RailSignals

My 17 year old is at that age of many questions. This in a western society, accustomed to instant gratification, one might imagine the necessary effort is not expended in pursuit of answers to his "why is that " inquires.

One of the wonders of his magical world is the way large bodies attract each other like bowling balls dropped from the roof onto my car. This is often called gravitation, from the Latin gravitatem used first like, well like when they spoke Latin. I made the big mistake to think I would look it up and find out about this gravity stuff so I could explain it to him. Ha, that would just figure, for like 6000 years of written history and unknown more time than that, mankind has ask this question. From the start I will say, no one has a clue. From Newton back to Kanada 8000 BC, it was determined that things fell because they were heavy.

Now don't get me wrong, the physics of acceleration and attraction in the post Newtonian world has become very sophisticated. One might even predict the path of a moon, a space shuttle, or a bowling ball and know with precision the impact speed and force to be absorbed by the now a convertible. As far as the pre20th century, this thing worked as far as it went. Just a few little bugs in the system, you know how a bug bugs a theorist. Anyway a couple of out of the box types moved physics past Newton like AutoCAD smoked Euclid's protractors. Albert did the quantum dance, the universe became a very jerky place, always hopping up and down the stairs. Ahem, they are even setting the GPS satellite cesium clocks like 0.00000003 sec slow because time runs slower when you get up there 50 miles from the earth. It's something about the space time fabric bending near large masses.

I have come to know that space is not flat, time not linear, and that gravity is an illusion because of where you are standing. They should make a law or something, what the heck am I to tell him now? I could try the "old people don't know anything", but he already knows that.

But even now I type into this Word editor and after years of usable and intuitive menus, now long searching often gives no joy. Any way, Hi all, if this configuration and test meets with success, Bob has become my uncle. Is that rambling or what. Again the phone lines are back up, the dialup account makes me wish I had a high back chair, and my questions have taken on quantum jerk function analogues. Luckily this will not go thru relieving you of much blather.