Posts Tagged ‘gravity’
Obsessed with his weight…
German scale-maker Kern has been in the weighing business since 1844. To demonstrate the precision of the scientific instruments in which it now specializes, Kern has launched The Gnome Experiment.
If Earth was a perfect sphere of uniform density, then gravity would be consistent. But it’s not, which means gravity varies wherever you go. So can we chart those discrepancies using just a basic-range Kern scale?
Method
We’re shipping our Gnome Kit from scientist to scientist around the world. Join the experiment and you’ll receive:
1x Kern EWB 2.4 Scale
Pre-calibrated according to local gravity at Kern HQ, Balingen, Germany.1x Kern Gnome
The perfect test-subject for two good reasons: Gnomes are already accustomed to travelling the world. They also originate from our homeland, Germany.1x Lab gloves & 1 x Air duster
Important because dust or grease will reduce the accuracy of the results.
Readers can check up on results-to-date…
… and can sign up to participate, here.
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As we pack our bags to move south,* we might send earthy birthday greetings to civil engineer and geodesist John Fillmore Hayford; he was born on this date in 1868. Hayford, the father of the modern science of geodesy, made the first precise determination of the ellipsoidal shape and size of the earth.
* an object weighs about 0.5% more at the poles than at the Equator.
A Matter of Some Gravity…
I’ve been noticing gravity since I was very young.
-Cameron Diaz
Isaac Newton first proposed a universal law of gravitation, where every massive body in the universe was attracted to every other one. This simple law proved extremely powerful, able to explain the orbits of planets and the reason the apocryphal apple fell on his head. However, Newton was never able to explain why gravity worked or what exactly it was. Two hundred plus years later, Albert Einstein was able to offer a more complete description of gravity—one where Newton’s laws are a limited case. According to Einstein, gravity was due to the warpage of spacetime by mass and energy; all objects followed straight paths, just on curved spaces.
With the advent of quantum theory over the past 100 years, scientists have been able to develop an elegant mathematical framework capable of uniting three of the four fundamental forces that are thought to exist in the universe. The fourth, gravity, still remains the fly in the ointment, and has resisted unification to this point. Early last year, Dutch theoretical physicist Erik Verlinde published a manuscript to the arXiv that purports to explain why science cannot reconcile all four fundamental forces. According to him, it is simple: “gravity doesn’t exist.”
Read the full story (SPOILER ALERT: it relates to Leonard Susskind‘s “holographic principle,” suggesting in effect that gravity isn’t a fundamental force, but an “entropic” result of information imbalances between the bodies/regions in question) in Ars Technica (recapping Physical Review D, 2011. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.83.021502).
As we sit more confidently beneath apple trees, we might wish a polymathic Happy Birthday to the painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer– the archetypical Renaissance Man– Leonardo da Vinci; he was born on this date in 1452.
Self-portrait in Red Chalk (source)
G Whiz…
In Rio, at the 2016 Olympics, the same jump will get an athlete >1 cm higher than that jump at the London Olympics in 2012…
From the ever-illuminating xkcd.
As we rethink our choice of venue, we might wish a humorously absurd Happy Birthday to Terry Jones, author, screenwriter, director, actor, television host– and most famously, founding member of Monty Python. He was born on this date in 1942. Among his many awards, “9622 Terryjones,” an asteroid in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, was named in his honor.
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