really true. Any person or organisation that has the power to restrict your rights can do so if they choose. A piece of paper will not actually stop them. You have to understand what a right is in the first place; it's something that has been given to you. Rights don't exist naturally.

A consistent law that couldn't really be argued with would be that you had the right to manufacture, buy, sell and use drugs in private property but it would be illegal to transport drugs in a public place. No rights would be infringed then, as any rights you have in public have to be given by the public/government. Under such circumstances most people wouldn't be able to get hold of drugs without someone breaking the law.

The problem with rights is how they are interpreted by people. Suppose you had the right to do anything you wanted in the privacy of your own home. This would effectively allow you to kill somebody. Once you stepped out of your home though you could be imprisoned for the act. The public places are effectively owned by the government and just as you can choose what happens in your home the government can choose what happens in public. Being a murderer in public would be deemed illegal. You could stay in your home but that would then become your prison. So you could have the right to do whatever you wanted in your own home without causing people to start killing visitors. But this is where the law on drugs falls down. You would be allowed to use drugs in your own home but not in public or be in a public place whilst under the influence of drugs. This seems reasonable and protects the public from drug abuse and it's consequences. As it stands however just using the drugs in your own home is considered illegal; the law is no longer consistent. It should therefore follow that if you visited another country where the use of a drug was permitted and whilst there, you used it, the authorities at home should arrest you for the offence on your return; but they don't. When it comes to the motorbike example I gave before you have to remember that the road is owned by the government and as such they can dictate how it is used, unlike your home where for the most part you are free to do as you choose. But you can dictate how visitors to your home make use of it. There are no laws in the UK governing the use of motorbikes on private property; as far as I know.

That's OK Snail; that makes me a newbie, newbie. The problem I have is trying to describe something that I can barely visualise. But I just can't believe you didn't realise I was joking about the Australians

Don't forget that any wood that is attached would be in the form of planks probably. In that form it has very great compression strength unlike a log. Another way to look at it is that if the block of stone is 64 feet by 12 feet on one side then that gives you 110592 square inches. Now I have assumed the ton you are using is the one that weighs 2240 lbs. At 800 ton that's 1792000 lbs which is only 16 lbs per square inch.

You've hit the nail on the head for me there swansont, thanks. This is what I mean by another dimension. It would also mean that each atom accelerated through this dimension as a separate entity, but as a whole the total acceleration of all the atoms gives us the total gravity of the planet. I realize that within the other dimension things would be moving apart but does that necessarily mean they should move apart in space. You could also look at this as a negative acceleration but that would mean everything would have to stop eventually; so perhaps not. But if the acceleration did exist in this other dimension then, if I had the skills, I would start looking for a relationship between that, the expanding Universe and the effects of time dilation. Yes I was joking about the Australians falling off, everyone knows Australia is magnetic and they wear iron soled boots

It's just that in the video he specifically mentioned a glass pipe before the plastic ones. I figured this was significant otherwise why not just use plastic pipe throughout. Certainly interesting though.

Sorry agentchange. I figured the moderators would have spotted my comment and decided if it should be moved.

Is this caused by the water getting charged by friction as it flows through the pipes?

Riding a motorbike without a helmet feels great; it really does. It sounds better too. When I got my first motorbike it was allready a requirement in th UK to wear a helmet so I had very little opportunity to ride without one. Unlike drugs being illegal though I think that since the authorities give you the right to ride a motorbike on the public highways they can also choose how you exercise that right. A better comparison would be allowing you to ride a motorbike in the first place; which is a greater risk to your safety than driving a car. If however any medical treatment you received due to an injury caused by riding a motorbike was paid for by your insurance then your premium would reflect this and your choice of transport could not be considered a burden on society; helmet or no helmet.

Moving the large blocks: What about turning the square profile of the blocks in to a round one. By fixing lengths of wood along the sides of the block you can effectively turn them in to long tubes; or almost tubes. This would allow the blocks to be rolled from one location to another. This thread should be in Engineering.

Sorry, not at all. It was just an idea I had after looking at this thread. It's not unusual for me to say what I'm thinking without first thinking about it I did invent a neat device on another forum that way though; so sometimes it pays off. I have just read in another thread on here something about inertia and gravity.

I have no idea either. I just assumed that if the planet is accelerating to cause the effect of gravity then it couldn't be accelerating through normal space; the Australians would all fall off. So it must be accelerating through some other dimension.

No. But then what comes first, the idea or the proof? It's just an idea and how you view it is your choice. You could decide that the idea has no validity at all and ignore it. You could choose to think about it for a while and see if a mathamatical explanation can be created. Even if the math can be developed, it may not prove the idea anyway. But what you can't do is prove it is invalid just by asking "Could you back this idea up with some maths?" Why not discuss the implications/pitfalls of it? Anyway, it does seem to have got the thread back on topic

I appreciate that, hence the reason for the instant transport of the atomic clocks. It gives a measure of the difference without relying on observable phenomenon; theoretically. If it was just a quirk of observation then it seems to be as valuable as understanding the doppler effect with sound.