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Scientists Create 'Fastest Man-Made Spinning Object'
dryriver sends this news from the BBC:
"A team of researchers claims to have created the world's fastest spinning man-made object. They were able to levitate and spin a microscopic sphere at speeds of up to 600 million revolutions per minute. This spin speed is half a million times faster than a domestic washing machine and more than a thousand times faster than a dental drill. The work by the University of St Andrews scientists is published in Nature Communications. Although there is much international research exploring what happens at the boundary between classical physics and quantum physics, most of this experimental work uses atoms or molecules. To do this they manufactured a microscopic sphere of calcium carbonate only four millionths of a meter in diameter. The team then used the minuscule forces of laser light to hold the sphere with the radiation pressure of light — rather like levitating a beach ball with a jet of water. They exploited the property of polarization of the laser light that changed as the light passed through the levitating sphere, exerting a small twist or torque. Placing the sphere in vacuum largely removed the drag due to any gas environment, allowing the team to achieve the very high rotation rates. In addition to the rotation, the team observed a 'compression' of the excursions or 'wobble' of the particle in all three dimensions, which can be understood as a 'cooling' of the motion. Essentially the particle behaved like the world's smallest gyroscope, stabilizing its motion around the axis of rotation."
"You guys ain't even seen angular velocity until you've seen my press conference work."
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
"A team of researchers claims to have created the world's fastest spinning man-made object."
A politician?
--
BMO
Yup. I saw it too in the byline and user Slashbox areas. Gone after a page refresh.
I don't care why you're posting AC
No, it spins at 666,666 RPM. Yeah, I know, all dentists are sadists.
n/t
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Are you telling me a dental drill spins at 600,000 RPM? I seriously doubt that. That's ridiculous, it would burn your teeth and anything else it touched. You wouldn't even be able to hear the high pitch whine of the drill at that speed.
I guess that depends who you ask Wikipedia the speed of a modern dental drill is up to 800,000rpm - but the source cited only supports up to 400,000 rpm. these guys say somewhere around 350,000rpm and 400,000rpm - which seems to agree with the other product results turned up by a google of "dental drill rpm."
So -- if you're looking for a quick fake fact and you accept wikipedia as gospel truth - yeah, dental drills operate at over 600,000rpm - apparently the folks that sell dental drills say 300,000rpm to 400,000rpm is more realistic - still in the range of 1/1000th - off by a factor of 33% - but its PR speak.
I spent most of the time I was reading the summary trying to come up with some really clever/sarcastic/funny comment (Electrons spin faster! -- um, no that's lame. I got it, if you spin it backwards, it just says "Paul is dead" in a chipmunk voice.)
But then I got to this:
The team then used the minuscule forces of laser light to hold the sphere with the radiation pressure of light — rather like levitating a beach ball with a jet of water. They exploited the property of polarization of the laser light that changed as the light passed through the levitating sphere, exerting a small twist or torque.
That is so indescribably cool I just had to let that stand on its own. There is so much physics wrapped up in this one experiment.
I'll just leave it at an obligatory XKCD:
Science, it works bitches.
600,000 RPM is 10,000 revs/s. Depending on the nature of the whine, the bulk of the energy may be at harmonics, but given anything short of absolute perfect balance and symmetry, there will definitely be some at the fundamental. Most people have no problem hearing 10 kHz, and many young people will pick up the first harmonic at 20KHz.
Well, 300000rpm would be 5000Hz, which seems to be about the right frequency of the noise made by my dentist's drill. I'm pretty sure dental drills are compressed air driven, so yeah, another factor of 2 or so is probably reasonably achievable.
His body doesn't count as a man-made object, or this wouldn't have broken the record.
Indeed -- we aren't discussing woman-made objects here.
I know the team member who first suggested this research. As a kid, he was obsessed with spinning tops, bicycle wheels and everything else he could find that spins really fast. Looks like that passion of his spun out of control as he grew older!
Is the fastest spinning object, man-made or otherwise? Looking for some perspective on this.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Syriasly
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Chuck Norris does not spin his right foot around and roundhouse kick you in the face. He spins the world with his left foot.
Optical trapping can sometimes make use of radiation pressure, but that's generally not how you optically trap a particle, nor is that how they did it. Radiation pressure is characterized by absorption and reflection (like tennis balls hitting a wall). To trap a particle, you use refraction (when modeling the system with ray optics).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_pressure
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_tweezers
The change in index of refraction between water (or air) and your particle causes the light rays to "change direction" as they enter and leave the particle. There is a net momentum transferred to the particle in the direction of the focus of the laser beam, thus trapping the particle at the focus.
I used to have a brushless R/C motor that would turn 65,000 RPM, and I decided it would be cool to try and make a VCR head turn 250,000 RPM.
It would spin like a top for over an hour, and made for one awesome display of 'look the fuck out' if you let it fall on edge like a wheel.
The gyroscopic force was crazy, it was hard to move it all. I would let it slide out of the bearings and land upside down on my table and then lift the table up slightly and make it crawl uphill and try and drive it around as it spun on the stub of the shaft.
My quest for 500,000 RPM ended rather abruptly as the bearing stuck and pulled the head and very unbalanced lower part (where the head used to be mounted that contained the bearing) out of my hand and it began tearing chunks out of whatever got in the way as it bounced around my room and I ran like hell!
I wish I had another VCR;)
(I'm not responsible for any injuries if you try this yourself)
Cheers!
Per minute? You Americans use some odd units. The correct unit for dental drill rotational speed is Hurts.
This spin speed is half a million times faster than a domestic washing machine
Similarly, I could say "30 is 10 times more than 3". The summary didn't claim that the sphere in question spun 500krpm faster than a washing machine, but 500k times faster, which is another claim entirely (i.e. that a washing machine spins at about 1200rpm).
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
No, it explains that you wasted some poor teacher's time.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.