You are indeed correct. You got me there. :0Gregory wrote: Oh, no! There is something in their connection, which would cause them to fall faster!
And this is Newton's law of universal gravitation.
The attraction between the earth with a mass of 6.0 x 10^24 kg and five equal masses either connected or not has such a slight change as to be practically nonexistent.
This isn't the case. As the mass increases that force of gravitational attraction increases also. The greater the force of attraction the higher the velocity. The crux of the matter is the comparative value of the 'dropping' mass to the earth's mass.Greater amount of masses has greater amount of inertia (resistance for acceleration), so it compensates for the gravitational acceleration, and this is why all the material objects MUST fall with the exact same rate and speed.
The difference between one ton or two compared to the earth's mass is of little difference. Two tons will fall faster over the same vertical drop but you could never measure it.
It stopped when the simulation ran out of steps. The first part of the graph (900 seconds) the cog is trending upward. Both the upper and lower extremes are moving up and hence the average is also. That's beyond scientific explanation. Only in simulation is this possible. :)Your CoG winding graph looks cool. It's a pity that the cog drops after, and the wave height becomes greater... Doesn't it stop? (that would be interesting)
In the last part of the graph the average level is horizontal. None the less the extremes are expanding away from that average. If that were all this pendulum could do you would need to make use of latches to hold the mass at a higher potential energy level.
The slanted lines on the cog tracking correspond to the rapid vertical spikes on the graph.