h a l f b a k e r yYou could have thought of that.
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A hamster enclosure in the shape of a drum, on a motor-driven spindle, with a lid that is made of clear plastic with a one way mirror finish so the hamster can't see out.
Place hamster, toys, etc in base of drum. Drum slowly and gently spins up until centripetal force is sufficent to hold hamster
to inner circumference of drum.
All the hamster feels is their world being slowly and gently tilted.
A camera looking into the drum taks a picture at the same position in each rotation.
Look at the screen and see hamster running round in wheel, within bigger rotating wheel. Enjoy Zen irony.
[link]
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yes- a silent bun for [bigsleep]! |
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Nice work [bigsleep].
(I dislike the original for being a little too creepy - yours, on the other hand has too much hamster to be creepy) |
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All this needs is the strategic addition of a cat..... |
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Ooooh! Oooooh! I know! A wall-of-death aquarium!! |
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Definitely from the French, non? |
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//A wall-of-death aquarium!!// It's usually called "a washing machine". |
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What is the centripetal force? |
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Bouyancy. Imagine a vertical transparent cylinder, capped
at top and bottom (there could be a large hole in each cap
in the middle). |
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Spin the whole thing up, then trickle in water, which will
rapidly be dragged around to spin at the same rate. The
result will be a cylinder of water with a hole down the
middle. |
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Then add fish. They'd get a bit of jolt going in, but would
quickly join the whole spin-cycle. From then on, they'd
be perfectly happy fish. Uneaten food would sink to the
outside, dead fish would float to the inside, living fish
would be somewhere in between. |
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Actually, the hole in the middle would taper, being
thickest at the bottom, in some sort of paraboloid conic
section; this would be the paraboloid of the cones and
fishes. |
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If you spun the whole thing up to a high speed, though,
the centripugal forces would become much greater than
the gravitational ones, and the central hole would
approximate to a cylinder. This would also allow you to
keep deep-sea fish. On the other hand, watching them
would be tricky. |
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You've really submitted another (but similar) idea
here, [Max]. I love it, whatever. Buns for everone!
[+] [+]. |
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This really isn't much of a Wall-of-Death anything,
though, is it? Seems like more of an interesting
Aquatic-Cycle-Of-Life, or something. |
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And help me out here...at speeds where gravity is
still significant, the fish would swim tilted with
their backs towards center, wouldn't they? |
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//the fish would swim tilted with their backs towards center,
wouldn't they?// Yes, they would, unless they were very
confused. |
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Actually, why _do_ fish mostly swim "right way up"? |
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//Actually, why _do_ fish mostly swim "right way
up"?// |
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"RIght way up" meaning with dorsal side away from
the direction of gravity, right? Perhaps for most of
life's purposes--eating, mating, etc--any common
collective orientation is helpful. The directional
force of gravity would be the most reliable, strongest
reference. (?) |
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That makes sense. I'm surprised, though, that there aren't
many species which have found a "niche" by swimming
upside-down. I know there are some that swim vertically,
and of course flatfish that lie on their sides, but do any fish
spend their lives upside down? |
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There's an upside-down catfish, Nigriventris. |
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It swims upside down feeding off the underside of lily pads and such. Its ancestors have been doing that so long that its belly is countershaded dark, hence its name. |
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Sometimes fishes in undersea caves just pick the nearest rock surface to belly against, so some of them swim upside down, but it isn't a lifestyle. |
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//That makes sense.// I've seen that phrase used
very effectively here with sarcasm. I assume you
were serious. |
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As luck would have it, I am acquainted with a
fisheries biologist (not sure he's an actual
ichthyologist). He just told me that in experiments
where light is shone from another direction, fish
swim sideways, or even upside down. This sort of
shoots my gravity theory. |
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Naturally I asked about benthic fish. He asserted
that even at great depth light of some frequencies
penetrates. |
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To further confuse the issue, he suggested that
some fish are 'bottom oriented' whatever that can
mean. |
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The stuff on light-based orientation is intriguing - thanks!
(And I'm not going near "bottom orientation".) |
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