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My granddad was an inventor. One time he had a long slinky (I think he must have joined a few together) that was hanging, stretched out parallel to the floor, o
by danbmil99 13y ago
My granddad was an inventor. One time he had a long slinky (I think he must have joined a few together) that was hanging, stretched out parallel to the floor, on a number of closely spaced fishing lines, attached to a 4x4 overhead.
At one end he had a geared down variable-speed motor that pushed the slinky with a sine wave motion. I believe the other end was fixed. In between, he had painted various parts of the slinky blue. The blue parts seemed to be completely still, even as the areas between the blue pulsated back and forth.
He said it was a demonstration he built "to show my ninkompoop investors about standing waves".
- mikegriff 13y agoThat's a good way to show standing waves, but did they understand what they were looking at, or did they just think it was some sort of a trick?
- danbmil99 13y agoWell I think the "ninkompoops" invested about $10M in the 60's so they must have thought he had something going on. I guess it was that era's version of a dog/pony show.
- pbhjpbhj 13y agoWhat were they investing in?
- danbmil99 13y agoGramp's machine was called "Big George". It vibrated stuff at insane frequencies and amplitudes. At various times he claimed it 1) Made paper stronger 2) Aged wine 3) Could filter industrial smokestack pollution But after many years working with engineers, I finally realized that gramps just wanted to make the loudest, highest frequency sound possible. His patent (one of many, no he wasn't a troll, he built everything he patented) http://patent.ipexl.com/US/3708033.html http://patent.ipexl.com/US/3708033.html