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A googol-to-one gear ratio [video]

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Re: A googol-to-one gear ratio [video]

#91
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word you're looking for is "thermal." The bulk of the gear behaves completely classically at this temperature.

I think you are right in the sense that at room temperature, thermal fluctuations dominate. Better stated, my point is that if the entire assembly is at absolute zero, the quantum fluctuations in the final gear are much greater than the deterministic motion associated with one revolution of the first gear.

If this entire assembly is at absolute zero, something is very wrong in the universe.

Re: A googol-to-one gear ratio [video]

#92
post #33

Flip it around .. what's the fastest rotational speed achieved via a hand powered machine?

I imagine you could get several thousand RPM at least with a hand pump and a dentist's drill, if mechanical gearing is not a requirement.

I think ~100k RPM is achievable with a shirt button on a bunch of twisted strings, pulled on both ends.

This was actually used to construct a cheap mechanism that needed the high g to separate some chemicals to analyse samples. I can't remember the details though.

Re: A googol-to-one gear ratio [video]

#93

I would love for someone who knows more about physics to explain what effect a single rotation of the front gear actually has on the last one. Naively you would assume that every rotation of the first gear rotates the last by one googolth. But (I assume) that can't be true in the real world, since that distance is significantly smaller than a planck length. I have some educated guesses as to how the rotation is actua…

[deleted]

Re: A googol-to-one gear ratio [video]

#94

I would love for someone who knows more about physics to explain what effect a single rotation of the front gear actually has on the last one. Naively you would assume that every rotation of the first gear rotates the last by one googolth. But (I assume) that can't be true in the real world, since that distance is significantly smaller than a planck length. I have some educated guesses as to how the rotation is actua…

There’s nothing particularly strange about it. There would be probably be some measurable heat that would eventually make it to the final gear if you had an ideal setup for measurement. I haven’t done the order of magnitude estimation, but it’s probably not significantly different than snapping your fingers in your bedroom and asking precisely what effect it has on a specific air molecule in your kitchen.

Re: A googol-to-one gear ratio [video]

#95
post #2

What happens to the energy used to rotate the device? Is it dissipated as heat before it reaches too far?

The energy not lost to friction is being loaded into the system as the gears and axles start to strain from the stresses applied. Some energy is potential energy like a compressed spring. The balance is spent making the material yield; this will be lost as heat.

Re: A googol-to-one gear ratio [video]

#96

I would love for someone who knows more about physics to explain what effect a single rotation of the front gear actually has on the last one. Naively you would assume that every rotation of the first gear rotates the last by one googolth. But (I assume) that can't be true in the real world, since that distance is significantly smaller than a planck length. I have some educated guesses as to how the rotation is actua…

There's slop in between the teeth of the gears, they aren't perfectly tightly meshed. All of the gears can wiggle back and fourth that amount, but the "wiggle room" of the last gear gets shifted one googlth of a rotation per one rotation of the first gear.

If all of the gears were pre-loaded, such that the slop was "behind" the contacting teeth, then the last gear would turn one googlth of a rotation, with an incomprehensible capacity for torque if it were to encounter any resistance in that very small distance. Being less than a planck length, you might say that the probability of finding the gear's atoms one planck length behind, and one forward, shifts continuously. Of course the atoms are vibrating far greater distances due to ambient heat, but still bonded together.

The frequencies are typically of the order of 10^13 Hz, and the amplitudes are typically of the order of 10^−11 m. A Planck length is about 10^-35.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_vibrations

Maybe you could say that the gear that shifts approximately one atom vibration (#11) or one planck length (#35) applies as much torque as needed to shift the slower gears behind it, once the force applied becomes greater than the friction resistance, which will happen quite often (about as fast as the atoms are vibrating, if the gears are perfectly tightly meshed) because of the tremendous capacity for torque. There will be higher pressure from the source of the force than from the resistance of the further gears.

Re: A googol-to-one gear ratio [video]

#97

I ran the numbers for going in the other direction. Suppose that: * The 99 slower gears are massless. * the fastest gear weighs 10 grams * The fastest gear is a cylinder of radius of 2cm * The slowest gear completes 1 rotation every 3 days. * Relativity only applies when I want it to. We have: * The fastest gear has an angular velocity of: w=10^95 radians/second = 10^95 s^-1 //Since radians are unitless * The fastest…

For relativistic effects I think you'll need to apply the Lorentz factor [0]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_factor

Re: A googol-to-one gear ratio [video]

#98

I would love for someone who knows more about physics to explain what effect a single rotation of the front gear actually has on the last one. Naively you would assume that every rotation of the first gear rotates the last by one googolth. But (I assume) that can't be true in the real world, since that distance is significantly smaller than a planck length. I have some educated guesses as to how the rotation is actua…

There's slop in between the teeth of the gears, they aren't perfectly tightly meshed. All of the gears can wiggle back and fourth that amount, but the "wiggle room" of the last gear gets shifted one googlth of a rotation per one rotation of the first gear. If all of the gears were pre-loaded, such that the slop was "behind" the contacting teeth, then the last gear would turn one googlth of a rotation, with an incompr…

I wanted to make a geared divider for a "micrometric" slide but the slop/room made me wonder if there was a way to know the actual precision.

Re: A googol-to-one gear ratio [video]

#99
post #2

What happens to the energy used to rotate the device? Is it dissipated as heat before it reaches too far?

Friction basically. In a perfectly idealised version of the system with no friction/slack/materials being deformed/etc, if you started it off then let go then everything would keep spinning forever. You don't need to pump a whole lot of energy into the device to make it go.

Re: A googol-to-one gear ratio [video]

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but that's just an engineering problem.

> that's just an engineering problem It's not - it's a physics problem - it reaches fundamental physical limits of the universe.

Pfft, hold my beer.
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