Tag: Gravitational constant

Beautiful Realization

On By rolcottIn Physics: Foundations of Measurement, Physics: Fundamentals, UncategorizedLeave a comment

“Whaddaya mean, Sy, ‘charge and resistance and voltage all playing beautiful together‘? How’s that beautiful?”

“It is when they play together in a Kibble Balance, Vinnie. That beautifully-designed device solved the realization problem for two of the revised fundamental standards of measurement. Here’s the one for electricity.”

“That’s odd. It says ‘electric current’ but the number’s about charge. And I don’t see anything in there about voltage or resistance.”

“True. The electronic charge e is one of our universal constants. It and the speed of light and Planck’s constant h are the same on Mars as they are here on Earth. Take a cesium-based laser from Earth to Mars and its frequency doesn’t change. That’s why the revisions are measure-anywhere standards, no need to carry something to Paris to compare it to a physical object.”

“This is another one of those definition tricks, isn’t it? Like the cesium frequency — we defined the second by saying it’s the time required for so-and-so many waves of that light beam. Here, it’s not like someone measured the charge in coulombs, it’s we’re gonna make the coulomb exactly big enough so when we do measure an electron it’ll match up.”

“You’re not wrong, Vinnie, but it’s not quite that arbitrary. Lots of people did measure the electron against the old standard. This number represents the most accurate estimate across all the measurements. The standards board just froze it there. It’s the same strategy they took with the other six fundamental standards — each of them sits on top of a well-known constant.”

“Like Newton’s gravitational constant?”

“Sorry, Al, not that one. It’s universal, alright, but it’s only known to four significant figures, nowhere near the 8-or-better level the metrologists demand.”

“So tell us about the beauty part, Sy.”

I grab some paper napkins from the dispenser at our table. Al gives me a look. In his opinion Vinnie uses way too many of those and he doesn’t want it to spread. “Just using what I need to make a point, Al. Vinnie, I know you like pictures better than algebra but bear with me.”

“Yeah, you went through the kilogram thing pretty quick what with the garlic and all.”

“Oooh, yeah.” <scribbling on the first napkin> “Well anyway, here’s a sketch of the Kibble Balance rigged for weighing but let’s just pay attention to the parts in the dark blue oval. That zig-zag line labeled RK is a resistor that exploits the quantum Hall effect. Quantum math says its resistance is given by RK=h/e2. That’s exactly 25812.80756 ohms.”

“That a lot more digits than gravity.”

“Nice catch, Al. Now the second component in the oval is a quantum voltmeter. If you put a voltage V across it, the Josephson junction inside passes an alternating current whose frequency is f=V/CJ, where CJ=h/2e.” <scribbling on the second napkin> “Put another way. the frequency tells you the voltage from V=f×CJ and that’s the same as V=f×h/2e.” <scribbling on the third napkin> “The current iW going through RK is V/RK and that’s going to be iW=(f×CJ)/(RK)=f×(CJ/RK)=f×(h/2e)/(h/e2)=(f/2)×e. You with me?”

“Gimme a minute… You’re saying that the current is going to be half some frequency, which we can measure, times the charge on an electron. Yeah, that makes sense, ’cause the current is electrons and you got us counting electrons. Hey, wait, what happened to the h?”

“Canceled out in the fraction, just the way that e canceled out in the fraction for the kilogram.”

“Cute.”

“Better than cute, it’s beautiful. The same equipment, the Kibble Balance plus a gravimeter, gives you the realization of a kilogram depending only on h, AND the realization of the ampere depending only on e. Once you know the standards for time, which depends only on that cesium frequency, and for length, which depends only on time and the speed of light, you can get standards for mass and electric current in the NIST lab here on Earth or up on Mars or anywhere.”

“Almost anywhere.”

“What’s your exception?”

“In space, where there’s no gravity.”

“Einstein covered that with his Equivalence Principle.”

~~ Rich Olcott

Gravity and other fictitious forces

On By rolcottIn Physics: Fundamentals, Physics: Newton and Gravity, Uncategorized3 Comments

In this post I wrote, “gravitational force is how we we perceive spatial curvature.”
Here’s another claim — “Gravity is like centrifugal force, because they’re both fictitious.”   Outrageous, right?  I mean, I can feel gravity pulling down on me now.  How can it be fictional?

Fictitious triangle
A fictitious triangle

“Fictitious,” not “fictional,” and there’s a difference.  “Fictional” doesn’t exist, but a fictitious force is one that, to put it non-technically, depends on how you look at it.

Newton started it, of course.  From our 21st Century perspective, it’s hard to recognize the ground-breaking impact of his equation F=m·a.  Actually, it’s less a discovery than a set of definitions.  Its only term that can be measured directly is a, the acceleration, which Newton defined as any change from rest or constant-speed straight-line motion.  For instance, car buffs know that if a vehicle covers a one-mile half-mile (see comments) track in 60 seconds from a standing start, then its final speed is 60 mph (“zero to sixty in sixty”).  Furthermore, we can calculate that it achieved a sustained acceleration of 1.47 ft/sec2.

Both F and m, force and mass, were essentially invented by Newton and they’re defined in terms of each other.  Short of counting atoms (which Newton didn’t know about), the only routes to measuring a mass boil down to

  • compare it to another mass (for instance, in a two-pan balance), or
  • quantify how its motion is influenced by a known amount of force.

Conversely, we evaluate a force by comparing it to a known force or by measuring its effect on a known mass.

Once the F=m·a. equation was on the table, whenever a physicist noticed an acceleration they were duty-bound to look for the corresponding force.  An arrow leaps from the bow?  Force stored as tension in the bowstring.  A lodestone deflects a compass needle?  Magnetic force.  Objects accelerate as they fall?  Newton identified that force, called it “gravity,” and showed how to calculate it and how to apply it to planets as well as apples.  It was Newton who pointed out that weight is a measure of gravity’s force on a given mass.

Incidentally, to this day the least accurately known physical constant is Newton’s G, the Universal Gravitational Constant in his equation F=G·m1·m2/r2.  We can “weigh” planets with respect to each other and to the Sun, but without an independently-determined accurate mass for some body in the Solar System we can only estimate G.  We’ll have a better value when we can see how much rocket fuel it takes to push an asteroid around.

CoasterBut there are other accelerations that aren’t so easily accounted for.  Ever ride in a car going around a curve and find yourself almost flung out of your seat?  This little guy wasn’t wearing his seat belt and look what happened.  The car accelerated because changing direction is an acceleration due to a lateral force.  But the guy followed Newton’s First Law and just kept going in a straight line.  Did he accelerate?

This is one of those “depends on how you look at it” cases.  From a frame of reference locked to the car (arrows), he was accelerated outwards by a centrifugal force that wasn’t countered by centripetal force from his seat belt.  However, from an earthbound frame of reference he flew in a straight line and experienced no force at all.

Side forceSuppose you’re investigating an object’s motion that appears to arise from a new force you’d like to dub “heterofugal.”  If you can find a different frame of reference (one not attached to the object) or otherwise explain the motion without invoking the “new force,” then heterofugalism is a fictitious force.

Centrifugal and centripetal forces are fictitious.  The  “force” “accelerating” one plane towards another as they both fly to the North Pole in this tale is actually geometrical and thus also fictitious   So is gravity.

In this post you’ll find a demonstration of gravity’s effect on the space around it.  Just as a sphere’s meridians give the effect of a fictitious lateral force as they draw together near its poles, the compressive curvature of space near a mass gives the effect of a force drawing other masses inward.

~~ Rich Olcott