Paging Drasnor......

aspieRommel

I am part of the forums for the World of Tanks: Xbox One edition. We have an off topic section where anything not pertaining to the game can be discussed. Well, this gem popped up a couple of days ago and I thought you guys, especially @drasnor , would get a kick out of it.

Enjoy!

http://forum-console.worldoftanks.com/index.php?/topic/166553-the-earth-is-flat/#topmost

pigflipper

I lost brain cells reading that thread.

drasnor

I make a living exploiting the things you can do with an Earth that's not flat. The fact of the matter though is that it's not round either; it's lumpy and oblong and has these dense parts and floppy parts and the whole mess is just about as not-flat as things can be. Did you know that gravity is not constant? Not only does gravity vary geographically:

but it also varies over time, both on a 12-hr cycle tracking the tides and on a 5.9 year cycle tracking the variation of Earth's rotational rate. It's very inconvenient.

AlexDeGruven

I do appreciate how, to an actual rocket scientist, these facts are merely inconvenient and tend to complicate the math a bit.

drasnor

I deal with these things called gyroscopes roughly every day and every time I just leave one lying around it always reads pretty much the same thing: ~15 degrees per hour about an axis tilted roughly 34 degrees with respect to the floor. The thing is just sitting there, why does it think it's spinning? Oh wait, it's not spinning in the local frame; it only reads zero in the inertial frame. I guess that means that the room is spinning. Crazy!

I'm offering some Icrontic funbux for anyone who can figure out why the spin axis is ~34 degrees with respect to the otherwise-level floor.

primesuspect

Is it because your gyroscope is at approximately the 34th parallel and so is tilted at that angle relative to equatorial spin?

drasnor

@primesuspect said:
Is it because your gyroscope is at approximately the 34th parallel and so is tilted at that angle relative to equatorial spin?

I think you're right; that would explain nicely why it only reads ~28.5 degrees when I have them in Florida too!

primesuspect

IMMA HAVE SO MANY FUNBUX

primesuspect

Wait, are you saying you legitimately didn't know and you were asking if someone else could figure it out? Or did you know and this was a test?

drasnor

@primesuspect said:
Wait, are you saying you legitimately didn't know and you were asking if someone else could figure it out? Or did you know and this was a test?

primesuspect

Well either way I figured it out. I'M SMART