EULER's disc and persistent ROCKING PLATES. How does GRAVITY make them work ?

[Mike Smith Cosmos]

.... I just see it as a see saw Mike being honest - that's all it is I think, just a see saw with low vertical displacement for the oscillations and good transference of the momentum after the impacts due to the surfaces of the work top and the kettle being hard.

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Well I think you are right , in principle .

 

But all see saws , we , from childhood onward, probably take for granted, as to what makes them work .

 

We know it's gravity! But for it to be so exacting and balanced ! I can't see that it can hold that precision comming from way down ,so,so deep under the earth. ( with all its churning and spinning trillions of tons of molten magma) . I am imagining it somehow coming from a local component of gravity. In other words , any irregularities due to different rock type , density, distance ( thousands of miles ) are somehow blended to become a very reliable, homogeneous VALUE of FORCE .

 

I call to mind Richard Finemans lectures on metronomes running in sympathy and fish in great underwater beautiful swarms . What controlled the fish on the outside to swim in perfect harmony, with all the other fish . " Some overarching controlling force ? ". NO , he says ! Each fish has a simple instinct to swim near but not too close to its neighbouring fish only . Add this effect happening across the whole swarm , and you get those amazing swarms . ITS NEIGHBOURING FISH IS WHAT INFLUENCES. THE SWARM .

 

Is this what is happening with Eulers disk, my China plates, and your kettle . Could it be that the neighbouring surfaces and gravitational field is So ,So precise and homogeneous and orthogonal ( 90degrees in all three dimensions)? That the neighbouring idea is the controlling regulating, issue in the vaste ,unwieldy , force field of Gravity ( like the great swarm of fish ).

 

 

 

Mike

Edited June 1, 2017 by Mike Smith Cosmos

[DrP]

I think the fish are very different... as you pointed out they have a swarm mentality and instinct drives them to be both predictable yet unpredictable.

 

The Euler's disk, the see saw, a pendulum are all the same. It is predictable to the very last oscillation if you know the parameters of the set up. We can set a pendulum in motion and know that with a frictionless system we would have it running forever... with friction and air resistance the thing just swings for a long time before it's potential energy is slowly converted to heat, sound and kinetic energy of the air molecules around it until the systems come to rest... which it always will. If the systems starts vibrating again then it has received some external input of more energy from a vibration though the surface or something like that. It isn't a scientific mystery.

 

The mystery is how gravity actually works - we do not know that yet as far as I can tell. What we do know though is that the effects are measurable and reliably repeatable.

[Mike Smith Cosmos]

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............

 

The mystery is how gravity actually works - we do not know that yet as far as I can tell. What we do know though is that the effects are measurable and reliably repeatable.

Yes . But does that reliability come beaming up through the turbulent magma , the rotating rocks and variety of minerals that compose the earth ,hense fairly varied or is it a local effect , having a neighbouring effect .

 

In other words a football stadium full of spectators could send a message by a personal messenger to someone on the opposite side of the stadium . Or they could give the message to their immediate neighbour , who passes it on the the next neighbour , and on and on , until it reaches the other side of the stadium .

 

In the case of the arrival of the effect of gravity from deep below in the earth to your kettle , which way did the effect of gravity come ? From immediatly below your kettle , or from some form of message from thousands of miles below ?

 

Mike

[DrP]

You would probably know more than I about that as an ex physics teacher. I 'think' you can just think of it as an attraction between their centres of masses for the purpose of calculation (or maybe from surfaces, I can't remember - COM would make more sense to me). i.e. when the centre of mass of the earth is directly below the fulcrum in my kettle it will be balanced (except the slushing water will unbalance it and set it off). In reality I would assume an actual physical attraction of each atom to every other atom based on the know equations relating masses and distances and constants to the force experienced. I assume this averages out enough for us being to be able to use c of m of objects for purposes of distance measurements between them and stuff when calculating the attraction or turning moments.

[Mike Smith Cosmos]

You would probably know more than I about that as an ex physics teacher. I 'think' you can just think of it as an attraction between their centres of masses for the purpose of calculation (or maybe from surfaces, I can't remember - COM would make more sense to me). i.e. when the centre of mass of the earth is directly below the fulcrum in my kettle it will be balanced (except the slushing water will unbalance it and set it off). In reality I would assume an actual physical attraction of each atom to every other atom based on the know equations relating masses and distances and constants to the force experienced. I assume this averages out enough for us being to be able to use c of m of objects for purposes of distance measurements between them and stuff when calculating the attraction or turning moments.

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The trouble with going to the centre of mass of the earth , then you are talking about a long way down , some thousands of miles . The centre of mass of the kettle or plate is fairly short distance . That's why I wondered if the 'focus of gravitational action' ( pardon , if that's not a correct expression of gravitational action ) That the reaction or interaction , was in fact nearer to our devices ( plate, kettle or Eulers Disc) , seeing as we experience such precision.

 

OTHERWISE - That's like having a child's see saw with a weight on one side of 200 trillion tons , positioned one thousandth of an inch from the pivot and a child on the other side of the see saw , weighing a few tens of pounds , stuck a million miles out from the pivot . Just to balance enough to bounce back .

 

That's why I was wondering :-

 

If there was not some local reaction with the gravitational field ( whatever that consists of ? ) ( rubber sheet?) .

 

I think you are just as likely to have some good ideas as the next man ?

 

Mike

Edited June 1, 2017 by Mike Smith Cosmos