Kind: captions
Language: en
I'm about to experience weightlessness
for the first time.
Oh my god.
Oh my god. That is so strange.
Oh my god.
Oh my god. Amazing.
This is totally freaky. This is way
better than I expected. I'm just going
to say this right now.
Um I'm going up to the ceiling and here
we are.
I am ridiculously excited because behind
me is a zero G plane. I'm in France. I
was invited here by the YouTuber Bruce.
This is Bruce Diana physics girl. We are
going flying some parabas. We're going
into zerog. It's going to be awesome.
Come on.
The principle behind weightlessness is
pretty simple. The plane and everything
inside it just need to accelerate
towards the earth at the same rate as a
freely falling object in a vacuum. that
is 9.8 m/s squared. So you can think of
your body as this pen and the plane as
this bottle. And when it's freely
falling, there's no contact force
between the pen and the bottle. And so
the pen feels weightless. So you might
think the way to do this is just to put
the plane into a dive. But that's not
actually how it works. Instead, the
plane starts climbing at a steadily
increasing angle. With no windows
inside, it's impossible to tell that
this is happening. and all you feel is
pressed into the floor with a force 1.8
times your body weight. This is because
the plane's acceleration is directed
upwards and perpendicular to the floor.
And it makes standing very difficult.
Not only are you nearly twice as heavy,
all the blood drains from your head and
into your feet, which made me pretty
dizzy.
So weak.
Lying on your back is much more
comfortable. And we're advised not to
move our heads around and look straight
ahead because in hyper our vestibular
system is hyper sensitive to movement
which can lead to motion sickness. And
that's why this is sometimes called the
vomit comet.
I kind of like this.
It is fun. Feels like someone lying on
your
and I like that.
Once the plane is climbing at about 50°,
the engines are ramped down and the
plane is put into a parabolic
trajectory. It's at this point that you
start experiencing weightlessness. I can
feel myself getting lighter.
Whoa, that is such a strange feeling.
That is so weird.
The plane and you are still moving
upward, but you are accelerating
downward.
There's Diana. She's the physics girl.
Then the plane peaks and starts speeding
up again towards the Earth.
Is totally strange.
The whole time the plane is accelerating
toward Earth with the same acceleration
as a free falling object in vacuum. The
pilots have to very skillfully adjust
the thrust to perfectly balance air
resistance and maintain exactly this
acceleration. Okay.
Oh my goodness. How do you feel?
It's incredible.
So, it's like throwing this bottle into
the air. The pen inside experiences
weightlessness from the time it leaves
my hand until it comes into contact
again. After 22 seconds of
weightlessness, the pilots pull out of
the dive again, subjecting us to hyperge
as the plane accelerates upwards. In
total, we performed 13 of these zerog
parabas, plus one Martian gravity and
two moon gravity parabas.
Okay, we are now in Mars gravity.
In Mars gravity, I can do one arm
pull-ups. Maybe
push-ups.
Like this.
Yeah, like this.
Wow.
I am the Martian.
We brought along some experiments to do
in zero G.
So, this is in about 1g of gravity. This
is what the flame looks like on this
barbecue lighter. Now, we're going to
try it in hyper G
and then we'll try it in zerog and it
should be
we will see.
We will see. We take it for granted that
flames have this distinctive shape, but
that's only because of gravity. The
products of combustion have more energy
and so move around faster and take up
more space than the cooler air around
them. Therefore, there's a buoyant force
on them which is greater than their
weight and so hot air rises. This helps
pull in the oxygen from around the flame
to continue the reaction.
We're going through hyper.
I keep blowing out the candle because
the uh stress of hyperge is uh
significant.
In hyperge, this effect is magnified
since the effect of gravity is almost
twice as much. This amplifies the
difference between the weight of the hot
air and the weight of the cooler air
around it. And so the hot air rises
faster making a longer flame.
Oh my goodness. Look how that flame just
wafts in zero g cuz there's much less
buoyant force to carry away. And so the
combustion is not as good. You can see a
lot of smoke coming off of that candle.
That is incredible.
Hey. So we still had a gas flow. So this
is why the flame is not circular.
It still goes up because
it is not a sphere. But it it looks very
strange.
In zero g, the hot air is still less
dense than the cooler air. But now there
is no weight and no buoyant force. So
the flame doesn't rise as high. This
flame still maintains some of its shape
because of the flow of fuel from the
lighter. Otherwise, the flame would form
a sphere like on the space station where
it's very difficult to maintain the
combustion reaction because it's hard
for oxygen to access the fuel with all
of the combustion products getting in
the way. So, if you're ever unsure about
what the gravitational acceleration is
where you are, well, looking at a flame
is a pretty good way of finding out.
I also brought along a slinky to try the
slow motion slinky drop, but in zerog.
Of course, here I couldn't dangle the
slinky under its own weight. So, I swung
it around my head instead.
The effect should be similar with each
coil stretched to provide the tension
that keeps the length of slinky beyond
that accelerating in uniform circular
motion. I wanted to see what happens to
the end of the slinky when I let go.
[Music]
Here we go. 3 2 1
3 2 1
Did you catch that? The slinky remained
fairly stretched out and kept rotating
at about the same frequency as before.
Initially, I thought this was a boring
result. But then I realized the reason
the slinky doesn't contract is because
weight was never part of this equation.
The slinky stretched out in the first
place because it was rotating. And since
it's rotating after I let go, roughly
the same amount of tension is required
to maintain that circular motion, and so
it doesn't contract. In zero g, it's
possible to have a stretched slinky
rotating in place without contracting.
As long as the tension in the slinky
provides the centripal force, it'll keep
spinning.
This just goes against my intuition,
which is made, of course, only out of
experiences with gravity.
Being weightless was an unforgettable
experience, but maybe my favorite part
was how it challenged my intuition.
And that's the reason we need to do
research in zero G.
I want to say a huge thanks to the team
at Novaspass who made this an
unforgettable experience. And of course
to Bruce who runs the French YouTube
channel EPon for inviting me. Uh you
should really go check out his video
from the ZeroG experience. And of
course, Diana the physics girl. Uh, go
check out her video on zerog here.