“If you hold one end of a Slinky, letting it hang down and then drop it, what happens?”

Fri, 23 Dec 2011

Inspired by Gardner’s riddle and earlier Slinky studies while putting together his paper, Kolkowitz calculated that the bottom of his metal Slinky would remain suspended for approximately three-tenths of a second. And only recently he made a surprising realization: the levitation time of the toy would be exactly the same if it were dropped on the moon, Jupiter or Mars, even with their vastly different gravitational fields. [full article]