Who can challenge gravity? Apparently nobody. Everything that goes up has to go down. But science likes a challenge. Sometimes certain experiments challenge the laws of physics that rule the world. A research team got it. The result can be seen in the boat floating upside down with the water floating over it. It’s the world upside down. It’s not magic, it’s math.
Defy Archimedes
The results of the study were published in the journal “Nature”. They defy Archimedes’ principle, his gravity and our intuition. What it shows is that you can also float in completely unusual ways.
What would normally happen under the action of gravity? Liquids in a container, e.g. B. a laboratory flask, usually fall to the bottom of the container. Emmanuel Fort and his colleagues at the Paris School of Labor Physics and Chemistry wanted to reverse this. They wondered what would happen if they vibrated the liquid vertically. This allows you to float on a less dense layer (like an air mattress). They showed that this vertical jerk also causes the buoyancy to move on the underside of the floating liquid. That is, as if gravity had been reversed.
The researchers poured a liquid (silicone oil or glycerin) into a transparent container. They shook it with vertical vibrations and blew air into the base. So the liquid began to float. This experiment had previously been carried out. Now the authors have gone one step further and have shown that objects can float upside down in floating liquid. The little boat floating upside down proves it. An incredible anti-gravity effect.
Practical applications
The team’s observations call into question the Archimedes principle. This refers to bodies that are completely or partially immersed in a liquid at rest. Explain that they experience vertical upward pressure equal to the weight of the fluid being dislodged. Here, however, this buoyancy force is reflected in the lower part of the floating liquid layer. In other words, what happens to the boat that floats above happens to the boat that also floats below. Even if it is gently nudged with your finger, the boat will return to normal. Just like when a toy boat is pushed into a bathtub. According to the authors, this is more than just a nautical curiosity. Such phenomena could have practical applications in the transport of gas or materials entrapped in liquids.
Science will continue to challenge us and push the boundaries of established laws. They will continue to turn the world upside down, like the little boat that floats upside down.
