Good question. I think that the entire device is unstable no matter what, its impossible to keep it straight no matter where the point of gravity as long as it needs to balance on a single tip. So zero speed would mean tip over in all cases unless you make a more stable tip (square) which would mean it cant spin very well which means you havent made a spinning top.

You can find more about the physics of the spinning top here:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/top.html
and here:
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/271/why-dont-spinning-tops-fall-over

So what is the optimal distance of the center of gravity to the tip?

There are several things working at the same time. Most importantly is the energy. You need to store as much energy as possible so that the top can spin for as long as possible. When the top slows spinning the friction at the tip becomes larger (the precession becomes bigger) so it starts to lose more energy and slows the spinning even more. You store energy by adding weight with a center of mass that is further away from the tip. When the top then "falls" the center of gravity moves down and reduces potential energy. Due to energy conservation kinetic energy goes up meaning speed of precession or of spinning goes up and creates a force pushing the top back up.

Off course, more mass means more friction at the tip, so there is for sure an optimal here, most likely depending on mass, size and shape of spinning top, etc.

Last but not least, more rotation speed I assume also means more friction, so its a trade-off.

If you move the center of mass down below the tip, well, if you move it as far off as you would above, the energy you can save is about the same, but the entire thing would be harder to build and you would need to make sure the sides fit around the ground plateau. Also, when the precessions become bigger the sides will hit the plateau, meaning game over.

In the end you are better of keeping the center of gravity above the tip point.

1000Mbit doesn't necessarily equate to lower latency anyway, and then Up/Download speed isn't even that important for online gaming, unless you want to stream/torrent/uploadselfies while playing. It is however a nice number that's easy to stick on marketing material. I had a huge fight with an ISP a few years ago after they pretty much flat refused to do anything about crippling packet loss of 10ish% at peak times because it had a "negligible effect on bandwidth". Pretty sad that I get much more reliable net over ADSL copper lines at 10ish Mbit than I had on fiberoptic.

I'll give the guy all the credit for a suberb run (and balls of steel) but it's just not the same thing as driving it on gravel in a group B car.

Even if you ignore the sun in the eyes, stick gear changes and the way Vatanen had to use the clutch in the corners because the engine just had too much power, the sheer difficulty of traversing a low friction surface like gravel puts his time in a league of it's own.

Watch the two videos and you see the complete technical difference, Loeb goes in to low gear through the corners, doesn't drift at all (even drops in to first at points), and uses the cars acceleration combined with tarmac traction to get back up to speed. He even hits 6th gear quite a few times in the run. His control of the wheel is very smooth and measured.

Now watch Vatanen. Most of the corners, he's probably riding 2nd or 3rd and instead of breaking, is using the crazy horsepower of the engine to keep him going round the corner. He doesn't reach the same sort of top speeds of course because he's constantly fighting the loss of traction even in a straight line. His wheel control is excellent, but you can observe how he is constantly fighting to maintain his place on the road.

I suspect Loeb probably could better Vatanen's time with the same car and similar conditions, but we'll never know.

Girls.
You think you know what we want, girls.
Pink and pretty it's girls.
Just like the 50's it's girls.

You like to buy us pink toys
and everything else is for boys
and you can always get us dolls
and we'll grow up like them... false.

It's time to change.
We deserve to see a range.
'Cause all our toys look just the same
and we would like to use our brains.

We are all more than princess maids.

Girls to build the spaceship,
Girls to code the new app,
Girls to grow up knowing
they can engineer that.

Girls.
That's all we really need is Girls.
To bring us up to speed it's Girls.
Our opportunity is Girls.
Don't underestimate Girls.

Okay, I'm up to speed. This doesn't surprise me in the slightest. They're in the middle of rushing through the gagging laws which would effectively stop activists and protests. They have stopped all but a very few cases of legal aid, so if you're poor you're not now entitled to justice. Cameron and co. told people last week if they're truly faced with putting food on the table or heating the house up then "Put a jumper on." And on and on and on...

They're not bothered about hiding anything anymore, that's all

Yeah, what the hell is happening here? Pretty fucked up if the police cranked up the speed just to disperse the crowd, even if the majority of them are angry douche-bags.

wtf kind of engines do those monsters have anyway?

I'm a bit curious how long it takes to get up to speed, too. Bet it's quite a few minutes.

What makes this one so funny? This is exactly how peeps discuss sports: Of all the people who talk slpingo (sports lingo) there are only 1 in 20 who actually know the players and understand the mechanics and strategies of a sport and are up-to-speed with the season's progress-The rest simply want a spot on the losing team, so badly they make shit up that sounds good!!

"Oh, I have all my fingers
The knife goes Chop Chop Chop
If I miss the spaces in between
my fingers will come off
And if I hit my fingers, the blood will soon come out
But all the same I play this game, cause that's what's it's all about!

Oh! Chop! Chop! Chop! Chop! Chop! Chop! Chop!
I'm picking up the speed
And if I hit my finger
Then my hand will start to bleed!"

Cringe

Ahhhhh, savvy! Thanks for gettin' me up t'speed...Comparative Hitler works, sometimes it works very well-

Are you excluded from having a viewing fail? (because fail I think you did)

See my comments above and you should realise how much a joke this setup is.

The point of the video is to push the agenda of the people who setup the scenario.

Maybe it takes you hundreds of hours of training under stress to not freeze up/shoot yourself/shoot innocents - but don't project that onto everyone else, some of us take to these situations naturally.

To obtain answers for your third point, why don't you look it up and report your findings back to us - we shouldn't be doing your research.

Not all of us lose skills as readily as the trainers in this video do. I know it takes me several years for ingrained skills to diminish in myself and only a few weeks of training to have them back up to speed.

>> ^grinter:

>> ^EvilDeathBee:
>> ^grinter:
Shopping carts with swiveling rear wheels are F@$^king stupid!

They're much easier to control in the store, but harder to control in the parking lot, and vice versa for ones that swivel just at the front. I miss the all 4 swivelling trolleys they have in Australia.

I'm seriously not trying to get into an argument about shopping cart design. And I respect your attachment to Aussie swivelcarts. Still, I have to disagree on the point that they are easier to control in the store. When you have a cart with four swivel casters filled with a heavy load, and you get it up to speed, those wheels provide no assistance when you try to redirect the cart's momentum around a corner. It's a danger to shins and container goods.
It's like you are hurtling out of control in the ship from the game Asteroids rather than swooping around in an X-Wing.


You just need practice. After a while, you'll be jumping on the back wheels and drifting sideways down the aisles like a pro

>> ^EvilDeathBee:

>> ^grinter:
Shopping carts with swiveling rear wheels are F@$^king stupid!

They're much easier to control in the store, but harder to control in the parking lot, and vice versa for ones that swivel just at the front. I miss the all 4 swivelling trolleys they have in Australia.


I'm seriously not trying to get into an argument about shopping cart design. And I respect your attachment to Aussie swivelcarts. Still, I have to disagree on the point that they are easier to control in the store. When you have a cart with four swivel casters filled with a heavy load, and you get it up to speed, those wheels provide no assistance when you try to redirect the cart's momentum around a corner. It's a danger to shins and container goods.
It's like you are hurtling out of control in the ship from the game Asteroids rather than swooping around in an X-Wing.

>> ^braschlosan:

>> ^Jinx:
but colour is an invention of our brains anyway? Is yellow a specific wavelength or is yellow what our brain says is yellow whether its red+green together, or "true" yellow.

Either way the light output by your monitor is not 580nm like your brain is telling you but rather an even mix of 650nm and 510nm.
If our eyes didn't "fudge" colors in this way we most likely wouldn't have color television (or monitors)


I didn't read his post like that, maybe he's asking for a definition of yellow because as our cones are basically wavelength filters for photons whilst our brain interprets a message of "hey i caught something of this intensity" from each of them, what is this "yellow" that we all use and think we know what it means? It will eventually come down to the resolution of the eye; each photon from each source will be coming in from a different angle into our eye, by extremely small amounts - the smallest thing we can resolve is where our brain says "ok, i think that's coming from the same place; it's not red and blue separately but yellow."

It'd be the same if you have a green and red patterned circular board and spun it really fast. Our eyes effectively have a "framerate", a point where we see something as motion. Play a game and limit to 1 fps, then increase in say 5's and before 30 you should start to feel motion rather than stuttering frames, then as you keep going you can't see stuttering anymore, it's just all motion. Our eyes have something similar, we used to do it in science. My dad was head of physics and he stuck a ROYGBIV patterned board on a black and decker drill and when it was up to speed it looked white.

So if something registers as yellow to our brains, is that not yellow? We have no direct access to our cones, we just interpret the signals. If all we had were light sensitive cells everything would be one colour and no colour at the same time.

That's what the post meant to me and it's a great point really even if it's just an excuse for sciencey discussion! If yellow is defined as a range of wavelengths of light, he's right to say it isn't yellow, but i doubt many people think of yellow in that sense. Having said all that, the video was actually interesting and informative and i enjoyed watching it, and this is probably a philosophical question for others to bother with.

PS.
Bert and Ernie, Simpsons, Smurfs, South Park, Turtles? Not sure about B&E though.