http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133&n=2
What's the Flying Spaghetti Monster answer to this?
EDIT: See also: http://www.idrewthis.org/2005/gravity.html
| 2005/08/19 00:12:51 CDT by burn Edited at 2005/08/19 00:18:15 CDT |
Mike Wiktor in tenth grade Honors Physics asked the same question; but in a different way. He surmised that if someone was to climb a hill and then jump off aforementioned hill we would say the individual would be using kinetic energy while falling. To circumvent this all one would have to do is take a battery with them as they climbed the hill. This battery would be storing potential energy. Then when jumping off the hill they would, in fact, float until the battery ran out of "juice."
While some experiments were conducted the size of battery became a limiting factor as, if I recall correctly, it was determined that average human would not want to carry more than a few D batteries. And it is a well known scientific fact that D batteries are not very conducive to holding very strong charges. We think that we would have had better luck with a car battery. However, there were two limiting factors. One, it would be inconvenient to carry around a car battery on a daily basis for fashion and practical reasons. Two, at the time most of us didn't have a car (hence no car battery), and not too many kids want to throw down fifty bucks for a car battery when they don't have a car and there were more important things to do than conduct scientific experiments (play video games, talk about girls, hang out in basements).
While our experiments ended with inconclusive findings we felt our experiments were important enough to submit them to a few prostigous scientific journals. At this moment I can not recall which journals we sent our findings to; I do recall Tiger Beat being on the "maybe" list.
Beyond that I would request that Wiktor et al. would chime in with what they remember about the potential to kinetic battery experiments.
| 2005/08/19 22:55:48 CDT by dave |
Yes, the nasty part about falling off the cliff was not the gradual conversion of potential to kinetic energy on the way down, but rather the abrupt conversion of kinetic to heat energy at the bottom. As I remember, Wiktor's idea was to circumvent this whole process by putting the potential energy directly into chemical energy in the battery, thereby avoiding the falling process while still conserving energy.
BTW, is anyone else troubled by the question of how to measure the simplicity of a hypothesis? The scientific method prefers the simplest hypothesis consistent with the data, but that strikes me as a rather tricky thing to define. It is impossible to experimentally tell the difference between things falling simply cause that is what they do (gravity) and things falling becaused God consistently wishes them to do so. Gravity is often preferred as the "simplest" explanation, but I guess that we would all have to switch to intelligent falling if the second coming of Christ occurred. As it is, the events surrounding the first coming of christ lead me to believe that intelligent falling might be the simplest theory.
| 2005/08/20 00:35:34 CDT by Temporal |
What do you think God wants you to believe? If He set up the universe to -- as far as has ever been reliably recorded -- remain consistent with a particular theory of gravity, then don't you think He wants us to call it a law of physics and teach it to our children?
Or does God enjoy playing tricks on people?
| 2005/08/20 05:15:44 CDT by burn |
Or does God enjoy playing tricks on people?
I am going to assume that is a rhetorical question
dave thanks for clarifying the wiktor debacle
| 2005/08/20 12:51:17 CDT by derch |
I thought i'd just contribute this...
Gravity +/- 1 wiktor means it makes you fall either up or down.
| 2005/08/21 14:50:33 CDT by dave |
I thought i'd just contribute this...
Gravity +/- 1 wiktor means it makes you fall either up or down.
Don't forget to include the stationary case. Really, nano-Wiktors are a more useful unit.
| 2005/08/21 23:11:28 CDT by burn |
you guys should edit your profiles to nice color... I keep thinking you guys are the same peeps.. minus Tim's running guy icon
| 2005/08/22 16:47:54 CDT by derch |
fixed
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