Ah, here's how to straighten out Atwood's machine. Clone the Earth. Put one
copy some long distance away from the original, say a light-year. Put one
block near the surface of the original, and the other block near the
surface of the clone (or "image Earth"). Now simply connect the two blocks
with the usual massless rigid string.
Dr. Carl E. Mungan, Assistant Professor http://www.uwf.edu/~cmungan/
Dept. of Physics, University of West Florida, Pensacola, FL 32514-5751
office: 850-474-2645 (secretary -2267, FAX -3323) email: cmungan@uwf.edu