Re: OT: The 10th Demention
Something's amiss with the Work formula. If I lift a brick straight up it takes some effort. If I lower that brick straight down, it doesn't feel like I've exerted as much effert. If I push it sideways on a slippery surface, it takes almost no effort at all.
If I carry a rock to the top of a mountain, did I store energy in some sort of battery? Potential Energy? I notice that pendulums and bouncy balls and roller coasters have enough energy in their battery to bounce all the way back up to very nearly where they were. Odd that we say it was Momentum carried it back up to where it was. If I put enough energy in a brick to lift it six feet from the sand, we have no problem saying that was just enough energy to go back down. But it looks like twice as much on the way down, doesn't it?
What if I tossed a steel marble up in a vacuum sealed metal box here on earth? Would it continue to bounce up to some specific height? And doesn't that look a lot like orbiting, viewed from an angle?
|