Hmm ... are the brass balls mostly solid, or hollow? (There may
> be a hole through if the "scribes" are a single piece, but you need to
> have a *lot* of mass for this kind of experiment to show results.
The owner of this one says that the balls are solid, and that it's 9" tall to the top of the rods.
Rob
O.K. That would be about 4-5" diameter for the larger of the two balls, I guess.
That *might* be enough to see the gravitational deflection of the smaller as the larger approaches -- with magnification examining the point at the bottom of the suspended smaller ball. And this would require some rather low-friction suspension -- perhaps a piece of thin music wire a few feet long attached to the upper end of the rod.
But I'm not at all sure that this is the *intended* function of these balls. I would love to know what they turn out to be.
Enjoy, DoN.
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