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19 March 2024 04:47

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Question

Asked by: Nitro
Subject: Equal but not opposite
Question: I wasn’t going to continue but there seems a need for others to know why shed dwellers remain addicted to this subject despite its cursed slipperiness. Conducting the simple Newton defying tests below may go some way to explain the addiction and get some brethren who’s faith has been lost to re-examine things from base one. And yes, it may seem like a blind religion but you cannot look for something unless you believe there might be something to be searched for. I would suggest that Newton, Galileo, Rutherford, Faraday, Baird and even the odd American started with a belief. Do these simple gyro pendulum tests, please.

It may be necessary to be British and a little mad (Newton was, after all, mad enough to distort his eye with a needle when researching the spectral effects of white light) to move beyond Newton’s observations. So let me try. Newton was undoubtedly brilliant and, of course, British.
Trouble with his “laws” arise however when the body being acted upon is rotated or, more precisely, when such rotation of a body is on at least two axes.

Take this simple example:- it has been shown by Foucault and others that, discounting friction, a pendulum being acted upon by the perfect linear downward (to us) force of gravity will swing to and fro along a straight line until and unless acted upon by additional force/s (that’s resultant appears) at right angles to its swing. All well and good so far. Unless, that is, you replace the bob weight of the pendulum with a gyro that, unlike the video examples cited before, has its axis in line with the pendulum’s suspending wire. Now the pendulum’s path describes a curve and (here’s the tricky bit for devotees of Newton) there is no mass displacement in the opposite direction as required by the third law (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction). The edges of the third law have suddenly frayed. A fairly large hole in the first law has also just appeared ( An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force). Clearly there is an unbalanced force causing the pendulum’s path to curve yet there is no external force being applied. What of the second law? (Objects at equilibrium (the condition in which all forces balance) will not accelerate. According to Newton’s second, an object will only accelerate if there is a net or unbalanced force acting upon it. The presence of an unbalanced force will accelerate an object - changing its speed, its direction, or both its speed and direction). It is obvious that there is an unbalanced force causing the gyro pendulum’s path to change its direction. What is causing its sideways acceleration? Where is the mass being displaced in the opposite direction? Does a problem also exists with the second law as well? Dam right there’s a problem – or several!

The simple observable fact is that the gyro on the pendulum wire moves its own mass and the wire to one side of the straight line that the the pendulum would be expected to swing, with no opposite reaction. Under Newton the string should move to the opposite side to the expected straight line swing, to maintain the centre of mass of the gyro dead in line with the suspension point of the wire, if the “laws” were being followed. That doesn’t happen. Further; the gyro is able to precess even more than its own mass to one side yet still there is no movement of any mass in the opposite direction nor opposite sideways movement of the suspending wire or its support (indeed the wire will move, as in the MIT video, slightly in the same direction as the gyro’s displacement) Now that, IS a little mad!

Incidentally, the blind unquestioning religious following of existing scientific beliefs can be just as daft as followers of the flat Earth society. Such blind faith in what has gone before can be observed in someone who believes on the one hand that a gyroscope, that has slowed to the point where nutation takes over from precession, produces reactions in the same way as one that is fully spun and carefully released with its axis horizontal and on the other hand refutes an MIT video clearly showing no pivot (suspending wire) displacement and, further, says that friction – which would simply cause the gyro’s axial angle to droop – is why there is no equal and opposite reaction that would be seen by such displacement. Come on Firestone! This subject deserves more effort than that.

Kind regards
NM
Date: 8 May 2012
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