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NASA Social Networks The Internet Science

NASA's Viral 'Standing Broom' Trick Has Nothing To Do With Earth's Gravitational Pull (cnn.com) 43

Posted by BeauHD from the public-service-announcement dept.
A viral myth from 2012 is recirculating on the web right now, claiming NASA said Monday was the only day you can make brooms stand up all by themselves, because of the earth's gravitational pull. Sadly, there's a reasonable explanation for the "standing broom" trick and it has everything to do with balance. CNN reports: [T]he truth is, you can make a broom stand upright today... and tomorrow and the day after... and the day after that. It has nothing to do with the earth's gravitational pull on a certain day. It also has nothing to do with the vernal equinox (another day of the year when this "magic" supposedly happens). Instead, it has everything to do with balance. The center of gravity is low on a broom, and rests directly over the bristles. Which means, if you can get the bristles positioned like a tripod, your broom will stand upright any day of the year.
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NASA's Viral 'Standing Broom' Trick Has Nothing To Do With Earth's Gravitational Pull More

NASA's Viral 'Standing Broom' Trick Has Nothing To Do With Earth's Gravitational Pull

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  • More fake news from the guys who brought us the "Moon Landing". Next they are going to tell us that Stonehenge doesn't really align with the vernal equinox at all.

    • Stonehenge is fake news created by the human sacrifice industrial complex in partnership with the British tourism industry.

  • A good reminder (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @08:17AM (#59715162)

    A good reminder of how low grasp of reality some people have when it is necessary to explain this. I keep overestimating people's intelligence.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )

      I keep overestimating people's intelligence.

      A daily 2 minute peruse of Facebook (or any other social media) will cure you of that in a heartbeat. People are fucking dumb. OK, that isn't really fair, people are gullible. It never ceases to amaze me how people can't/won't take 10 seconds to research something before they share it. My favorite recent example: On FB they were testing a feature where it would cover a post that someone shared with a message indicating that the topic of the post had been independently fact checked and had been proven f

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        It never ceases to amaze me how people can't/won't take 10 seconds to research something before they share it.

        Social media doesn't encourage independent research, It instead encourages people to re-post the same drivel on and on and rewards them for that.

        It's why social media is a marketer's dream - people are easily manipulated and social media encourages such manipulation. Clickbaiting is profitable to the platform owners as well, encouraging them to encourage the practice.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

        For some reason, Facebook make people look more stupid than they are.

        Most of my Facebook friends I know personally tend to be rather smart, open minded and with some common sense. We all have our quirks, but that doesn't stop us from having interesting conversations on a variety of topics.
        But when I read the Facebook feed supposedly originating for the same people, it is terrible. First, 3/4 of them are ads. Official Facebook ads (sponsored posts), viral marketing campaigns, people selling their stuff, ...

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Fact: Half the people is of below aversge intelligence.

        Hi, I know you posted this as a joke (the misspelling is telling), but I'd like to point out that this is false for any casual readers who see it and think "wow, that's tautology!"
        Intelligence functions on a bell curve, and "average" is a range on that curve, not a distinct point. So more than half of humanity is average intelligence, and less than half are more or less intelligent than average. If you're discussing society, and not humanity, the dumbest humans do not participate in society, and must be

      • "Think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin.

  • Soo... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The broom trick ISN'T from NASA, CNN says it's not from NASA and the slashdot headline says it's "NASA's" broom trick and marks it as a NASA topic?

    Who's the one spreading misinformation here?

    • Who's the one spreading misinformation here?

      BeauHD's finest...

    • NASA discovered gravity so it's kind of their trick.

      • NASA did not discover gravity, all they did was buy the patent from Isaac Newton.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by higuita ( 129722 )

          well... people weren't floating around before Isaac Newton!! Gravity exists since the big bang ... before that... we do not know!

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward
            Discover and invent don't mean the same thing. Of course Newton didn't discover gravity either. People already knew things fell. He invented calculus which allowed us to model gravity on earth and beyond.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        Boeing discovered gravity. :-(

  • Obviously? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    All of this should be completely obvious to anyone with even a cursory understanding of physics. This kind of misunderstanding is the kind of stuff that some distant relative shares on Facebook because they don't know the first thing about basic science. Why is this a story?

  • "Which means, if you can get the bristles positioned like a tripod, your broom will stand upright any day of the year. "

    Without gravity? I doubt that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mwvdlee ( 775178 )

      Without gravity it should quite easily stay upright as well.
      But where does it say it has to be without gravity?

      • Without gravity, there is no "upright".

        • Sure there is. It's what ever you define it as.

          • It's what ever you define it as.

            To deep for me.

            But if there is a situation where something needs to be in a state that is called "upright" there will surely be a force acting on whatever object you're dealing with. Otherwise, you'd not say, "The object is upright." You'd say, "The object is floating."

  • Garbage article (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @09:28AM (#59715276)
    Why is some stupid email forward thing that my brain-dead relatives would send around on Slashdot? This is really a garbage article.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )
      It gives us a reason to gripe to other (mostly) smart people about our dumb acquaintances and relatives. We all have them, they all share dumb shit like this on social media, we are all annoyed by it. I had at least 5 on my FB feed this morning. At least one was from someone I thought had a brain between their ears.

  • I've heard a similar thing said about eggs. I think it was you could only get them to stand on end on the vernal equinox. In reality, with a little patience, they'll balance any time.

    Now there is a neat trick for determining if an egg is hard-boiled or uncooked. Spin them. The hard-boiled egg will keep spinning for a relatively long time. An uncooked egg will spin for a moment and quickly slow down. The difference being the solid inner core picks up the angular momentum and keeps it going, but the liquid in

    • Now there is a neat trick for determining if an egg is hard-boiled or uncooked. Spin them. The hard-boiled egg will keep spinning for a relatively long time. An uncooked egg will spin for a moment and quickly slow down.

      A quicker way is to spin them, briefly hold them to stop them spinning, then let go. The hard-boiled egg will stop spinning. The uncooked egg will resume spinning because the liquid interior still has some angular momentum even though you briefly stopped the exterior from spinning.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Quirkz ( 1206400 )

        Sure. As the folks in the egg business say, "Six of one, half dozen of the other." It's all good physics.

    • Yes, the broom idea is new to me...I've always heard this tale in connection with eggs.

  • It does explain why my 20yr old son was balancing a broom in my kitchen and snap chatting it to his friends yesterday.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )
      Challenge him to do it again today. I bet because he was told it would only work yesterday that his results will be different. Would be a fun exercise in predisposition.

      • He's fairly sharp when it comes to science and mechanical engineering. Enough that I will trust him with my life, he does all the work on my car for me.
         

  • s gravitational pull?"

    Why yes, yes there is. Gravity is the masons' "god" which solves every one of their mathematical impossibilities!

  • That's precisely what keeps the broom stuck to the floor like that.
    Without the gravitational pull, that broom would float away at the slightest disturbance.

  • I remember a radio DJ from the 1970's that had people standing eggs on end every year during the vernal equinox. He had people calling in months later to let him know that the egg they stood up during the vernal equinox was still standing. He did this every year for almost a decade. It may have been longer.

  • ... yesterday. But your mom was out riding my broom.

  • "One born every minute!", as the old saying goes.

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