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Scale Models Can "Compute" Casimir Forces
KentuckyFC writes "Place two conducting parallel plates a few nanometres apart and the well-known but difficult-to-measure Casimir force will push them together. The force depends crucially on the shape of the plates but nobody is exactly sure how. That's because calculations with anything other than flat plates are fiendishly difficult and measurements are even harder. Now a group at MIT has come up with an ingenious new way to investigate Casimir forces. What the team has noticed is a mathematical analogy between the Casimir force acting on microscopic bodies in a vacuum and the electromagnetic behavior of macroscopic bodies floating in a conducting fluid. Their idea is to build a centimeter-scale metal model of the system they want to investigate, place it in salt water, and bombard it with microwaves and see what happens. The team says the experiment does not measure the force on the scale model but instead a quantity that is mathematically related to the force. So the experiment is not a simulator but actually an analog computer that calculates the force (abstract). What's exciting is that the method should for the first time give researchers a way of testing nano-machines designed to exploit the Casimir force."
They understand the Casimir effect and the related equations, they just can't solve them. So what they do is they find another problem that has the same equations and they measure on that system. If both systems behave using the same equations, then the result should be the same.
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The artist/writer forgot that Mathematics (and, by extension, all the rest) are just an extension of Philosophy.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
The way the Casimir force works is that when you put smooth plates very very close together, they are pulled closer... we get a force pulling the plates together.
I assume there is some reason this wouldn't work, but could we harness this "force" and convert it into useable energy?
Just attach something to the back of both these plates that will be pulled on by the plates as they try to move together. The "something" would not allow the plates to get together, but as far as my understanding goes, the plates would "perpetually" try to move together and you'd have a constant generation of energy.
But current physics laws don't allow endless energy for free, so what's the catch with this one? Is the amount of pull so small it would take ages to build up enough energy to be usable?
logic puzzle: "it was the bus' last stop - the bus driver got off"
for(b=(a=0)+1;;b+=(a+=b))print(a+"\n"+b+"\n");
That helps even further, as does the "boat" analogy below. I was hoping for the car analogy, but I will take what I can get.
same reason you can't harvest energy when you hang a bowling ball on a string. Like Earth and the bowling ball, they attract each other, but potential energy is just potential energy
Yes, they do.
That's all that sucking is, creating a low-pressure area for everything else to flow into.
By your implication, nothing sucks, at all.