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Re: What is weight? (was Re: Internal or external?)



Leigh Palmer <palmer@SFU.CA> writes:

The sensation of weightlessness cannot be duplicated in a sensory
deprivation tank. It simply is not the same.

I very much agree with my friend Leigh! A demonstration that I do with
small classes is to take them up in groups of three in a four-seat light
airplane (I'm a pilot, so I get the left seat up front) and fly a brief
parabolic arc. It's the only part of the flight during which I ask them to
take their seat belts *off*! (I of course keep mine on.) The students are
in apparent weightlessness for a few seconds (as long as I can maintain
that parabolic trajectory, which I literally do by the seat of my pants ---
when my pants lose contact with the seat, I'm doing it right). Once I had a
passenger who was a Catholic priest, who said "It was a great experience
--- I said prayers I haven't used in years!" Hard to imagine him saying
that about floating in a sensory deprivation tank...



+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Roger A. Freedman
Department of Physics and College of Creative Studies
University of California, Santa Barbara

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