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DDWFTTW - Tests.

So is he pretty clued up on it, this AirShowFan? I mean, I know it's not YOUR cart or spork's, but I see you two, perhaps along with a bunch of others like mender, as knowing this beast inside out now. Obviously that opinion is based on only understanding part of it myself, but also on seeing you answer questions confidently (that make sense), predict, test, fess up when you make a mistake, and put endless effort into educating people on all sorts of sites. I guess spork must now be more than anyone the DDW cart champion in terms of conversations (though obviously your less frequent posts are much more important ;)). I trust you guys, and feel that you ought to have a site. Not that I'm telling you what to do, and you're doing a lot already. It should just have a "JB/Spork Approved" logo.

Of course, ASF could be TAD, but if I thought such a thing, I'd keep it to myself. I see spork has posted there under 'Anonymous', which is a really great way to hide your identity. :D
 
John Freestone said:
So is he pretty clued up on it?
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I recall AirShowFan on at least one of the blogs. My recollection is that he had a pretty firm grasp on it. I vaguely recall a few things I would have changed, but I don't think anything major. I'll go back and give it a read.

I see spork has posted there under 'Anonymous', which is a really great way to hide your identity. :D
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I've never intentionally posted as anonymous, but there are a couple of blogs that let you post without logging in - so I have some posts without my signature.
 
First sol: Miss your insights and laconic humor. And yes, I’m aware of your standing in the physics community here, and even mentioned it when I was posting your replies on the thread the mods split into a topic here over to that evo thread on rdf. Glad to see you still think its possible spork created humber as the perfect strawman for getting his message across. Like you I doubt it though. If he even HAS any day job it’s hard to imagine he’d have the time, given all his other activity in cyberspace. Either way I certainly find the back and forth quite entertaining, and do wish you and Dan O and Fredrik would join in.

Many thanks for the time you’ve all spent-John, mender, Michael, Ross, spork, and even you JB, who are likely the most annoyed by my ‘willful ignorance.’ Perhaps never before in history have so many extremely bright people made such a stellar effort to pour understanding into such a small brain. I know, you’d all claim I’m a distant second to humber, but as you know I disagree and still see him as being brilliant whatever his game or mistakes he’s made. Just the fact sol-arguably one of the brightest bulbs in a marquee that would stand out in Vegas-thinks he might possibly be a creation of spork’s manly hands tells me humber is no idiot.

I will keep an eye out for posts here, but from now on will reply only on rdf. When the TVOCP thread was put on moderated status, I made the mistake of taking on the mods here in the management forum. I just receive my second formal warning today for being Off Topic, and again threatened with suspension. My last 4 replies to TVOCP never made it, though the last was a short reply to Dan and totally on topic. I would like to see this thread revitalized and continue, and fear my name coming up on the main menu will draw unwanted attention. I even considered PMing this message. So I’ll see you on the Dawk side, and hopefully will win my appeal and feel it’s safe to come back here soon. Not surprising I ran into trouble, eh? You guys all know what an arrogant, aggressive, self-glorifying troll I am. Only here did they find me out.

Sincere thanks again. You’d likely be amazed at the high regard I have for all of you. So why haven’t I drunk the cool aid? Cause I’ve chugged it before, and found that even a very impressive consensus can be proven wrong. I sip now, and wait to see what can be scaled and measured. Even questionable, preliminary testing can be quite informative. Old school, chaps. Don’t often grok the equivalency models you geniuses come up with, and one of many questions I asked that got lost in the noise was how Newton’s Cradle-which humber mentioned way back-wasn’t relevant to this discussion wrt the ke. Believe mender replied, but I recall more questions ‘razed’ and I never followed up.

Back to more thoughts and GS searches on frames of reference. I had seen those 4 NASA links you posted in an earlier search Mike-but thanks. To be honest found them hard to get my mind around. I mean on many levels were literally talking rocket science here! Is there an Idiots Guide? I read “Relativity for the Million” years ago. Did you guys catch the double entendre of humber’s Walmart frames, by the bye? This whole discussion has enriched my life immensely. Kudos to all. --Arpie
 
Well, well. With a tiny bit of digging, we find RCP being accused by JREF moderators of troll-like behavior.

I just can't fathom such a thing. :rolleyes::rolleyes:

JB
 
RP,

You are obviously such a nice guy at heart, it's a shame some of your writing comes across as caustic.

Then again, I guess the problem is that to most of us, Humber and Christophs errors are so "Deer in the headlights" obviously wrong, that we will immediately tend to interpret posts not realizing this as hostile, whilst that is not your intent.

I agree that Humber has something going on, if not just a skin as thick as a Rhino. That he can continue to argue against a whole bunch (and if you totted it up, with those that have come and gone, you'd be talking something like 25-2) and not even once look like he's considering that he is wrong in even one area, when he has frequently been caught out and shown the inarguable evidence, certainly takes stones of boulder-like proportions.

Perhaps, though, if I can acquaint you with some of his most egregious ideas, you will get a taste of why his continued obstinance gets up our noses so.

Physics is like a house. It needs foundations. Without them, any further building just falls down flat.

Humber's foundations are made of play-doh!

For instance, Newton is taken as the Father of modern Physics. His laws of motion, formulated 400 years ago, sent men to the moon and spacecraft at Neptune. They are simple, elegant and an understanding of them is essential to understanding anything else in the realm of physics.

Newtons first law establishes two golden principles.

Humber dis-agrees with both of them.

Firstly, the fact that a body keeps a constant velocity UNLESS acted on by a force (direct Humber quote- "You suggest motion without force!" ).

Secondly, that there is no privileged frame of reference, and that motion is relative (NUMEROUS refutations- the latest to your "Fly in plane" scenario- "The fly is traveling at 1m/s, no other interpretation is necessary").

What we've weaseled out of Humber over time is that he was raised in a remote community, has a diagnosed learning disability, and, while trade-qualified, seems to have no real formal education. The fact that he missed out on the very basic fundamentals of Physics, then went on and self-taught himself a great deal, but from an incorrect starting place, has lead to this rather unique individual who has a great deal of knowledge-all of it wrong!

A big difference between our fields and yours is that there IS absolute truth in the physical world. There are no grey areas. You may admire Humber for his skills in the Psychological world, but we just can't, because he isn't "Good" or "bad" or "better". You are either right or wrong, and he is amazingly consistent at being the latter.
 
Well said, Ross. You made me feel quite sorry for humber there for a moment. That summary is brilliant: "this rather unique individual who has a great deal of knowledge-all of it wrong!"

What I don't get is how he never got chucked off here for trolling. I guess it's part of his "special genius" - he knows how to stay impecably on topic while he talks complete rot. I guess you could start a thread here called "I am Jesus Christ, come again", and just keep reating "No, I am Jesus Christ, really, honest", and you're on topic. Have a little literary flight of fancy or whatever like RP does and you'd be trolling.

Oh well. The modding in this place is a mystery to me anyway. I just put some concerns to one of them about that other thread getting moderated indefinitely and some other general suggestions, and got my head bitten off.

Bye Arpie. See you over there, 'cause we're not all here.
 
ynot said:
Can’t see any purpose to weighing the pressure of the guidance arm at point of contact on the disk or running the cart without a prop.
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So, Ynot has now reached the point that he won't just simply do tests folks demand if they don't make sense to him.

Now, I am not critical of that position -- on the contrary, I understand it completely. It should just be noted that this is the *exact* position that when we took it with Ynot he was VERY, VERY critical of.

Ynot ask for many tests that just didn't make sense and when we resisted he wanted to use it against us. He even bragged early in his testing career that "the difference between you and I is I will at least perform the tests others request". LOL -- not anymore I see.

Welcome to the real internet world Ynot, where no effort is enough effort. Now perhaps you understand why we didn't feel the need to perform every silly test you threw our way.

JB
 
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Even though I’ve experienced the evidence firsthand I’ve never quite been able to totally accept that the treadmill and turntable tests accurately represent a cart being powered solely by wind (like many others). So I’ve built a circular wind tunnel to test DDWFTTW in a “real” wind and the cart is only powered by moving air. It’s not high-tech but it works. Things move around quite quickly so you need to use slow motion or frame by frame to see what’s happening.

This video was taken during construction to show and explain the workings . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=simRdTslucs&feature=channel_page

This video is the wind tunnel and cart in action (the uploaded quality is very poor compared to the original) . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxPegaBWa4o

The cart not only beats the wind it also beats the vanes that create the wind! The series of images below show the flap each time it comes around and you can clearly see that the cart has advanced from vane 4 to vane 1. There is an image missing between the last two because the flap was in the reflection on the plastic and couldn’t be seen. The sequence represents eight revolutions of the cart. It wasn’t taken from the video posted but the same thing can be seen in that video as well.

sequence.bmp


The vanes are turned by hand and it’s very easy to keep a constant speed. When the air is up to speed there is very little energy required to retain that speed so the vanes aren’t travelling much faster than the wind. The tunnel is totally enclosed and the air moves essentially as a single mass. The wind created would be at least as constant and stable as an outdoor wind.
 
Amazing work ynot. I love your circular wind tunnel. One of the complaints against wind tunnel tests has always been the length of the tunnel. Your version got rid of that objection totally.
 
Very sorry for the poor video quality. Will try to provide a better quality one as soon as I get time to do so.
 
You've certainly put a lot of work into this. It would be good if you can get hold of a high speed camera in order to view the movement in slow motion.
 
Ynot = anti-humber. If he doesn't understand something he builds until he does. LOL

Hopefully, since every single test he has done has mirrored the outcome of the simple treadmill test, Ynot can now rest easy that the 4 centuries old principles of Gallilean invariance are still invarient.

Kudos. Very nice work Ynot.

JB
 
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Kudos, ynot. Very good work. I don't think anyone's ever done that before. Now you need to put a little dog in it and see if it survives. Only joking, pet lovers.

ETA: Maybe Terry should have a ride!
 
Thanks for all the positive feedback.

Haven’t found out how to increase the frame rate on my Sony Handycam yet (if it’s possible) or tracked down a high speed camera that can film in slow motion. In the meantime I thought I would make a close up video that may be a bit easier to view. Not that the overall quality will be any better. I did it in a darkened room to reduce glare on the plastic but unfortunately the internal light is inadequate and things are a bit dark. Thought I would post it anyway as I don’t have time to do it again right now. Have started the video with everything at rest to show the start up. Also removed the top inner cowling so you can see through the tunnel (wasn‘t required anyway). The knocking sound shortly after start up is the tether “tail” hitting the surface it travels over before it settles down. Most of the other noise is the chatter of the gears and wind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC-EoGbdyzE

Yuck! The uploaded video is crap - sorry about that.
 
ynot said:
Thanks for all the positive feedback. Haven’t found out how to increase the frame rate on my Sony Handycam yet (if it’s possible) or tracked down a high speed camera that can film in slow motion.
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If you can't get slow motion, you could always try stop motion :)
 
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