This has been a whirlwind time period, and many things have happened, though NOT a self lifter yet, oh shucky darn! First, those of you thinking about joining my email group, you're too late, it over-ran me BIG time, and I had to move it into a more public (and less typing for me) Forum format.
I'd like to thank Kelly Asay for getting us a way to communicate GIT stuff while giving me more time to concentrate on my web site, and taking the pressure off of me, I was getting down right terse and cranky with the avalanch of communications! Those that want to drop by on the fun, and to get a look at the kind of things you want to know, like how to, how come, how does, what about, who has, who should, how do I, or why bother, Drop by the GIT Forum at ctoday.com!
We've become such a chatty group of folks, several took over another Forum (with permission I hear, from reading the mail and messages) at Inter-corporate.com's Engineering Forum, and I've been known to haunt that Forum too!
Arthur Forge tried another version of his Forgeplate variants, and got marginally (disputable) successful results from his latest construction, and decided to soup it up, and nearly had another GITastrophy! Apparently the orbitals decided to screach at him and the sparks were flying as the enourmous traction needs weren't up to it, and he nearly slagged his machine. Read his report In the GIT Forum
Knowing that the forces that want to make the orbitals slide in the race get HUGE (destroying thrust, and a few machines!), forced me to come up with another variant, one that would more likely work right off the bat.
The amount of failures is growing, but not enough to negate the successes (after all, it IS supposed to be impossible! ;), so reports had me break out the forces involved, and design a theory test machine that I call Thor's Hammer GIT that is now available for you. The link gets to the page, you were notified here first!.
Thor's Hammer GIT uses Joao Andrade's discovery of a tangential thrust on your orbital body from orbital torque in his swing arm torque test. I verified it myself with a hand drill (holding it by the very end of it's handle tightly, plug it in, and the whole drill body gets propelled from the torque reaction!), dang, it works!
Since a variable orbit rate machine splits itself out into centrifugal forces going one way, and your tangential accelerations (speeding up and slowing down the weight), going the other, that tug of war can be won with using orbital torque to share the tangential forces, and a truely unbalanced centrifugal wins!
If that machine is a bit much for you, here's a simpler test to run, especially if you have an air hockey table nearby.
The test unit on the right is simply a chunk of plywood about a foot square, an electric motor on one corner with a gyro mass attatched to it's axel, a counter weight (battery pack shown) to make it circularly balanced (it will balance on knife edge corner to corner so the center of gravity is centered on your platform), and a way to switch it on that doesn't disturb it's motions, say a thin wire suspended from over-head, (you don't get your fingers into the mix!).
There are two possibilities here, when you kick on the juice to the spinner, either it will move from a pivot point in the very center of your air table floated square (bottom right) or nearer the spinner corner. I haven't tried this test yet, but if you get a swing from nearer the corner, you now have proof of a more linear motion from an angular input, further identifying the source of the force that have so many people building GITs!
Frankly I haven't seen much at all in the literature on off center torque applied to a free floating mass, though knowing (and feeling kinsethetically) that the torque point "should" have more of an influence than the base inertial mass itself in deciding which way to turn, this test should be run. If you get to it before I do, let me know, you may get some of this GIT glory for yourself!
ANYway, I spent a bunch of time on modeling Thor's Hammer GIT (named for several reasons, you figure it out ;), I'm enjoying some time without hundreds of letters to answer, (well, I still have over 150 I haven't answered yet, but I've asked everyone to resubmit them to the forum so I could get sane and my sense of humor back), so I wanted to let my quiet readers to have a look at what the others that write me have so far have seen, and it's so late here in Oregon that the sun is coming up, so Stay Tuned, and I'll see you in the GIT Forum!
5:30 am Tuesday Morning, 19 May 1998 - DavidC
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