The famous hammer and feather experiment is ultimately an unscientific and misleading observation. Of course, from a distance of four feet between the hands of the astronaut to the surface of the moon, the hammer and feather would appear arrive at the same time. ...But were you to drop a hammer and the feather from 100 miles above the moon, the hammer will arrive first because random interference of interplanetary atoms and streaming particles from the solar wind would interfere, thus changing the feathers momentum more than the hammer due to the difference in mass - just like atmospheric interference within the atmosphere of Earth, the atmosphere would nullify the experimental observation. OK, so lets try the experiment by dropping the hammer and feather in the thinnest known intergalactic space, towards a bigger more distant distant object. Again, the hammer will still arrive before the feather because even out here, any given cubic centimeter of space is subject to virtual particles, background radiation, and the whole atoms traveling at tremendous speed. The fact is, the feather and hammer will never travel in a pure vacuum - because such a vacuum does not exist in space. One of the most exciting aspects of science is that we are continually confronted with data that show increasingly fine measurements. One example might be discovering the anomalous precession of the perihelion of Mercury. This nitpicking measurement became one of Einsteins observational supports for the existence of Relativity. (Acknowledging here that some folks who frequent this site may dispute relativity.) We now know that the hammer and feather do not fall at the same rate in space over distance. Nature is offering up an observation with huge implications. In contemporary science, any astronomer or cosmologist worth their salt is aware that space can no longer be considered empty (anywhere!), which has raised many fundamental and intriguing questions. Because of this, I think it is misleading to expose young minds to the hammer and feather experiment without the further explanation of the condition of space, because without this acknowledgment, the experiment infers that space is an absolute vacuum, which we now know to be wrong. We probably lose a lot of future creative input from these young budding intellects by not adding the addendum to the experiment. - Apart from that, the experiment is pretty cool. :-) youtu.be/5C5_dOEyAfk
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 16:30:18 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015