Ignoring friction and conservation of momentum, the blue ball has enough energy to reach twice its original height. If you kept adding tracks in this way, the last ball in the track series would have enough energy in it to go x times higher than it started, where x is the number of tracks.
Disclaimer: I reserve the right not to know what I'm talking about and not to mention this possibility in my posts. This disclaimer also applies to sentences I claim are quotes from anybody, including me.
Jonathan, so you think that the effect of gravity will continue to add to the energy of the balls as they are propelled by the previous balls energy?
This is an interesting question to me.
If I am in an aeroplane and fire a shot from a rifle towards the ground 100 meters away. Does gravity add energy to the bullet beyond what it would normally?
In other words say I drop the bullet and it gains [x] amount of energy because of gravity. Is the bullet fired gunpowder energy + [x] or is it just gunpowder energy?
I'm not sure I understood the bullet analogy. If you drop a bullet from a given height it will gain kinetic energy from gravity. Then if you shoot it straight down from the same height, it will have gun energy + gravity energy.
"Theoretically, ignoring friction it would take three tracks to get enough energy to lift the two previous balls back to the top....."
You could do it with two tracks and have none left over, or you could do it with three tracks and have some left over. But in order for the process to be cyclic, that bit left over must be used to lift the third ball back up, and then we will just break even.
Disclaimer: I reserve the right not to know what I'm talking about and not to mention this possibility in my posts. This disclaimer also applies to sentences I claim are quotes from anybody, including me.
I guess what I am trying to talk about is consceptually the ways in which energy can be transfered with out loss upwards contra to gravity.
Sort of like if you imagine a thousand dominos all set to tip over and every domino as it hits the ground face down transferes that energy back to the dominos at the start setting them on their edge again only to fall over again and repeat the cylce.
And the sound they make as they fall can be channeled to vibrate a speaker membrane that vibrates a magnet thus creating free electricity...and so on....
The car and domino examples would just break even, any sound or friciton would stop them.
Also, energy technically can't be moved upward without loss, because lifting energy through a given height is the same as lifting E/(c^2) worth of mass over the same height.
Disclaimer: I reserve the right not to know what I'm talking about and not to mention this possibility in my posts. This disclaimer also applies to sentences I claim are quotes from anybody, including me.
Also, energy technically can't be moved upward without loss, because lifting energy through a given height is the same as lifting E/(c^2) worth of mass over the same height.
does this apply to the transfer happening in our steel rod and ball race scenario?
Is the steel rod transfering energy? Or is it transfering something else?
Yes, it is trasfering energy literally like a sound wave. But the energy that comes out of the bar goes into the ball and comes back down in the ball, and so it regains the little energy lost when the energy was on its way up. Kinda confusing...
Disclaimer: I reserve the right not to know what I'm talking about and not to mention this possibility in my posts. This disclaimer also applies to sentences I claim are quotes from anybody, including me.
Disclaimer: I reserve the right not to know what I'm talking about and not to mention this possibility in my posts. This disclaimer also applies to sentences I claim are quotes from anybody, including me.
Here's an approximate velocity versus time graph. Notice the green line is the average velocity.
Attachments
Brachistochrone.GIF (1.68 KiB) Viewed 12617 times
Disclaimer: I reserve the right not to know what I'm talking about and not to mention this possibility in my posts. This disclaimer also applies to sentences I claim are quotes from anybody, including me.
