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Originally posted by cupocoffee
My point is, accelerating something is supposed to require energy. But in the case of something orbiting the Earth, there's a constant acceleration vector toward the Earth, but no energy is spent, the Earth never runs out of energy and the force of Gravity never changes.
Originally posted by cupocoffee
Originally posted by buddhasystem
Oh please. There is plenty of energy spread around the Universe. Nuclear weapons is one shining example. As I said before answering the same inane question,
The inane question, that you quite clearly don't know the answer to.....
you can drive to the Grand Canyon and jump off the rim. Rest assured gravity will do work on your sad body. That doesn't mean that you can extract energy from vacuum, by jumping into the Canyon multiple times, even if you were to survive the fall.
Not that I particularly enjoy talking about my own death, but thanks for bringing Gravity up too. How is it that the Earth accelerates millions and millions of objects, all day long, every day, for thousands of years, but the force of Gravity never changes?
Accelerating things requires energy, doesn't it? So where does the Earth get all that energy from?
Originally posted by wmd_2008
LOOK at it this way object at rest on ground NO capacity to do work
object raised from ground level NOW has potential energy BUT you used energy to get it there!
When it falls it has kenetic energy becuase its moving YOU dont get anything for nothing.
So as you run up the stairs to the top of a building to throw yourself off
you have expelled energy to get there which will have produced heat (you get hot) some of the energy will be taken up by friction and some will be lost due to sound produced as your little feet hit the stairs.
having built some 100 prototypes, are now saying they are ready to license the technology for production.
Originally posted by cupocoffee
Originally posted by Arbitrageur
But I'm not sure what your point is.
My point is, accelerating something is supposed to require energy. But in the case of something orbiting the Earth, there's a constant acceleration vector toward the Earth, but no energy is spent, the Earth never runs out of energy and the force of Gravity never changes.
All I am trying to say is that all these different things make sense if you accept that there's a hidden (virtual) energy field that powers the whole Universe - that gives electrons their charge, that causes Gravity and Magnetism, etc.
Originally posted by cupocoffee
reply to post by buddhasystem
You still fail to explain where the energy for the force of gravity comes from, just like you failed to explain where the energy for magnetism comes from.
Sorry but Bearden's explanation - that it all comes from the vacuum energy - still seems like the best.
Originally posted by buddhasystem
Stock up on new age crystals and voodoo dolls.
Originally posted by -PLB-
You won't be able to extract any energy from the rubber band while it is in stretched position, even though there is a constant force at work. Just like you can't extract any energy from the earths gravitational field, even though there is a constant force at work.
Same explanation as the grand canyon example. Potential energy=kinetic energy=potential energy=kinetic energy.
Originally posted by cupocoffee
But you can get energy from the Earth's gravitational field. Just make an Oscillator, like a Pendulum.
Originally posted by cupocoffee
Originally posted by buddhasystem
Stock up on new age crystals and voodoo dolls.
No thanks, I'd rather stock up on magical force fields that come from nowhere, affect our reality constantly but require no energy and have no energy source........
Originally posted by Arbitrageur
All the energy is potential at the end of the swing, and kinetic at the bottom of the swing. It's just converting back and forth between the two. There's no energy from gravity in the pendulum, gravity just assists in the conversion back and forth between the two forms of energy.
When Clarke wrote his third law that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", I'll bet it never occurred to him that in this day and age people would still think of gravity and refrigerator magnets as magic (or as advanced technology).
Originally posted by Pilgrum
Originally posted by cupocoffee
My point is, accelerating something is supposed to require energy. But in the case of something orbiting the Earth, there's a constant acceleration vector toward the Earth, but no energy is spent, the Earth never runs out of energy and the force of Gravity never changes.
Actually an object in a stable orbit experiences 2 accelerations, a 'natural' one (gravity) and an artificial one determined by V^2/R (centrifugal and centripetal forces). A stable orbit implies that the 2 forces are equal and opposite therefore cancelling each other out and without any outside influences like friction losses or other comparatively large enough interfering sources of gravity, the orbit will continue indefinitely. It does take energy to accelerate to the speed where the balance is achieved and in the case of planets and moons that energy has been there since their formation.
Originally posted by cupocoffee
Originally posted by wmd_2008
LOOK at it this way object at rest on ground NO capacity to do work
object raised from ground level NOW has potential energy BUT you used energy to get it there!
When it falls it has kenetic energy becuase its moving YOU dont get anything for nothing.
So as you run up the stairs to the top of a building to throw yourself off
you have expelled energy to get there which will have produced heat (you get hot) some of the energy will be taken up by friction and some will be lost due to sound produced as your little feet hit the stairs.
But meteors and things that come to Earth from elsewhere in the solar system fall to Earth from the atmosphere as well, and NO energy was spent to put them up there.
And as I already pointed out, the Earth causes a constant acceleration on anything that orbits it as well. All those satellites in orbit, they are constantly accelerating towards the Earth. (Again note the difference between velocity and rate-of-change of velocity)
But the force of Gravity of the Earth never weakens and it never runs out of energy.
You absolutely CAN get "something for nothing" with Gravity.
How does Gravity actually work, where does the energy come from? Who cares, right? After all, it's just another "inane" question......
[edit on 21-6-2010 by cupocoffee]
Originally posted by buddhasystem
Your exposition is incorrect. In the inertial frame of reference, such as a stationary observer on Earth (an approximation but not a bad one for our purposes), a satellite will solely experience the pull of gravity and no other forces. Zero, zelch, nada. And that's why it goes around in orbit. If you swing a stone tied to a rope, in circles, again it will be only the tension of the rope. The "centripetal" etc forces are used to simplify treatment of mechanics in non-inertial systems, but this is not essential. So again, an orbiting body is directed by only ONE force.
Originally posted by cupocoffee
Originally posted by -PLB-
You won't be able to extract any energy from the rubber band while it is in stretched position, even though there is a constant force at work. Just like you can't extract any energy from the earths gravitational field, even though there is a constant force at work.
But you can get energy from the Earth's gravitational field. Just make an Oscillator, like a Pendulum.
But I guess now I'll just get a barrage of unconvincing analogies and metaphors and examples to try to explain away Pendulums too.......
Originally posted by wmd_2008
Well why doesn't a PENDULUM swing forever if the never ending source of energy on it is GRAVITY.