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Perpetual Skislope

Posted by michael on from the round-and-round-she-goes dept.

the hollow room writes: "How about skiing on a never ending slope? A story at New Scientist suggests that some fool is going to try to build one of these. Built like a huge tilted record player, it can spin at up to 30 km/h. Any takers?"

2 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. Movies by spt · · Score: 4, Informative

    Movies of a working ski-trak!

    Okay, it's just a model but they answer the everyone's question about getting on and getting off - there's a stationary area in the middle

  2. Re:The perpetual slope already exists by wsloand · · Score: 3, Informative

    It just doesn't work that way. A disc and a sphere of the same weight will simply not roll downhill at the same speed, even in a vacuum. Besides, the very act of lowering one's center of gravity 1.5 feet would have a definite impact on momentum.

    You are comparing different issues. The skiier is not rolling. If the skiier were trying to roll down the hill, then you would be correct, but the momentum that you're describing is rotational momentum, not translational. With translational momentum, it doesn't matter. A proper comparison would be to push an object across a table (like say your CPU and your monitor); they have very different geometries, but the only forces acting on them are your push and the friction of the table (until you get to high speeds when wind resistance matters).