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Superball!

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the things-you-don't-learn-in-physics-class dept.

Ben from Western writes "The Gravity and Chaos Club at Western Washington University dropped 4000+ balls 70 feet through one of our buildings. We took numerous pictures and filmed numerous videos including: from the side on the bottom watching the balls hit the ground, from the top watching the balls drop, from the bottom looking straight up as the balls dropped... Most of our club members are slashdot readers so we hope the general audience of slashdot will enjoy this as well."

26 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. Bah! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Drop 4000+ Bowling balls and I'll watch.

  2. Instant +5 Funny comment by neonstz · · Score: 5, Funny

    Putting several hundred megs of video online and then posting it on slashdot has never been a good idea.

    1. Re:Instant +5 Funny comment by WesG · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well at least he had the balls to post it... :-)

    2. Re:Instant +5 Funny comment by joe_bruin · · Score: 5, Funny

      they may have a lot of balls at Western Washington University, but apparently they're a little short in the fat pipe department.

  3. Cleanup? by Bob+Vila's+Hammer · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Not it!"

    --


    --"The perfect example of the man of action is the suicide." - William Carlos Williams
  4. slashdot readers? by Breakfast+Pants · · Score: 5, Funny

    If they were slashdot readers why would they intentionally slashdot themselves?

    --

    --

    WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
    1. Re:slashdot readers? by lplatypus · · Score: 5, Interesting
      If they were slashdot readers why would they intentionally slashdot themselves?

      Imagine the statistics that one could gather about the slashdot readership simply by processing the access log from a slashdotted site. One could answer questions like "how many Microsoft employees read slashdot from work?" or "how many people read slashdot from China?".

    2. Re:slashdot readers? by jafiwam · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, yeah... but rather it will be small subset of the Slashdot readership as the vast majority don't bother to read the linked article anyway...

  5. Won't someone think of the bandwidth by dswensen · · Score: 4, Funny

    So, 135 MB video files ready to download...

    Trying to use up the remainder of that research grant I see.

  6. Bittorrent ?? by jehreg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Special kudos to the first that makes a bittorrent available of the 117documentarypremium2.mov file.

  7. Thousand of hits by Liselle · · Score: 4, Funny

    I hope some of you folks in the club are also taking pictures of your webserver from different angles, as thousands of people hit it. I've gotten faster transfer rates using two cans and a string. Poor thing. :D

    --
    Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
  8. Feel the Burn by AttillaTheNun · · Score: 5, Funny
    "Most of our club members are slashdot readers so we hope the general audience of slashdot will enjoy this as well."

    Then you know what to expect next. Feel the burn of a good server slashdotting.

  9. Hope your not running a mailserver on the same box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Because mail would bounce quicker than you balls.

  10. Mirror of the pics here: by Saint+Aardvark · · Score: 4, Informative
    Managed to grab 'em from my cache; probably some dupes.

    http://saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com/drop

    --
    Carousel is a lie!
  11. /.'d by ee_moss · · Score: 4, Funny

    Boy, that site was taken off faster than a prom dress.

    1. Re:/.'d by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      "than a prom dress..."

      What's sad is that I initially read that as PROM... as in P-ROM, as in Programmable ROM.

      *sigh* I need a social life....

  12. Slashdotted by MadFarmAnimalz · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well well. Someone really dropped the ball.

    --
    Blearf. Blearf, I say.
  13. gravity AND chaos?! by milktoastman · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yours is the Gravity and Chaos club? Isn't that rather specific? I mean, do they actually have groupies for that sort of thing?

  14. what this is really about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny


    "Our geeky club only has 3916 hits since May. We're trying to increase that by atleast a whole factor. Watch us drop a bunch of balls! We're slashdot loners, so we hope that a good slashdotting will boost our self esteem."

  15. Basketball + Superball = WOW by G4from128k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Drop the pair with the superball immediately above the basketball. When the basketball hits the ground, it rebounds, hits the falling superball and sends the superball into orbit. (Caution: do NOT stand over the pair of balls when they hit, because the superball bounces far higher than the falling height).

    It's a fun demonstration of transfer of kinetic energy.

    --
    Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
    1. Re:Basketball + Superball = WOW by X_Bones · · Score: 4, Funny

      yep... did this once in my dorm, dropped the basketball+superball onto a hard tile floor. The superball rocketed sideways and hit my roommate right in the middle of the forehead; he damn near choked on the hot dog he was eating. Funniest thing I've ever seen...

      --

      the coolest club on /.
  16. Tomorrow's Story... by nick_davison · · Score: 5, Funny

    "The Gravity and Chaos Club at Western Washington University dropped 4000+ connections every 70 milliseconds through one of our servers. We took numerous pictures and filmed numerous videos including: from the server logs watching the server hit the ground, from telnet watching the server drop, from http looking straight up as the server dropped..."

    I'm thinking they can drop the "Gravity and" part of their name now. The other half, they've definitely earned. That they're almost all slashdot readers kind of implies this chaos was deliberately staged for the above "tomorrow's story".

  17. WARNING -- SPOILER! by CHaN_316 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I just saw the movie, and it was amazing! The 4000 balls were let go, and they fell, and they bounced all around. I didn't expect that ending...it was pretty cool! Although, character development wasn't that great... and one could argue this was mostly an action flick, but whatever, I still liked it.

    --
    "There is no spoon." - The Matrix
  18. Torrent Here! by nrlightfoot · · Score: 5, Informative

    117documentarypremium1.mov.torrent hosted by Head Hunter's tracker (it's named ball drop on his page)

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    what sig?
  19. RTFA? by GQuon · · Score: 4, Funny

    That would only gain statistics about people who actually RTFA. Could hardly include ALL slashdotters?

    --
    Irene KHAAAAAAN!
  20. hasn't anyone ever heard of by halr9000 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Freecache? I've never used it, but I've also not seen it used widely yet and I wonder why. Please check it out. It's perfect for this type of situation. Unlike bittorrent, there is no seeding, no extra steps. Quote:

    An example:
    Say an up-and-coming rock band, the RockLobsters, has a website that has a large file, say

    http://www.rocklobsters.com/videos/my-new-rock-v ideo.mpg

    that is 5MB-1GB in size. If it gets popular, they will lose their guitars and homes to their ISP because their bandwidth bill will shoot up.

    While keeping their big file on their webhost, the RockLobsters change the URL on their webpage to point to:

    http://freecache.org/http://www.rocklobsters.com /videos/my-new-rock-video.mpg

    When a user clicks on this,

    • the user downloads the file from a nearby machine on their ISP's network, and
    • the user is happy because it was fast.
    • The RockLobsters are happy because they distributed their file to another user but did not have to send the file from their ISP.
    • The RockLobsters' website's weblog registers that a download happened so they can ratchet up their expectation of breaking into the big leagues.
    • The user's ISP is happy because they only downloaded it to their network once and served it to many users thereby saving on their Internet connectivity bill.