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You don't need a particularly hard vacuum to demonstrate the "feather and hammer" experiment.
Quote from: alancalverdYou don't need a particularly hard vacuum to demonstrate the "feather and hammer" experiment.I'm merely trying to reproduce the environment in the which they happened on the moon.
Two issues:(1) you can't "merely" reproduce the environment on the moon here on Earth--it takes effort!
(2) you don't necessarily need such high vacuum to reproduce the phenomenon you're after.
You "merely" need about 0.1g vertical acceleration. The atmospheric pressure is much less of a problem.
Any thoughts on this? E.g. what experiments using a vacuum chamber that large might a physics student might find very educational?
It just occurred to me that if I had one of those rooms in an old building which has concrete walls, ceiling and floor then I could make the room into a vacuum chamber. For the fun of it I could invite a bunch of these crackpots who claim that a rocket engine won't work in a vacuum to come and watch the demonstration. I'm looking into whether an Estes rocket engine will work on a vacuum. I think it does. The nice thing about having the chamber the size of a room is that the pressure in the room won't change by a noticeable amount so nobody could claim that when the rocket started it provided the gas on which to push off of. Then again I don't see why they don't use that to explain how a rocket can get into orbit. After all a crackpot is a crackpot is a crackpot, right? Lol!I think a lot of useful experiments might be able to be done by creating such a chamber. Who knows? I have a friend who's one of their top physicists at MIT. He might help me get a room to convert. The physic faculty might enjoy having it too.
I don't know how well concrete can hold a vacuum...
How are you planning on evacuating such a large room?
Quote from: chiralSPOHow are you planning on evacuating such a large room?Any vacuum pump will do. The pump can't tell how large a room is. The only thing different will be how long the pump needs to operate.
How about a small sealed glass container, perhaps only one square foot in volume?
If that doesn't convince the naysayer's, then we must assume their intellect is deficient.
Now the nuclear rocket engine could be a good longterm investment. It seems to me that once in space, you could collect and use almost anything as a propellant - the analogy of throwing stones out of a boat can be realised. I've no doubt that the Society for the Protection of Asteroid Ecology and Native Culture would object, but vaporising dust and rocks would be one heck of a way to accelerate large human habitats over very long distances.