Okay, here's a weird question....
I've recently come into possession of one half of a model of a Cylon Basestar.
Naturally, I intend to turn it into a space station, as in that photograph
from More Thrust. This is, in and of itself, harmless. Unforunately, I
happened to see an ad in the AS&S catalog today, which offered for sale:
....5/8" x 5" long ball point pen...floats magnetically above a slek
black
base. Give a a twirl and it will spin forever - well at least five
minutes....
Now, this Basestar bit is not all that heavy. And I'm not going to be adding
all that much stuff to it. And the idea of the space station floating above
the table is really appealing.... However, my past experience with toys of
this nature involve the floating object inevitably "sliding" to one side or
the other, unless something it holding it in place. Anyone know if I could
manage to do this somehow? It's only $14.95, so it's probably worth the
investment, but I'd like some input from people who had a physics class or two
first.
I dunno about the pen, and I am far from a physicist, but if you put a ring of
powerful magnets on say, an AOL coaster, all with the same pole facing upward,
with a little help from some super glue, and then another magnet on the ship
you wanted to float, with the same pole facing downward, wouldn't it sit in
the "trough" of the ring? I don't have any magnets on me, or I'd go home and
try this tonight, but from what I know about them, that should work, right? If
it did, you could make all your major FT ships "floaties."
:o)
God bless,
- Buddy
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[quoted original message omitted]
> On 26-Jul-99 at 09:56, Buddy Chamberlain (buddy@movnet.com) wrote:
As long as you had the the magnet well above the center of mass of the ship.
Otherwise the thing would be unstable, flip over, and be sucked into a
supporting magnet.
The novelty stores in our mall carry floating things like this. You might take
a look around.
> On Mon, 26 Jul 1999 09:50:23 -0400, "Buddy Chamberlain" writes:
I'd expect to have some issues with the center magnet flipping over and being
pulled toward the ring magnets. Have to be bottom heavy.
It would also probably be pretty hard to get the center hole to be stable
enough. My experience with these magnetic floaters is they tend to be pretty
unstable. Small knocks or pushes could send the whole construct tumbling down.
But, if it did work it would look really kewl.:)
> In a message dated 7/26/99 8:56:55 AM EST, buddy@movnet.com writes:
<< I dunno about the pen, and I am far from a physicist, but if you put a ring
of powerful magnets on say, an AOL coaster, all with the same pole facing
upward, with a little help from some super glue, and then another magnet on
the ship you wanted to float, with the same pole facing downward, wouldn't it
sit in the "trough" of the ring? I don't have any magnets on me, or I'd go
home and try this tonight, but from what I know about them, that should work,
right? If it did, you could make all your major FT ships "floaties."
:o)
God bless,
- Buddy >>
Better get some STRONG magnets for those lead ships! They will also be hell to
keep facing straight, since they will spin nicely. Also if they tip at all the
heavy lead on top will cause it to roll over belly up and the lead shielding
the magnet at that point will probably drop it onto the base. You might need
to use a bar with three or four posts to SUSPEND the miniature from, requiring
more magnetic bases to balance it out
> << I dunno about the pen, and I am far from a physicist, but if you put
> hell
You
> might need to use a bar with three or four posts to SUSPEND the
Much though I would love to do ship bases like this, I know better than to
try. I'm limiting myself to the space station, which is a plastic circle
about a foot in diameter. It doesn't weight all that much -- some of
the bigger NSL ships are probably weightier. The shape of the station should
allow me to place a magnet in such a position that it won't flip over without
a lot of help; it should, frankly, be the heaviest part of the model. From the
side, it's is shaped something like your classic flying saucer. Again, there's
a picture in More Thrust of the exact same model.
The spinning would not, under the circumstances, be a problem either. Unless,
of course, one of my players decided to see just how fast he could make it
spin.... *shudder*
If nothing else, I've realized that I have to keep my additions to the top of
the station as short and as light as possible. No big towers!