Friday, June 28, 2013

Newton Gone Wild

Sometimes people tend to think that basic Newtonian physics (equal and opposite reactions, bodies in motion remaining in motion, etc.) is kind of clockwork and boring, especially when compared with the weirdness of quantum physics and all of its strangely-behaving and strangely-named particles and effects.

BBC TV presenter Steve Mould, though, has among his several videos some things that show it is exactly the opposite. Among them is the one discussed here at io9.com, in which one end of a chain of metal beads is dropped over the side of its container and subsequently does a number of neat tricks as it spirals out.

Some folks with a slow-motion camera met with Steve and showed his experiment using their equipment, making it look even that much cooler. The original YouTube video is on Mould's site here, along with several others.

No wonder the universe is weird.

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