h a l f b a k e r yThere goes my teleportation concept.
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This would be a candle flame
Accelerometer for subway cars so that
standing passengers could more
accurately observe the actual acceleration
of a subway car and thus maintain a
better
ballance.
The subway cars in my city accelerate
and
deccelerate unevenly - I am guessing this
is
because the poor subway drivers have
no one to talk to all day and nothing to
look at except for a dark tunnell and so
they end up communicating in the only
way they can, with their accelerator foots
(or would that be feet?). The response
that they receive through this kind of
communication would come in the form
of
kick back from the ballancing
readjustment that the people on the train
excecute in response to the acceleration
vagaries. The response would probably
depend on how many people are on the
train and how many of them are standing
up -- and how strong their readjustment
to the change in acceleration is. But I am
convinced there is some kind of
communication going on there. I would
like to be able to communicate more
fluently with these poor lonely subway
car
drivers and so would like to reccommend
to the subway system that they install
accelerometers in each car to make
communicationn more visual and less of
an inner ear thing. The accellerometers
could be simple candle flame
accelerometers (see link) or, even better,
just a stick on a spring with the
movement
dampened by foam, so that when the
train
accelerated more the stick pointed
toward
the back of the train.
candle flame accelerometer
http://www.physicsc.../circles/u6l1b2.gif [JesusHChrist, Mar 05 2006]
[link]
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Your link needs to be edited - take out the break before "circles". |
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<later> - ahh, that's better. |
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Once the subway car accelerates, your own inner ear should tell you something's up, but that's already too late to help you to keep your balance, as the nearest pole recedes before your outstratched fingers, and you hurtle back onto the people behind you. |
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You need to be braced *before* sudden accelerations or decelerations, so you want some indicator that shows the driver's *intent*. (And yes, I do have a certain amount of experience on keeping and/or losing my balance on the subway.) |
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Hmm, I just have this intuition, and
maybe it's wrong, that if there were
something to keep your eye on that was
lagging a bit behind the movement of
the train, that it would make it easier to
ballance. |
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I was wondering if a Segway could help, but on thinking it through, I reasoned that the Segway would try to keep you in the same spot relative to the track. |
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Maybe a small metal track running down the middle of the floors of the cars with a small steel marble in each track. |
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I seem to recall listening for the sound of the motors. |
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A device could be rigged to tell the passengers not when the train was speeding up, but when the conductator was pulling the throttle. Or whatever he/she does to speed the thing up. |
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How about a subway car mannequin which is loosely attached to the floor and falls over, thus making you feel less embarrassed when you do, too? |
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