In previous installments, we brought you video of the amazing levitating Slinky, and Peter Barss wondered how the Slinky had been calibrated to work exactly this way. I asked physicists to come forth, and they have—not just physicists, but an astrophysicist. (Who better to explain levitation?)
Saint Mary's grad Jonathan Dursi, now a senior research associate with the Canadian Centre for Astrophysics, furnished this detailed by elegant explanation:
Sometimes you hear that there's three things taught in first year Engineering (or Physics, or whatever); things fall down; F=Ma; and you can't push on a string.* It's exactly those three things at play...
29 June, 2012