And now , for your Monday dawn moment of zen , Slinkys in slow motion . Whether it ’s dropped from centre story , or from the roof of a edifice , the bottom of a fully extended slinky will come out to vacillate in midair when released .
What lets the Slinky ’s bottom hover like that ? It all boil down to the summation of forcefulness . Remember : a Slinky is just a great , open natural spring . When the spring is fully extended like you see in the video , it has reach out a head of equilibrium wherein the the downward forcefulness of gravity is adequate and opposite to the up tensity of the coils above the bottommost remnant of the Slinky .
When released , the top of the Slinky has two force work on it : the force of gravity , and the violence of the outpouring , which is also pulling it downward . The bottom of the slinky has two forces acting on it , as well ; the difference is that while gravity is still pulling downward , the forcefulness of the give ’s tension is rather deplumate the bottommost coils upward . The two forces cancel eachother out , hence the hovering effect .
By the same logic , the to the full debase Slinky ’s core of mass experience adequate spring tension from both side of the slinky . These forces cancel one another out , so the CoM falls toward the ground at the standard 9.8 molarity / s2 . To quote Bill Unruh , a physics prof at the University of British Columbia who recently wrotethis awing paperdescribing Slinky purgative ( including its behavior on other planets ): “ There is a lot of interesting physics in a very , very round-eyed arrangement . ” [ VeritasiumandarXivviaExplore ]
PhysicsScience
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