do-it-yourself: gravitational experiment renders FE invalid

Hi there,

if you still believe that gravity does not exist:
There is a howTo on the web that leads you through the Cavendish-experiment that anyone can repeat to wittness gravity with his own eyes:

http://www.fourmilab.com/gravitation/foobar/

Given this experiment, we can at least assume that mass is coupled to a gravitational force. Assuming further that even a flat earth has considerable mass and therefore considerable gravity, the idea of having anything accelerating upwards at 9.81m/(s*s) can no longer be considered as valid, since this interferes with the result of the Cavendish experiment.

i can't belive there are people who "don't believe in gravity"... so does that make those people not exist???  8-)

seriosly.... just look at jupiter, and its galilean moons... what is holding these moons in place? gravity... what keeps our moon in an orbit around earth? gravity.. what keeps earth in orbit around the sun? wait for it.... yes thats right.... GRAVITY!!

plus, if you looked at the moon as it orbited jupiter, you'd see each face of the moon, confirming that it is spherical...

but then again... anyone who believes the earth is flat obviously doesn't own a telescope... or a science textbook for that matter!

do yourself a favour and google "sir issac newton"....

please, a FE'er

explain the tides... without gravity, on a FE model... i'm very curios to see how that would work (without the water going over the edge)

I understand your point, "FE is BS", fully! ; )

I also call a telescope my own and use it to watch Saturns Rings etc. (really, absolutely great view, makes me glad to share it with someone!), but my feeling is that this forum is more about arguing than about science. What FE'ers are always asking for is a "proof of gravity that they can wittness". Other planets is to abstract for them to be part of their understanding (I don't believe this, but at least that is part of their discussion style). So I have posted that experiment to give them something they can do "at home".

especially within the last couple of months, saturn has been SPECTACULAR.... full on ring show... i'm lovin it.... its nearly over though... (the view that is)

Lets face it, they're not looking for "proof of gravity that they can witness", they are looking for pieces of evidence and theory that they can argue against on a pedantic level, such as "you haven't personally proved it all yourself", or "it COULD be like this... although we're going to fail to point out that our argument is a thousand times less likely to be true than yours", and various individual arguments which do not add up.
It's clear that anyone who objectively and intelligently looks at all the evidence put forward cannot say that they are convinced the world is flat. They could be correct in saying that there is still doubt regarding the matter, which is the same for ANY theory ever devised or even "proved", because that is the nature of life and the universe. But for them to say they are genuinely convinced that the world is flat, well, they are either lying attempting to delude you, or they are deluding themselves.

Given this experiment, we can at least assume that mass is coupled to a gravitational force. Assuming further that even a flat earth has considerable mass and therefore considerable gravity, the idea of having anything accelerating upwards at 9.81m/(s*s) can no longer be considered as valid, since this interferes with the result of the Cavendish experiment.

Not all flat earthers disbelieve in gavity. There are also some who believe in gravity, but believe (for some unknown reason) that the earth generates no gravity of its own.

FEers DO disbelieve in a central-force gravity... they believe in either an acceleration  force, or a unidirectional gravity and an absolute down.

Which is incredibly stupid for numerous reasons.

The Cavendish experiment shows a central-force, and thus disproves the Flat Earth.... thing... I mean... it isn't a theory it's a joke.

an entertaining joke  

FEers DO disbelieve in a central-force gravity... they believe in either an acceleration  force, or a unidirectional gravity and an absolute down.

This is not true. Erasmus proposed a model in which the flat earth resides on top of an extremely long cylinder, whose central force gravity exists and exerts force nearly enough straight down so as to be indistringuishable from the gravity of a spheroid earth.

But then, earth is not flat. Then it's a cylinder.

I have to think about that... done

But then, earth is not flat. Then it's a cylinder.

I have to think about that... done

You didn't think for long enough.  It would still be flat on the ends, which is where we'd be living.  Even if the Earth were "pancake-shaped" it would still be cylindrical... just not very long.  What does length have to do with flatness?

Hang on I thought you said there were turtles underneath the Earth...

Are they on the other end of the cylinder?

And then of course we're fighting about the definition of flat, so lets cut a long story short by saying that it can't be flat because there are mountains...

There... not flat. Can't be a cylinder because its got Jagged edges.

Moving on from that pointless FE-ish argument, I do apologise for not having been familiar with Erasmus' idea of a cylindrical Earth, but I seriously have had people telling me about unidirectional gravity and stuff so I assumed it was canon... it as on this website and regular.

Anyway, if you believe in central-force gravity then do you also believe in the geocentric universe... or is that also not canon...?

What does length have to do with flatness?

Length has nothing to do with flatness. But as you can see I have not touched the matter of length here. Therefore, back to the cylinder (this is off-topic, I know, but its the current discussion):

A cylinder is at least not flat in all places. It depends on your perspective. It has both, round and flat faces, so both is correct. Eventually, all flat earth models I saw here assume the form of a disc, which has also a rounded edge (I never heard of a theory of a rectangled earth, but you can of course create one now, if you like). In general you can say that the idea of a round and flat earth are not mutually excluding each other. The problem only arises when a spherical earth (SE) and a disc-shaped earth (DE) are discussed.

I guess a cylinder is a good compromise between FE and RE, so I propose the CE to be the most diplomatic earth-shape model. To handle the matter of gravity (a force-vector orthogonally pointing into the ground) it should of course be of infinite length and of 0 energy to avoid collision with the result of the Cavendish experiment.

Gravity doesnt exist?

That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Gravity exists, because the Earth draws gravity to its center.

Yah, but look that isn't reasoning it's just a statement... we understand your exasperation of course.

I guess it is not gravity that is attracted to the center, but energy. But I got your point, this post is just meant to prevent the FE'ers from the nitpicking ; )