4.3.1.P1
In Edmund Rostand's famous play, Cyrano de Bergerac, Cyrano, in an attempt to distract a suitor from visiting Roxanne, claims to have descended to earth from the moon, and proclaims to have invented 6 novel and fantastical methods for traveling to the moon. One is as follows.
Sitting on an iron platform--thence To throw a magnet in the air. This is a method well conceived--the magnet flown, Infallibly the iron will pursue: Then quick! relaunch your magnet, and you thus Can mount and mount unmeasured distances! *
| In an old cartoon, there is another version of this method. A character in the Old West is on a hand-pumped two-person rail car. After getting tired of pumping the handle up and down to make the car move along the rails, he takes out a magnet and holds it in front of the cart hanging from a fishing pole. The magnet pulls the cart towards it, which pushes the magnet forward, which... so the cart just moves forward continuously. See the figure at the right. |  |
What do you think of these methods? Can some version of them work? Discuss in terms of the physics you have learned.
*Translated from the French by Gladys Thomas and Mary F. Guillemard, etext prepared by Sue Asscher, distributed by Project Gutenberg
Joe Redish 10/31/07