A better yodeling contest

Surely even someone without much physics training can see what's wrong with the following free body diagram? Perhaps a bit of explanation would be helpful: the claim being made is that an object (or wave) starting at the center of the trapezoid confers greater overall force at the larger end of the device than the smaller.

You see the problem, right? The paper by Roger Shawyer continues with even more nonsense, some of which is not even self-consistent. Yet even the NewScientist magazine was taken in prompting an open letter by Greg Egan. Now personally, I am familiar with some of Egan's writing and feel he violates a few too many scientific principles for my taste. I forgive him, of course, because he is apparently a cyclist and generally good guy. Oh, and his writing is also classified as science fiction.

In other news, my current investment recommendation for flying cars and compressed air power is SELL.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 22nd, 2006 at 7.55 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.