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

thekidshouldseethis.com

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

#81

Post by ytturbed »

zelos wrote: post #21
paddyoloughlin wrote: post #17

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.

The value of his 'boyish wonder face' is that he's emotionally open, relatively speaking, and therefore we perceive that he's not consciously deceiving us in ways that he thinks important. It shouldn't matter, of course, since explanations either stand or they don't. But it seems that so much public discourse is infected with paranoia and conspiracy theory, including around space history.

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

#82

Post by smackfu »

scottlocklin wrote: post #42
zelos wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Glad to know I'm not the only one who finds Cox incredibly annoying. FWIIW, the exploratorium in SF and the Boston Science Museum both have experiments of this nature. It is a cool vacuum chamber though. Reading some of the NASA early docs on building such things can be quite fun.

I think the backlash against Cox is almost cliché at this point.

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

#83

Post by kens »

noselasd wrote: post #43
baldfat wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick list of more inventions that are not Tang http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies

Even something as mundane as error correction coding were developed at NASA, for communicating with spacecraft - technology that's now present in e.g. CD/DVDs, and every mobile communication system. Now, if they hadn't developed it, someone else probably would, but perhaps not at that time - leaving us at years behind where we currently are with e.g. the speeds on our mobile devices.

I think the credit for error correcting codes goes to Hamming in 1950.

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

#84

Post by thorntonbf »

paddyoloughlin wrote: post #25

I love how professionals who work at that facility and have probably deeply understood those principles for decades still display so much wonder at seeing this experiment with their own eyes.

This was my favorite part of the video, and I think it was genuine. The guy in the blue shirt and the one with grayer hair immediately afterward seemed like school kids seeing something amazing for the first time. I'm sure their day-to-day work is quite serious. Sometimes maybe it takes something simple to make you step back and realize that you really have some things in your life that are quite amazing.

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

#85

Post by giarc »

bjackman wrote: 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.

Things that aren't HN material will be downvoted by members. This is currently sitting at #3, and therefore the HN community has determined that this is indeed HN material.

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

#86

Post by ghshephard »

shangxiao wrote: post #75
paddyoloughlin wrote: post #17

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.

I actually like the slow-mo as it reaffirms the fact that there is no air in that chamber. When the feathers first drop you see a slight sway in the feathers, but only due to the acceleration. It's actually quite a sight to see feathers accelerate so quickly and stay so still.

According to this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalence_principle, posted lower, the feathers aren't under acceleration. Which is pretty cool once you think about it.

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

#88

Post by HCIdivision17 »

hudibras wrote: post #36
paddyoloughlin wrote: post #25

I love how professionals who work at that facility and have probably deeply understood those principles for decades still display so much wonder at seeing this experiment with their own eyes.

I might be cynical, but I think they were putting on a show a bit. They already had some sort of apparatus set up to do the simultaneous drops. My guess is that it's a standard demonstration for visiting dignitaries and the like.

You'd be amazed how a simple experiement can be fun. These guys work on this enormous vacuum chamber to build space ship things, and that's their day job. As in, at some point, it gets routine and a bit dull. (Ever find high power lasers boring? You will after your safety training...)

Now, they are recreating an experiment last performed at this scale on the moon. It's an unusual break from the norm, and I'm sure half of their grins were the phenomenal waste of power to perform such a silly experiment. (Seriously, that chamber was hauled down to a couple torr in three zarking hours!) Professionally goofing off is immensely fun.

(Tiddlywinks with a forklift would be another, and there was a guy who used the armor coating a Blackbird uses in a robot wars competition.)

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

#89

Post by Ad_Nauseam »

IgorPartola wrote: post #87

Serious question: why do we keep repeating this experiment? Not that I mind, I just am curious why do we keep building bigger and bigger vacuum chambers just to drop a feather and a hammer over and over.

Dropping feather and hammer isn't the only use of vacuum chamber
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