Measuring Gravity in Your Basement

Jack Durian writes "John Walker, the founder of Autodesk/co-author of AutoCAD has some fun playing pretend experimentalist, measuring gravity in his basement."

Comments

The Obvious

[airship]

What blows me away isn't the fact that he demonstrated gravitational force in his basement, it's the second demonstration that showed how Archimedes (or any other Greek natural philosopher) could have done the very same thing with sticks, string, and stones. Incredible! I've always been very, very intersted in history and raw information (or, generally, the lack of it). It's pretty well been shown that the Egyptians could have created a pretty powerful computer using fluidics bricks, and that the Chinese could have build hang gliders using silk and bamboo. Now it turns out we could have had Newton 1900 years earlier. Amazing how much difference just a little bit of knowledge can make.