Magnetic Gravitational Anomaly

**The Cusp** · 03-17-2009 02:02 AM

Two objects, regardless of mass, will fall at the same speed when dropped from the same height. Duh.

I just heard on Coast to Coast AM, that if you take two magnets, glue them together so that they are facing North/North or South South, repulsing each other instead of attracting, those magnets will fall slower than another object dropped from the same height.

The guy says he used 5 thousand dollar magnets and dropped them from the Eiffel Tower, and other people claim to have recreated this experiment.

Now I know most of you are thinking this is pure BS, and are so confident in yourselves that you don't even need to test this out. But it is very simple to try.

And I did, using small rare earth magnets, dropping them from the 5th floor. The results? Hard to say. It kind of looks like the North/North magnet arrives slightly later than the North/South magnets my friend drops with it. But the difference is so slight, it's hard to say for sure. If I had a high speed video camera it would surely help. Plus I lost my magnets in the snow.

So I'm thinking if I can get higher, the difference will be more pronounced, if indeed there is one. But it's hard to find somewhere I can drop stuff from. Anyone have access to a really high place and some really powerful magnets?

**Invader** · 03-17-2009 07:03 AM

Putting together some kind of simple mechanical device that drops them at the same exact time shouldn't be too difficult. Place a video camera near the intended area of impact for the magnets as well, and that should give you some pretty conclusive results for time difference.

**Photolysis** · 03-17-2009 12:27 PM

Two objects, regardless of mass, will fall at the same speed when dropped from the same height.

In a vacuum

I just heard on Coast to Coast AM, that if you take two magnets, glue them together so that they are facing North/North or South South, repulsing each other instead of attracting, those magnets will fall slower than another object dropped from the same height.

The guy says he used 5 thousand dollar magnets and dropped them from the Eiffel Tower, and other people claim to have recreated this experiment.

Now I know most of you are thinking this is pure BS, and are so confident in yourselves that you don't even need to test this out. But it is very simple to try.

And I did, using small rare earth magnets, dropping them from the 5th floor. The results? Hard to say. It kind of looks like the North/North magnet arrives slightly later than the North/South magnets my friend drops with it.But the difference is so slight, it's hard to say for sure. If I had a high speed video camera it would surely help. Plus I lost my magnets in the snow.

Now I know most of you are thinking this is pure BS

Actually I'm thinking "well gosh darn it that's very unscientific and if I tried such a flawed experiment I'd be laughed at".

Since this is the science forum after all...

Experiment does not occur in a vacuum therefore subjecting the magnets to drag
Ignores the shape of the magnets; the arrangement might result in a different surface area therefore different drag therefore different fall times
Ignores the possibility of external interference from metallic objects or other phenomenon
Uses innaccurate human perception to start the drops and time them and measure the heights
No repeats
No data
Orientation of the magnets is not controlled in flight (subject to wind, inaccurate drop etc), therefore drag is not controlled.

The experiments referred to suffer from the same problems in addition to being vague sources. The experiment is fundamentally flawed.

But it is very simple to try.

It's very simple but only if you want useless, meaningless, flawed results that do not demonstrate anything.

**Xei** · 03-18-2009 11:15 PM

Yes, any experiment you do involving just dropping the things in your room will be pretty pointless, and also prone to confirmation bias.

Give some peer reviewed evidence and I'll believe it. There's no fundamental reason why it shouldn't work, but of course there's no fundamental reason it should, either. If it does, though, it would be quite profound, because it would connect magnetic fields with gravitational fields, and connecting gravitational fields with anything is a giant problem in modern physics.