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Re: Bar magnets

At 09:37 AM 2/19/01 -0600, brian whatcott wrote:

Or to put it more succinctly; the needle WILL snap from one wall of the cage
to the other... there WILL be hysteresis. That is the meaning of unstable
balance.

It depends on how we want to nitpick my use of the word "snap". Depending
on the frequency of the torsional oscillator, the thing might move slowly
compared to human reaction times, in which case you can catch it and hold
it in the middle.

I call this the "ten digit feedback loop". (I wiggle my fingers while
saying that.)

Just because it's unstable doesn't mean its unmanageable.