Saturday, March 3, 2012

Magic brooms, planet alignments, woo and physics

There has been a flood of statuses about and pictures of folks being able to stand a broom up, on it's bristles and have it stand with no visible supports.  The visual is shocking: an everyday object doing something it doesn't do every day.  Standing there, all askew, shattering your conception of reality.  Are the planets aligned causing some apex of a quantum vortex, entangling the static charge of the broom and the natural conductivity of the floors space?  Could it be, with the earth current tilt in space, the gravity of the earth is slightly 'off,' thus accounting for an object defying our reality and standing impossible crooked?

In a word, no.  In two words, hell no.

The image of a standing broom with no support is a shock, but it's actually completely normal physics.  The planets' alignment, tides, earth's tilt on her axis, aurora, solar flares all have effectively zero effect on the broom at all - and that's every single day of the year.

Understanding this situation has nothing to do with the 'woo-woo' explanations proposed above at all - it's simple physics.  Where is the center of gravity/mass of the broom, and how is that spread out over a determined surface area.  Here is a visual example:





















See!  Not magic - SCIENCE!

1 comment:

  1. http://youtu.be/0sF-vfbhjkg

    Let them think what they want to, the rumor was worth laughing at these girls :)

    ReplyDelete