PSN-L Email List Message
Subject: possible vertical using magnets?
From: Randall Peters PETERS_RD@..........
Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:40:43 -0500
Kay,
We know how you feel, but here's one more 'drinnk from the firehose'. We're 'on a roll', looks like.
Meredith, like yourself, I saw the need to somehow communicate pictures; so I've placed one on my webpage at:
http://physics.mercer.edu/hpage/psn/vertical-using-magnets.gif
Anybody know instinctively if it's fatally flawed? I know Chris you don't like 'knife edges'. Maybe they're not as bad with load reduction by the pulling shown here. What about your thoughts, Charles, since I like your idea?
And Keith, we're not opposed at all to what you've mentioned. I wrote a paper on the pendulum that moves in a way you'd like. Check out the pages that result if you type 'rattle in Seattle' into Google. I wouldn't be surprised if my
1988 paper "Chaotic motion from support constraints of a nondriven rigid spherical pendulum", Phys. Rev. A 38, 5352
prompted the commercial development that resulted in the 'oak and brass' pendulum that writes in sand and which recorded that Seattle earthquake.
Randall
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