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World's Longest Slinky
Orlock writes: "I was trawling google for something, and came across this. Apparently the world's longest slinky, created as a kinetic sculpture showing visible low frequency waves travelling down it."
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I bet it would look quite funny in zero gravity (without the suspension stuff).
Warning: This sig contains a small bug. ==> *
I don't mean to sound picky, but surely a slinky is more than a helix? If it doesn't walk down the stairs, it's not a slinky to my mind.
And this thing - impressive though it is - doesn't look like it's going anywhere.
Is the record measured at it's max length?
It looks like that thing could be stretched at least twice that long. I mean if you're going for the record, go for the record!
I have aways wondered about putting a slinky on an escalator. With proper tunning i think a perpetual slinky could be made to work. The trouble is i dnt have a slinky at the moment my last one broke :( they are now made of plastic so you cant end them back to normal.
Has any ine tried a slinky on an escalator? does it work?
well just an idea
Earthcore NYE 2000 was a weeklong techno-marathon ... the sliiiiiiinky was there on a hill very similar to the one in the "space cadets" photos. It moved so gracefully on the elastic strings it's suspended by. A slight movement on one end creates a lovely fluid ripple along the length of the whole object. People creating ripples on both ends make waves that gently join each other. Very peaceful to look at.
Both Earthcore and the Sliiiiiiinky are not to be missed if one's in the Melbourne area!
-Christian
p.s. Robin Whittle ... creator of this sliiiinky, is also the creator of the world-famous Roland TB-303 Devilfish mod:
http://www.firstpr.com.au/rwi/dfish/
p.p.s. A great picture from that party ... it was the DJ booth.
our written thoughts are gifts to our future selves
In Denmark, there's a place called 'Experimentarium' where you can experience physics phenomenae first-hand. :)=
One of the regular exhibits is a slinky like the one mentioned in the article (there's a picture here).
Okay, maybe it's only 15 metres long, but OTOH it's been around for several years, so there.
For the cruising hordes of slashdotters, I scrambled some audio files and frequency analyis and have added these to the site. This includes analysis of a chirped impulse response which spreads the frequencies out in time over more than 2.5 seconds.
Christian mentioned the DJ booth at that Earthcore party. Cat (my Devil Fish assistant at the time and Sliiiiinky co-pilot) and I were at an excellent smaller party at Nagambie on NYE, and we arrived at Earthcore on 2 January. People were raving about the big night! The main floor was on the top of a hill, with the DJ booth being the front part of an old Victorian Railways diesel loco. It is all made of 1/4" steel.
Some of the crew saw it on a truck going omewhere, and they spoke to its owner and hired it for a few weeks. Behind it is the very dry reservoir of Lake Eildon. Cat and I surveyed the scene. Two crashed light aircraft and a motor car tumbling on a horizontal axis were parts of the decor. A bulldozer doubled as a lighting stand . . . there were other huge sculptures. The thing on top of the loco cab is a ferocious tesla coil of a chap also called Robin. Apparently there were wires all over with sparks leaping around the place and people all said that that night, everthing just went **off**! The local fire brigade was on hand, since the place was as dry as buggery and was a real fire hazard.
- Robin
Csound, 21 metre Sliiiiinky, the Gentlemanly Art of
First off here's a simplification that anyone can try. In my high school physics class (many years ago ;-) when we were studying waves, one of our lab experiments was to go out into the tiled-floor hallway. With the help of a lab partner, we'd stretch out a slinky along the floor. We experimented with creating standing waves of different periods. This permitted experiments in the horizontal and longitudinal axes (though not in the vertical, which the sliiiiiinky also supports). So, try it at home!
Secondly, I have a suggestion concerning the tendency of the sliiiiiiiiiiinky to get tangled onto itself that was often mentioned in the article. Wouldn't an initial tensioning of the sliiiiiiinky reduce or event prevent that from happening? I'm thinking the use of some cords, strings, or bungie cords being attached to the ends of the sliiiinky and whose other ends would be attached to the endmost vertical support poles. The downside, I would expect, is that the wave would move more quickly down the length of the sliiiiinky.