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The hammer-feather drop in the world’s biggest vacuum chamber [video]

thekidshouldseethis.com

21–30 of 124 posts

Re: The hammer-feather drop in the world’s biggest vacuum chamber [video]

#21

I wish the producers were less enamoured of their slow-mo and showed us the whole thing in real-time. The "weird" thing is seeing feathers plummet to the ground and I wish we got to see more of that.

This is a Brian Cox show we're talking about, not a science show. I'm surprised there weren't more slow mo shots of Cox doing his "boyish wonder" face.

Re: The hammer-feather drop in the world’s biggest vacuum chamber [video]

#23
post #3

I guess this is a pretty superficial complaint, but this is a 2nd-generation clickbait-site link (posted on io9, reposted on thekidsshouldseethis.com). Why not post the Youtube link directly? This isn't really Hacker News material, anyway.

> What to Submit > If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter.

Re: The hammer-feather drop in the world’s biggest vacuum chamber [video]

#24
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What to Submit > If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter.

Yes, although I thought the site I submitted actually had an interesting comment. The IO9 site less so, and hence in my judgement, on this occasion, the link I submitted was in some sense "better" than the raw youtube link.

I think the guidelines are mis-guided in this sense. Sometimes the original, raw content is somewhere else, but a page that points to it can sometimes add context, or otherwise enhance that original post/material.

But this is meta, and getting off-topic. To go meta-meta, I do wish there were somewhere sensible to discuss these sorts of issues.

Re: The hammer-feather drop in the world’s biggest vacuum chamber [video]

#26

I wish the producers were less enamoured of their slow-mo and showed us the whole thing in real-time. The "weird" thing is seeing feathers plummet to the ground and I wish we got to see more of that.

Exactly. I was frantically searching the video for this. Did they show it?

Re: The hammer-feather drop in the world’s biggest vacuum chamber [video]

#27
SPF is an awesome and unique facility, I wish more of the public would get to see it in person.

If you want to see more of it in video, it's also where the opening scene to "The Avengers" was filmed. Plum Brook Station has a whole collection of really cool (though mostly single-purpose) buildings.

Re: The hammer-feather drop in the world’s biggest vacuum chamber [video]

#29
post #2

I know how this will turn out but my intuition is screaming otherwise.

I find it interesting that Brian Cox, the presenter and avowed scientist, obviously finds it so 'surprising' as well. Maybe that's the true meaning of being a scientist, though - he doesn't truly believe it until observing it with his own eyes.

Re: The hammer-feather drop in the world’s biggest vacuum chamber [video]

#30
post #21

I wish the producers were less enamoured of their slow-mo and showed us the whole thing in real-time. The "weird" thing is seeing feathers plummet to the ground and I wish we got to see more of that.

This is a Brian Cox show we're talking about, not a science show. I'm surprised there weren't more slow mo shots of Cox doing his "boyish wonder" face.

I too though this "boyish wonder" face was phony. And yet the "boyish wonder" face will change the fate of the whole video when I show it to my 7yo. The rest is concrete and iron, not really appealing to kids, despite the potential awesomeness of the huge vacuum chamber.
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