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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]

#91

Post by 4ad »

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.

I seriously doubt they emptied the huge vacuum chamber for this experiment. Most likely it was used for some other experiment and it was very cheap to do this experiment as well. As to answer your actual question, because it's very televisual (this was for a TV show, after all) and sells well. It's something very simple, something (almost) everyone understands yet something almost nobody has ever seen. It's a powerful experiment for the general population.

But to answer a more general question. We shouldn't stop repeating experiments just because they were done before. The scientific method works as long as we keep reproducing results. Sure, this is a trivial result, but it's something every kid should have done by its own in the school physics lab.

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

#92

Post by apetresc »

nly wrote: post #65
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.

His 'boyish wonder', although personally I think it's genuine, does get annoying to those of us who have their own wonder to contend with. Though, perhaps, those completely devoid of it themselves appreciate the cues. I really don't mind Cox... what I despise is the trend of putting comedians in to science and politics shows in an attempt to relieve the dowdiness (Sorry Dara). Then again, I'm one of those people who…

For what it's worth, Cox isn't a comedian. He has a PhD in physics, has supervised PhDs of his own, has been a research scientist at some of the best groups in the world, and currently works in Geneva with the LHC.

Surely he's qualified to demonstrate F=ma, even to someone with a sense of wonder as evolved as your own.

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

#93

Post by anigbrowl »

antimagic wrote: post #57
aragot wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What? No! I don't know about you, but I would have a silly grin on my face too if I actually got to see this experiment live - I mean it's such a classic result - we've all been told that this is what would happen, but very few of us actually get to see it. It's like the experience of seeing the moons of Jupiter the first time that you look at it through a telescope - yes, you know the moons are there, you've even se…

I find this perplexing. Obviously few of us would get to see a feather drop due to the lack of a huge vacuum chamber, but you can derive almost as much experimental entertainment by dropping, say, a ping-pong ball and a similarly sized marble or ball bearing.

Really, I think the slow-motion camera has much more educational value than the vacuum chamber (cool as that is). When I was in school and we'd debate such things, I liked to do experiments but dropping things of different weight off the roof only takes you so far, as people might object that they hit the ground a fraction of a second apart but too little of an interval to notice given the relatively low height etc. If I was doing it now I'd just use my camera to tighten things up, and although it's slo-mo capabilities are limited several current consumer models deliver that functionality at affordable prices.

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

#94

Post by anigbrowl »

smackfu wrote: post #82
scottlocklin wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd never heard of him before this morning, but this style of overly-polished TV production is common in the US as well. One of the things that irritates me about it is that they expend significant budgets on presenting and dramatizing quite basic things in science (which is a good thing) but all this experiential/eye-candy stuff comes at the expense of covering less material.

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

#95

Post by thaumaturgy »

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.

Somebody on Reddit took that scene, sped it up to something close to normal time, and made a gif:

http://gfycat.com/GentleMeaslyFattaileddunnart

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

#96

Post by Animats »

thearn4 wrote: post #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.

If you want to see more of it in video, it's also where the opening scene to "The Avengers" was filmed.

It's appeared in a lot of movies, "Futureworld" (1973) being one of the first.

That's where the nuclear rocket upper stage for Apollo was supposed to be tested.

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

#97

Post by pbhjpbhj »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #29
dia80 wrote: 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.

I just watched this today - I've studied physics at Uni - I've done many experiments and known this result for a long-long time. However, this was actually the first time I've seen it myself.

It is awesome to see something so un-intuitive but so well known actually occurring - like if you could actually see quantum tunnelling happening. If you don't find the world awesome then doing physics has got to be a pretty hard slog.

But then I'm over-awed just about every time I use a mobile [aka cell-phone] or computer at the physics and engineering that's happening, the maths being applied, ...

A computing equivalent might be seeing Babbage's Difference Engine[1] or a valve based computer at work for the first time - you know the maths, the algos work, you know the science well enough (certainly in the mechanical computers) but seeing it all chug away and produce the result has a certain enthralling beauty. Maybe it's more like seeing a visual emulator [2] working on assembly code? You know it works, you know why it works (at some level at least) but it's doing it, it's awesome!

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiRgdaknJCg

[2] http://www.visual6502.org/JSSim/index.html

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

#98

Post by gadders »

JonnieCache wrote: post #73
gadders wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Have you ever tried listening to The Infinite Monkey Cage on BBC Radio 4? [1] It's motto seems to be "Look at us! We're scientists but we're so wacky!!!111" http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00snr0w

Robin Ince certainly has a lot to answer for. Ben Goldacre is the master of this style of science communication. Friendly and fun and enthusiastic, but in a way that appeals to both laymen and his peers. I suppose epidemiology is somewhat more human than astrophysics, so its easier.

Frontiers [1] also on Radio 4 is good.

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qy5p

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

#99

Post by res0nat0r »

anigbrowl wrote: post #94
smackfu wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'd never heard of him before this morning, but this style of overly-polished TV production is common in the US as well. One of the things that irritates me about it is that they expend significant budgets on presenting and dramatizing quite basic things in science (which is a good thing) but all this experiential/eye-candy stuff comes at the expense of covering less material.

This is appealing to the userbase who would never watch a dry boring scientific show in the first place, not hardcore science geeks.

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

#100

Post by mturmon »

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.

I assume the BBC paid a fee for the use of the facility. Maybe they piggybacked onto some testing or scheduled activities that were being done anyway. I'll bet once the location scout saw those huge doors close, the deal was set. ;-)

Similar large facilities exist at many national labs, and they are used only sporadically. For instance, in the Bay Area, NASA Ames has a very large (11 foot square) wind tunnel that can reach Mach 1.45 (http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/orgs/aeronautics/windtunnel...).

The inflatable bags that landed Spirit and Opportunity on Mars were tested in Mars air pressure at the Glenn vacuum facility: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/history/marspbag_prt... . Many spacecraft undergo "thermal vac" testing meant to simulate space conditions.

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