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A New Spin On Physical Phenomena
f00Dave writes "Researchers have discovered "a new physical phenomenon, electrostatic rotation, that, in the absence of friction, leads to spin". I'm a bit skeptical about the implied relationship between physical "spin" (as in rotation) and quantum "spin", however. Still, this is the sort of scientific advance that renews my faith in the system. Go nerds! =]"
Hey, isn't that where they stick a piece of buttered toast to the back of a cat and let it rip?
I never could get that working. My damn cat always ate the toast.. the fat bastard.
If there can be no friction, then there can be no output. What usefulness does a spinning object with no output provide, anyway?
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Sounds pretty cool. Does the object ever reach a maximum velocity or does it just keep on going? Where is the energy coming from?
Checking out my form of escapism.
...now my head is spinning too.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
a new physical phenomenon, electrostatic rotation, that, in the absence of friction, leads to spin
So how do I use this to fix the fade I cannot get rid of, regardless of time at the driving range? Otherwise this is a pointless discovery.
science does not always have to be usefull.
I'm more excited about the "absence of friction" part...
At last my dream of building a perpetual motion machine can be realized. Take that thermodynamics!
This gives me renewed hope for my latest project, a hyperdrive engine built of old Spaghetti-Os cans and dental floss.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
Unlimited spin would be nice for turntables and whatnot (imagine the mew re-mixes at ungodly RPMs) but seriously what would this be used for? I don't know much about physics, so could someone please elucidate the commercial value of this discovery?
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
I'd spin too if I were hung from a wire and electrocuted
Would it have to be a sphere or could it just be a closed system with no friction to the rest of the world, but friction on the inside?? perhaps some sort of self contained generator, make light or something.
I don't understand this submission:
I'm a bit skeptical about the implied relationship between physical "spin" (as in rotation) and quantum "spin", however. Still, this is the sort of scientific advance that renews my faith in the system.
What system are we talking about? Why does faith need to be renewed in it? What, have you lost faith in physics because it doesn't discover new laws every day?
Plugged his C cell batteries into his ben wa balls instead of his vibrating butt plug.
It sounds like they're saying the angular velocity will increase if the rotation is frictionless. Why won't this phenomenon cancel out at equilibrium amount of friction and keep the object spinning at constant angular momentum forever? I should also accelerate an object with a small amount of friction but at a slower rate than a frictionless object.
In any case, we're talking about building a perpetual motion machine here and throwing the first law of thermodymics out the window. This makes the cold fusion claims sound pretty tame. At least they said where they were getting their energy, here it seems to come from nowhere.
Jasom
ProfQuotes
Don't you just love it how each and every time we get settled down in a dogmatic paradigm that dictates that most all of the "major" phenomena of science have been discovered and from here on out it's just fluff, something like this happens? Even Clinton said this would be the century of biology breakthrough, 20th century being that of physics. I think the best of physics is yet to come ... stay tuned.
-- (Score:i, Imaginary)
Now if they want to measure political spin, we have to wait to see what research grants they apply for next...(sorry, couldn't help it.) Seriously- how do they do this without friction?
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
... but, with the miniscule amount of information provided, it seems to me that the spinning spheres merely demonstrate electromagentic force.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
Is is just me, or does the article not really explain what it is they are talking about.
Also, a drawing of the setup would have been nice.
Third, how do they get from spinning metal thingies to quantum spin? Sounds strange...
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So you have DC voltage, aka, electrons going in ONE direction. If they're going into the ball they have to stop at some point, or continue moving through the ball, in either case there is a 'force' being applied to the ball.
scientific research in general?
again, i'm just curious . . . .
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it spins in april like a spiffy mp3 that damages your hearing and sends your head spinning after a wma.
what, am I trolling AGAIN?
While this sounds cool, I'm not sure whether it's as significant as the article makes it out to be. I'd like it explained why this might be so important in more detail than the article went into. But maybe my 102 degree temperature is just clouding my thinking. Someone knowledgeable please reply.
It's amazing how much "mature wisdom" resembles being too tired. - Robert Anson Heinlein
Will this help me out with my spinning workout at the gym?
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Lisa, you will obey the laws of thermodynamics in my house.
Those of us who have lived through other wars realize that "spin" is very strong in times like these.
Mod me up. Make my day!
I own a Van de Graaf and this fact is very easily noticeable. If you have one of those whose upper sphere is not fixed, but rather 'dropped' unto the Van de Graaf machine, you will clearly notice that during the use of the machine that sphere will spin (not fast, but still).
Marton
Could the rotation be induced by the earth's rotation? Or the earth's slightly oscillating magnetic field? or a near by microwave tower? ;)
"It is very satisfying to learn that electrostatic rotation can be predicted by the simple laws of voltage and force that date back at least 200 years," Wistrom said.
So there's no discovery here. No new physics. The article goes as long way to imply there's some kind of mysterious new physics involved.
How many other scientists get to show their balls online?
I'm a bit skeptical about the implied relationship between physical "spin" (as in rotation) and quantum "spin"
Humans seem to have this uncanny ability to pic words and terms that closely match actual circumstances. My thought is that Quantum Spin is exactly that, spin. The spin may be at a right angle to our dimensions, but it's still spin.
So let me get this straight.
They applied an electrical charge to a object, while inside the Earth's magnetic field, and they were surprised that the object experienced a rotational force?
They didn't consider the magnetic field. They didn't consider that the magnetic field is constantly changing, due to the spin of the Earth and Solar wind. They didn't consider that having three charged spheres near to each other would cause the charge of those spheres to develop a pole.
No. They jumped right to the conclusion that they had discovered something new about the spin of atomic particles.
Spare me.
In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
Random is the New Order.
seems like this is an ideal thing to replicate in microgravity and a vacuum on the space station. at least this may be one experiment that justifies having a 40 billion dollar(?) science lab.
Just offhand, charge and magnetism match up, in that one is the speed-of-light adjustment of the other.
So if you can get electrostatic spin, then there may be some interesting applications towards electric/mechanical energy force mechanism.
My problem is that I can't see how electrostatic spin is different from magnetism.
Oh well, it isn't important: it's their invention, not mine.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
It's Magic!
Oh wait, no, it's due to the Earth's rotation!
Um, no, wait, it's due to a combination of the Earth's rotation and its orbit around the Sun.
Yeah! That's it!, Yeah, I got it! Woohoo!
Actually, Stephen Hawking is expected to say "it's the spooky force at close proximity."
Honestly, between you and me, I think this will turn out to be as real as cold fusion.
Faith is belief in something which you know to be false -- Arthur Clarke.
Here's the journal article from Applied Physics Letters
I think they've discovered a new way to make electric motors.
1. they apply a current through a metal ball. Which induces a magnetic field.
2. They place a second metal ball near the first ball. The proximity to the first magnetic field in the second ball induces a electric potential in the second ball.
3. The third ball may be electrically connected to the suspension wires of either or both balls 1 and 2. Hence, it induces a magnetic field of it's own. The relationship between the magnetic fields in the balls, is the cause of the rotation.
Of course Murphy and I could be wrong. I've been wrong before, but Murphy never has.
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you are one sick fuck
You take a 2-colored, metal-coated ping-pong ball [it can be done], and suspend it in air on a cushion of air jets. [Also can be done.]
Now stabilize it rotationally. Now stick two or three metal brushes lightly against it, and hit it with some charge. Will it spin? Will it spin continuously faster?
If so, how?
Or alternatively, we can have 3 metalized ping pong balls on three jets of air [that is, infinitely thing strings, you might say] and each brushing against three metalic brushes. Will these spin and accelerate continuously faster?
Suppose, instead of balancing them on air jets, we used strong magnetism and magneticized balls. Will it work then?
Why, or why not?
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
There's a good reason why the quantum spin was named spin in the first place: A charged particle with spin exhibits a magnetic moment, and so does a rotating charged sphere. However, electron spin is quantized differently from rotation, so we know it's not really rotation.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
So, they created an iron sphere with a magnetic field, and it started to spin, ever so slightly. Don't you think that this field could just have been moving through some other magnetic field, and this caused the spin?
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No, N/A, N/A.
No.
Yes.
Budget cuts.
It's just bad physics, like that Simpsons episode where Lisa tells Bart that water in toilets spins the other way in the southern hemisphere due to the coriolis effect. Even though the coriolis effect is a verified fact it doesn't really work for something small, like a pipe or toilet. Geometry of the installation and original water flow has more to do with it than anything else. They are comparing apples to oranges. Here a decent book on THEORETICAL physics.0 385477058/ qid=1049485191/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/002-7986922-74744 27
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/
My experiments with ethanol had yielded some insightful results, but they appear to have been flushed (along with the cat) after last night's run. Initial indications did reveal a small potential to power a tiny little generator long enough to power an AIBO to fetch me some ibuprofen from the local drug store.
The article is very confusing, and makes several leaps that even the researchers don't promulgate.
Basically, what seems to be going on here is that one charges up metal spheres to see how they interact. This is a way of testing EM theory. Now, as is commonly known, charging a metal sphere will eventually have the charge distributed uniformly on the surface, and eventually static. However, it takes a non-zero amount of time to reach these static states. What these boys have done is charge 3 spheres (presumably) simultaneously, and then observe physical spin (rotation) in the spheres.
Well, inhomogenities in the surfaces can have slightly non-uniform charge currents during the charging process. All it would take is a slight asymmetry, and the charge on two spheres (let alone three) could and would provide a torque to the other(s) via the usual Coulomb interaction.
Only in California do you not only not get arrested for taking your balls out for a spin, but it makes news.
Do you see the sig? Do you have it in your sights? Why yes, Miss Moneypenny...
This test wasn't performed on a spinning body, say, like Earth, was it?
Maybe the balls were standing still, and the room was spinning . . .
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is the cry of the un-imaginative.
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Wow, a device that when you apply a dc current to it, spins. That's so amazing. I don't know how they ever thought of it before. They should call it something cool like "The DC motor"
Electrostatic force is very strong as forces go. We are told asymmetric charge gives rise to a "spin", but could this be just a fraction of a circle; that is, gadget rotates several degrees till the wires stop it?
If the surrounding apparatus were not far away and completely symmetrical, some torque from electrostatic attraction to walls etc. (remember how a charged balloon sticks to your hand?) might be expected.
We need to see this one reproduced, and need more complete description possibly. It might be real, but could be an error too. Don't get too excited yet...
The Applied Physics Letters paper is just two pages long. There is no new physics here. Here's the skinny.
Sphere A is charged up; the two others, B and C, are at different distances from A. Each sphere is polarized in a non-uniform way (because each sphere has two hemispheres, one closer to the charged sphere and the other farther... just as tides form on Earth due to the moon).
The potential at the surfaces of B and C might be uniform but the charge distributions are not: they are dipole. Due to this dipole interaction (the more negativey charge hemisphere of one sphere wants to be closer to the more positively charged surface of the other sphere), Spheres B and C then tourqe to a different angle and will either a) stay there in the presence of some friction or b) oscillate back and forth in the absence of friction. Of course, there is always some element of friction due to the air and wire, but one can compensate by also oscillating the potential of A to make positive feedback, I imagine.
The press release was, in this physics grad student's opinion, horrible. Implications that this research has some impact on our understanding of electrostatics or (gasp) quantum mechanics is irresponsible. It's a cute trick, though, and I'll bet it will find applications in mico-,nano-tech and perhaps other research areas (e.g. experiments requiring precision angular measurements ).
There is an angular velocity to atoms that give them "spin". It was called spin because it was an angular velocity, although they obviously couldn't see it.
I believe they are suggesting that this might be the force behind the quantum angular velocity, or spin. Calculations and experiments have shown particles like electrons to have an angular velocity, perhaps this is a physical manifestation of that. Not quite sure. A neutron has no charge, but a spin of 1/2, although it's made up of two down quarks and one up quark, which do have angular velocity.
Not sure here.
Back on topic, this is really neat. I hope it turns out to be a fruitful advance, and not just a case of the balls being influenced by the breeze from the cooling fan on the DC generator in the lab. :)
You are not the customer.
actually, even with uniform distributed charge after charging complete, an asymmetric suspended object (like REAL WORLD BALL BEARINGS) will twist when an electrostatic field is applied until torques and forces are balanced. What a load of crap the linked article is
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that this is the first time anyone has applied electricity to some metal balls. How come this hasn't been discovered until now? Is this phenomenon confined to metal balls only?
:sniff sniff::
It makes one wonder what undiscovered physical properties can be found by applying a DC current to other objects!
I smell hot dogs!
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
meant to say "twist & move"....also, when the external field is removed, will "twist and move" again to equilibrium position.
I think this is an example of an overly-zealous press release from a university employee trying to make it sound more exciting than it is. The actual article (+ errata) by the researchers can be found atp rog=normal&id=APPLAB000080000015002800000001&idtyp e=cvips&gifs=yes
http://ojps.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?
Sorry, if you aren't browsing from an institution that subscribes to Applied Physics Letters, you probably won't be able to download the article for free. But I'll be happy to paraphrase what I understood from the article:
This phenomenon was purely predictable from Coulomb's law and Gauss's laws of electrostatic attraction/repulsion. Many of you should have learned about these in freshman physics. The spheres were arranged in an assymetric pattern, so rotation isn't breaking any kind of symmetry. If you arranged their spherical balls in a mirror image pattern, the rotation will reverse. The authors aren't trying to say they measured some kind of new mystical force that hasn't already been understood for 100's of years but simply that there could be an engineering application that no one had thought of before.
I'm inclined to agree with the original poster's comment that this has nothing to do with quantum mechanical spin.
Does this allow for new internal electron routing methods?? If it is no longer symmetrical then there must be new techniques???
My thought is that Quantum Spin is exactly that, spin.
...words and terms that closely match actual circumstances.
Which would mean what? That if you painted little stripes on an electron you could watch them going around like a barbershop pole? You can't do that, or anything like it. And quantum spin does not behave like everyday macro spin, either.
I would say that there are no "actual circumstances," beyond what can in principle be observed. You can imagine electrons as little balls spinning around, or you can imagine angels pushing the planets around, but in neither case is that "what's really happening," because there is nothing to know, beyond the observable consequences and the equations governing them.
But I've been told positivism is outmoded for some reason, so I could be wrong.
It is much easier for me to believe that the balls are interacting magnetically. The application of DC would have some electrical flow due to the capacitance of the ball. That would create a slight magnetic field. Since the ball cannot be "perfect", the variations in the magnetic field could easily cause angular force to be applied, and spin the balls.
Did they show how this sort of effect was removed from consideration?
Continued rotation against resistance from a static charge seems strange to me.
I wonder if they've adequately controlled against the phenomenon of "electric wind"?
They're "holding the potential constant" on the central sphere, despite any leakage from irregularities in its surface. The two uncharged spheres nearby should create a stronger field in their direction. Corona discharges toward the space between the spheres could result in a net outward motion of air there, and inward motion of air between the outer and central spheres. Friction of this air against the outer spehres would provide a rotational force, in opposite directions on the two spheres, with no net force on the central sphere.
Try again in a HARD vaccuum.
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This is funny- yesterday I was picking up a print out here in the Physics Department, and I happened to notice a stray copy of this article lying next to the printer. It is a super easy read for anyone versed in physics up to the intro-graduate level, and took up just 1 or 2 pages. The beautiful thing about this experiment is that it SCALES- in other words it works for very very small things (think nanomotors) and larger things (macroscopic systems, like the actual experimental setup). Just a beautiful piece of physics literature.
It just me or is it possible that It spin because of Electro Magnetic Force there 3 charges they all create a magnetic field and all are in field of each other would that make a spin.
There was a Magnet suspended in the air spinning by Electro Magnetic Force and they didn't call it antigravity... so I am little skeptical about this...
If any body know more or I have misunderstood something, please explain...
Who controls the information, controls the world...
See for yourself!
Sorry :-)
In all seriousness, keep up the good work.
Plus the earths magnetic field. What about the interaction with that or perhaps gravity
Did anyone else notice that they only spin once DC current is applied? This hints that the electric charge is used somewhere in the whole thing. I bet it would wear down the batteries after a while. Contact or no contact, the current is doing work.
Rotating the sphere (from rest) requires energy. Therefore, the DC voltage applied must require some current - where is it going? and what magnetic field does it produce? and how do all these fields interact? If not you could cover the spheres with insulation to maintain their charge, put them on really good bearings, and have a perpetual motion machine. At the bottom of the story is a big plug for this cool university. I suspect they're just trying to get more $tudents using neato-sounding, but bogus science.
I see hidden importance in the exact placement of the spheres, the angles and distances at which they are separated, which are not explained in the article. What I see happening is the spheres being positioned in such a way that the Coulomb forces act primarily (entirely?) in a tangential fasion on the two free-floating spheres, resulting in net rotation instead of net axial displacement. Could be merely a trigonometric stunt rather than new electrostatic observations.
hi, I like pancakes -.-- -.-- --..
There's no mystery...
:-)
Hell, I bet if someone hooked your balls up to a wall-outlet using some thin wire you'd start spinning too
I'm curious about something.. If you run DC current through a length of wire, you get an electromagnetic field oriented by the right hand rule, going around the wire. Could this be somehow causing the balls to spin? I'd like to try this experiment with the wires as short as possible to minimize the field oriented to the balls' axis. How would one prove that the electromagnetic field caused by the balls themselves isn't causing their own rotation? I wish I was gooder at physics.
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My girlfriend is looking forward to this.
Read James Blish's "Cities in Flight" to see the practical application as forseen by this visionary writer. Spindizzies for Everyman! Mayor Amalfi needs a new city manager. Let's spin!
Dead or Alive figured this out in the 80s.
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If the spin were being shown to be a result of quantum spin. (We haven't been shown that quantum "spin" is not the mechanism by which this occurs, either.) If it were then it would imply that all these funky "Free energy" systems would actually be possible. Unfortunately, since they are putting energy into the system, it is interesting and will (I am sure) lead to advances in our understanding of the universe, but doesn't say any such thing. And here I was hoping to run my car on free energy :(
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
this electrostatic motor?
Well, isn't that what they are for?
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In the papers figure 1, I think I see why sphere 3 turns clockwise, but I can't figure out why sphere 1 turns counterclockwise.
If the charge on 2 is positive, then 1 and 3 can be approximated by dipoles with their negative ends toward 2. 3, being closer to 2 than 1 is, will interact more with 1's negative end than its positive end, so it will turn clockwise. But it looks to me like a similar argument should have 1 turning clockwise as well.
I also can't figure out why the spheres move instead of electrons moving about on the spheres.
Can you clue me in here?
It if proven true explains Earth Mag Pole flips through the eons..
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fritjoff capra
start meditatin'
If these silver balls were rendered frictionless (polished), and then observed to spin, how would you know they were spinning? i.e. a perfectly polished sphere would look EXACTLY the same spinning or still. that is all.
TIME is the Aether...
Ok, IANA Physicist but if this new found effect is found to really hold true, does it mean that we could build electric motors with much higher RPM than is currently possible?
Consider the following:
As I am sure you all know, electric motors are limited in speed by the generated back EMF, and physically by how much current can be pumped through them without melting down and in DC motors by the friction from the brushes touching commutator on the motor (AFAIK). If this ball setup was put on a frictionless bearing (say a magnetic bearing in a vacuum) then as long as you could keep the constant charge getting delivered to the ball - which presumably bleeds away or something in order for there to be no violation of thermodynamics, it should just keep spinning faster and faster as long as the charge could be maintained until it catastrophically failed, showering all unfortunates near by with chunks of steel ball.
Have they yet to find some kind of "back Electrostatic field" equivalent to back EMF in magnetic motors that would stop the thing just getting faster, or is there already some other sound principal in physics that would stop this thing spinning up to destruction?
Even though the force generated might be tiny, if the force was constant independant of the speed of rotation, what would be opposing this from happening? Could you use an electron gun or something to deliver the electrons to it instead of a wire?
I read through the messages on this thread and couldn't find any conclusions. But it is one of the two:
1. This is a hoax or bad experiment.
2. This is real and rocks physics.
The original web pub is:
http://www.engr.ucr.edu/~wistrom/
I don't know if this is what they published in 'Europhysics Letters'. It's rather light for a physics publication.
As for the argument that the charge moves across the sphere at a speed low enough to create the torque is ludicrous, it flies in the face of Maxwell.
If it turns, (no pun intended), out that there is a measurable torque from an electrostatic field, fasten your seat belt. The physics world is about to be shaken. This is very major stuff, if real.
Best, Dan.