Answer a question about gravity:

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Overly Serious

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Oct 20, 2019
You are a science teacher. I am a child. You have told me that mass attracts mass, I know the formulas for F = ma, KE = 0.5m v^2 and vaguely understand how to plug values into m*g*h for potential energy. But I'm not quite getting it and I ask you the following question:

"So at home I've got a water filter with a top part which you fill with water and a bottom part that fills up as the water goes through the filter. The bottom of the filter is actually below the level of the water most of the time. So the top has lots of molecules of water in it and so does the bottom. The only way for a molecule of water in the top part is to displace a molecule of water in the bottom part, specifically because it's in a fixed container, it has to displace it upwards. Now the mass of the water molecules is the same - they're all the same. And you also told me that the closer masses are together, the more the force of attraction. That's why spaceships have the hardest time leaving the Earth but need less fuel to rise the further away from Earth they are. So... if the mass is the same, and the molecule is if anything close to the Earth and therefore harder to raise - all that potential energy and work done stuff you talked about - how is the molecule higher up, able to raise the molecule lower down to make room for itself? How does the molecule higher up have more Force to push up the one below when they're both the same mass, both at rest and the one above is actually further away?"

Explain this in ways I, a child, will understand.
 
Isaac Newton was an alchemist who denounced the, at the time, common-sense and Aristotelean notion that a body tends to be at rest and will move according to its own nature (e.g. earth tends towards the center of the universe [earth] while fire tends towards the celestial).

He replaced this previous model in his occult Principia, having been heavily influenced by Empedocles, with the spirits Philotes (Love) and Neikos (Strife). Newton refers to Philotes as “gravity” and Neikos as “inertia.” And the copulation of these two forces brings eternal motion — “objects in motion will stay in motion.”

So, instead of objects moving due the nature that’s within themselves, outside forces like gravity are the beings that cause objects to move. Leibniz was one of the ones to recognize that Newton had injected occult thinking into his model.

 
Isaac Newton was an alchemist who denounced the, at the time, common-sense and Aristotelean notion that a body tends to be at rest and will move according to its own nature (e.g. earth tends towards the center of the universe [earth] while fire tends towards the celestial).

He replaced this previous model in his occult Principia, having been heavily influenced by Empedocles, with the spirits Philotes (Love) and Neikos (Strife). Newton refers to Philotes as “gravity” and Neikos as “inertia.” And the copulation of these two forces brings eternal motion — “objects in motion will stay in motion.”

So, instead of objects moving due the nature that’s within themselves, outside forces like gravity are the beings that cause objects to move. Leibniz was one of the ones to recognize that Newton had injected occult thinking into his model.

pagans can still be right about shit through sheer accident. Just cause hellenists worshipped zeus, doesn't mean lightning ain't real
 
I'm gonna need a diagram of that filter, I can't picture what you're describing.
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It's a jug with an upper and lower compartment. The top is filled and then slowly the lower compartment fills as the water trickles through the replaceable filter in the middle (black in diagram). Now, when the lower compartment is unfilled there is no mystery as to how the water fillls because water molecules are much more massive than air molecules and so gravity provides the force needed for the water molecules to displace the air molecules. But water molecules are the same mass as water molecules. So how does a water molecule in the upper compartment get the force to RAISE a water molecule from below upwards so that it can take its place? Not only do they have the same mass but in theory - though the distance is minuscule - the one further from the Earth has less gravitational force as you, my science teacher, have just told me that gravitational force follows an inverse square rule. So how can the water in the lower compartment rise once it's above the bottom of the filter where the outlets are?
 
Gotcha. So the force if the gravity pushing down on the top water accelerates it so when it hits the bottom water it will have enough force to overcome the inertia holding down the bottom water. It's basically a question of who has the most force and a falling thing should always have more force than a sitting thing.

If you did this with pebbles or something it wouldn't work because they're solid, liquid molecules require a lot less force to move.

Edit: The reason the water is displaced "sideways and up" into the container and not back up into the filter is because that's the path of least resistance. The filter pushes back harder on the water than the air or other water does.
 
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It's a jug with an upper and lower compartment. The top is filled and then slowly the lower compartment fills as the water trickles through the replaceable filter in the middle (black in diagram). Now, when the lower compartment is unfilled there is no mystery as to how the water fillls because water molecules are much more massive than air molecules and so gravity provides the force needed for the water molecules to displace the air molecules. But water molecules are the same mass as water molecules. So how does a water molecule in the upper compartment get the force to RAISE a water molecule from below upwards so that it can take its place? Not only do they have the same mass but in theory - though the distance is minuscule - the one further from the Earth has less gravitational force as you, my science teacher, have just told me that gravitational force follows an inverse square rule. So how can the water in the lower compartment rise once it's above the bottom of the filter where the outlets are?
It's not just the weight of the water in the top part, it's also the weight of all of the air pressing down on the water. It would be interesting to try the experiment in a vacuum chamber. I would expect the water to stop flowing down, or to only move because of wicking / surface tension.
 
It's not just the weight of the water in the top part, it's also the weight of all of the air pressing down on the water. It would be interesting to try the experiment in a vacuum chamber. I would expect the water to stop flowing down, or to only move because of wicking / surface tension.
So you're saying that it is air pressure that "tips the balance" so to speak? That makes sense but it implies, as you say, that in a pure vacuum, the water in the top container would remain there once the water in the lower container was above the outlet. That would be somewhat freaky to see and doesn't feel right by intuition.


Edit: The reason the water is displaced "sideways and up" into the container and not back up into the filter is because that's the path of least resistance. The filter pushes back harder on the water than the air or other water does.
This makes sense to me. Lets take that part as settled. Unless a too-shallow understanding of it means I'm simply not realising that it also answers the rest.

Gotcha. So the force if the gravity pushing down on the top water accelerates it so when it hits the bottom water it will have enough force to overcome the inertia holding down the bottom water. It's basically a question of who has the most force and a falling thing should always have more force than a sitting thing.
This makes sense to me a falling drop of rain leaves ripples. It has momentum (mass * velocity) and the water at rest does not. However, there is already water in the filter. Or if this example is too esoteric I think the same would apply to two buckets on different levels with a hose from one to the other. I'll continue with the filter, though. Given there is continuous water from one body to the other, is it not the case that there is no possibility to gain such acceleration? Or if there were, it would be at the expense of needing to impart an opposite acceleration on water molecules in the lower compartment?

If you did this with pebbles or something it wouldn't work because they're solid, liquid molecules require a lot less force to move.
Let us presume this is the deciding factor in why it would work with water but not with pebbles. If that hypothesis is correct - that it is a matter of needing greater force to accelerate them then, firstly - those pebbles would have that greater force because gravity is proportional to mass is it not? The famous experiment of dropping two weights with equivalent aerodynamic properties from a tower and finding despite the different weights, they hit the ground at the same time. A counter-intuitive result to every school child. There may be more to move with greater mass, but there is also more for gravity to "grab onto". If we visualise this as a real thing then of course we don't expect it to work because pebbles are large, have lots of friction, would require a very large tube and container to operate in such that they could behave in a fluid way. But these are not factors of the pebbles having greater inertia are they? But of different other physical properties of size, inflexibility etc. The other implication of your hypothesis that it is the mass being too great, is that if I had a magic see-saw, made out of some weightless material and placed a large stone on one end and then, very carefully imparting no additional momentum whilst doing so, placed a pebble of equally substantial mass on the other end, the see-saw would remain with the initial end down rather than both ends tend to the middle. So it must be another factor.

And yet in both scenarios we have a mass gaining the force to raise another equal mass with - if anything - greater distance from the gravitational body than its partner. This child can follow the equations of Potential Energy. This child can understand how in the absence of anything below it, the same KE imparted to send something upwards can send something downwards, but doesn't understand how this Potential Energy, which is just a mathematical abstraction and not a real energy actually stored anywhere, can in the absence of room to accelerate raise another object upwards.
 
Isaac Newton was an alchemist who denounced the, at the time, common-sense and Aristotelean notion that a body tends to be at rest and will move according to its own nature (e.g. earth tends towards the center of the universe [earth] while fire tends towards the celestial).

He replaced this previous model in his occult Principia, having been heavily influenced by Empedocles, with the spirits Philotes (Love) and Neikos (Strife). Newton refers to Philotes as “gravity” and Neikos as “inertia.” And the copulation of these two forces brings eternal motion — “objects in motion will stay in motion.”

So, instead of objects moving due the nature that’s within themselves, outside forces like gravity are the beings that cause objects to move. Leibniz was one of the ones to recognize that Newton had injected occult thinking into his model.

Today in "what the fuck did I just read": Newton believed gravity was spooky ghosts.
 
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