If an object will not fall faster on the heavy side, then Apple's shifting weight mechanism wouldn't work, would it? And Spaceship 1 and badminton birdies won't fall nose first. Maybe someone needs to go back to their high school physics book and realize that we don't use iPhones in a vacuum.
An object won't fall faster on the heavier side, correct. I suspect you are talking about air/vacuum with regard to air resistance in your examples. Center of gravity/mass change on the other hand has effect on rotation, for example, in a vacuum or an atmosphere.
If an object will not fall faster on the heavy side, then Apple's shifting weight mechanism wouldn't work, would it? And Spaceship 1 and badminton birdies won't fall nose first. Maybe someone needs to go back to their high school physics book and realize that we don't use iPhones in a vacuum.
Apple's invention has nothing to do with causing one side to fall faster. It uses conservation of momentum to spin the device by spinning a small mass in the opposite direction.
If an object will not fall faster on the heavy side, then Apple's shifting weight mechanism wouldn't work, would it? And Spaceship 1 and badminton birdies won't fall nose first. Maybe someone needs to go back to their high school physics book and realize that we don't use iPhones in a vacuum.
Birdies (and Spaceship 1) fall nose-first because of their aerodynamic design, not because of the heavy nose. If you dropped a birdie on the moon, it wouldn't fall in any particular orientation. The shifting/spinning weight inside the phone would rotate the phone via conservation of momentum and angular momentum.
This can be easily tested. Tape a couple of metal washers to the back of a relatively light and thin, but firm object (probably best not to use an actual phone - maybe an empty iPhone hardshell case?) and try to drop it on its face. I'll bet you'll have no difficulty doing so.
make the mechanism mass a battery. Trade static for dynamic. make the phone a couple mills thicker (I'm scared to buy a iPhone 6 because I think it's too skinny) to allow for empty spaces be filled with mass
The other part of this is could be to give tactile feedback as you play games (as you pitch a car into a curve, you feel the weight shift in your hand like the steering wheel being pulled to one side).
Apple's invention has nothing to do with causing one side to fall faster. It uses conservation of momentum to spin the device by spinning a small mass in the opposite direction.
a bit more complicated, but it's more of increasing the moment of inertia. if you're spinning, you can speed up/slow down the spin by extending mass
My issue is knowing where the ground is. you can't stop a rotation , you can just slow it down or speed it up so you can 'stick' the landing.
the next patent will be for ultrasonic spatial detection (terrain following sonar).
a bit more complicated, but it's more of increasing the moment of inertia. if you're spinning, you can speed up/slow down the spin by extending mass
My issue is knowing where the ground is. you can't stop a rotation , you can just slow it down or speed it up so you can 'stick' the landing.
the next patent will be for ultrasonic spatial detection (terrain following sonar).
The bulk of the article (and the first picture) talk about using a rotor. I think the idea is to use the vibrational motor to achieve this effect.
I would think that trying to change the moment of inertia (or for that matter trying to produce a net moment by adding mass to one side, as others have suggested) would require too much extra mass to be practical. At least with a rotor, you can compensate for lightness with rotational speed.
Uh, they could achieve the same thing by weighting the side they want it to land on. No motor, no computers, etc.
Your solution depends on air resistance. A phone dropped from your pocket or a table top would hit the floor in half a second at less than 10mph. That's too soon and too slow for aerodynamics to have any effect on an object as dense as an iPhone. Try flicking a badminton shuttlecock off a table as a first test of your theory.
Another useless comment. Is insurance there to make us bad drivers? Are warranties there to cover poor manufacturing? Nobody ever has an accident?
Guess you haven't seen the App Cycloramic, which uses the vibration motor to rotate your iPhone while on a table top to take 360 degree pictures. Without the friction of the iPhone resting on a surface (free fall) it could rotate even faster.
Someone should go back and look at their high school physics text. An object won't fall faster on the heavy side.
While the phone's as a whole wouldn't fall faster (its center of mass), a shift in weight in the phone does have a impact on how fast some parts fall in regards to the ground. Since your modifying the spin around the center of mass. Shifting weight away from the center would slow its rotation, while pulling it back would accelerate it, like a skater mid air. They spin horizontally, but you can also spin sideways :-).
What they're talking about here is basically using a flywheel, your compensating the low mass through high speed to move/modify the overall system's orientation. They're used in spaceship; fascinating stuff really.
Interesting concept that I recall being discussed a year or two back. The issue with modifying angular momentum during a fall remains the need to know the exact height of the phone above the impact surface. That is the single, critical unknown. Without an ultrasonic method - mentioned as a more advanced enhancement - or something equivalent, it's hard to see how this can work.
How exact do you think it needs to be?
I wouldn't be surprised if the overwhelming majority of drops are from roughly the same hight (say, 3-5 feet). Apple could design this distance into the mechanism, and it would still be effective in most cases.
Quite exact, the way I was envisaging it, which was to adjust the rotation rate so that at impact, it is oriented as needed.
But it occurs to me that they may do something rather different, especially since many dropped phones likely don't have much angular velocity to start with. Rigid-body rotations are stable about the two principle axes with the greatest and least moments of inertia, so two internal rotation systems, in principle, would be adequate to achieve any given impact orientation, independent of drop height (above a trivial minimum), by flipping the phone to that orientation and then neutralizing all rotation. It would complete the fall without spin.
Uh, they could achieve the same thing by weighting the side they want it to land on.
Someone should go back and look at their high school physics text. An object won't fall faster on the heavy side.
I hate to pile on but, @cjcampbell this is not something new. Does the hammer and feather experiment ring a bell -- think Apollo 15 (here if before your time).
Interesting concept that I recall being discussed a year or two back. The issue with modifying angular momentum during a fall remains the need to know the exact height of the phone above the impact surface. That is the single, critical unknown. Without an ultrasonic method - mentioned as a more advanced enhancement - or something equivalent, it's hard to see how this can work.
There's already a proximity sensor, and 2 cameras, they could be used.
Comments
I think they should fit all future iPhones with Airbags that deploy just before impact.
Possibly a parachute or two just for extra protection.
An object won't fall faster on the heavier side, correct. I suspect you are talking about air/vacuum with regard to air resistance in your examples. Center of gravity/mass change on the other hand has effect on rotation, for example, in a vacuum or an atmosphere.
It's a conspiracy so they can reverse engineer it and make your screens break so you have to buy new ones.
Apple's invention has nothing to do with causing one side to fall faster. It uses conservation of momentum to spin the device by spinning a small mass in the opposite direction.
I bet a mini airbag would be the easiest solution of all ... but being Apple I vote for TheWhite falcons's idea of hovering
Uh, they could achieve the same thing by weighting the side they want it to land on. No motor, no computers, etc.
Brilliant! To think you came up with that idea on your own, without having an R&D budget of billions of dollars!
You must be a genius. Be sure to patent that idea right away.
If an object will not fall faster on the heavy side, then Apple's shifting weight mechanism wouldn't work, would it? And Spaceship 1 and badminton birdies won't fall nose first. Maybe someone needs to go back to their high school physics book and realize that we don't use iPhones in a vacuum.
Birdies (and Spaceship 1) fall nose-first because of their aerodynamic design, not because of the heavy nose. If you dropped a birdie on the moon, it wouldn't fall in any particular orientation. The shifting/spinning weight inside the phone would rotate the phone via conservation of momentum and angular momentum.
This can be easily tested. Tape a couple of metal washers to the back of a relatively light and thin, but firm object (probably best not to use an actual phone - maybe an empty iPhone hardshell case?) and try to drop it on its face. I'll bet you'll have no difficulty doing so.
Too heavy. It wont be implemented. Mass is mass.
make the mechanism mass a battery. Trade static for dynamic. make the phone a couple mills thicker (I'm scared to buy a iPhone 6 because I think it's too skinny) to allow for empty spaces be filled with mass
The other part of this is could be to give tactile feedback as you play games (as you pitch a car into a curve, you feel the weight shift in your hand like the steering wheel being pulled to one side).
Apple's invention has nothing to do with causing one side to fall faster. It uses conservation of momentum to spin the device by spinning a small mass in the opposite direction.
a bit more complicated, but it's more of increasing the moment of inertia. if you're spinning, you can speed up/slow down the spin by extending mass
My issue is knowing where the ground is. you can't stop a rotation , you can just slow it down or speed it up so you can 'stick' the landing.
the next patent will be for ultrasonic spatial detection (terrain following sonar).
a bit more complicated, but it's more of increasing the moment of inertia. if you're spinning, you can speed up/slow down the spin by extending mass
My issue is knowing where the ground is. you can't stop a rotation , you can just slow it down or speed it up so you can 'stick' the landing.
the next patent will be for ultrasonic spatial detection (terrain following sonar).
The bulk of the article (and the first picture) talk about using a rotor. I think the idea is to use the vibrational motor to achieve this effect.
I would think that trying to change the moment of inertia (or for that matter trying to produce a net moment by adding mass to one side, as others have suggested) would require too much extra mass to be practical. At least with a rotor, you can compensate for lightness with rotational speed.
Uh, they could achieve the same thing by weighting the side they want it to land on. No motor, no computers, etc.
Your solution depends on air resistance. A phone dropped from your pocket or a table top would hit the floor in half a second at less than 10mph. That's too soon and too slow for aerodynamics to have any effect on an object as dense as an iPhone. Try flicking a badminton shuttlecock off a table as a first test of your theory.
Another useless comment. Is insurance there to make us bad drivers? Are warranties there to cover poor manufacturing? Nobody ever has an accident?
Guess you haven't seen the App Cycloramic, which uses the vibration motor to rotate your iPhone while on a table top to take 360 degree pictures. Without the friction of the iPhone resting on a surface (free fall) it could rotate even faster.
Someone should go back and look at their high school physics text. An object won't fall faster on the heavy side.
While the phone's as a whole wouldn't fall faster (its center of mass), a shift in weight in the phone does have a impact on how fast some parts fall in regards to the ground. Since your modifying the spin around the center of mass. Shifting weight away from the center would slow its rotation, while pulling it back would accelerate it, like a skater mid air. They spin horizontally, but you can also spin sideways :-).
What they're talking about here is basically using a flywheel, your compensating the low mass through high speed to move/modify the overall system's orientation. They're used in spaceship; fascinating stuff really.
Quite exact, the way I was envisaging it, which was to adjust the rotation rate so that at impact, it is oriented as needed.
But it occurs to me that they may do something rather different, especially since many dropped phones likely don't have much angular velocity to start with. Rigid-body rotations are stable about the two principle axes with the greatest and least moments of inertia, so two internal rotation systems, in principle, would be adequate to achieve any given impact orientation, independent of drop height (above a trivial minimum), by flipping the phone to that orientation and then neutralizing all rotation. It would complete the fall without spin.
Uh, they could achieve the same thing by weighting the side they want it to land on.
Someone should go back and look at their high school physics text. An object won't fall faster on the heavy side.
I hate to pile on but, @cjcampbell this is not something new. Does the hammer and feather experiment ring a bell -- think Apollo 15 (here if before your time).
It'd be better if it just stopped and hovered mid-air.
Now there's an engineering challenge!
A patent for clumsiness. I guess Apple wants us all to become clumsy.
Another useless comment. Is insurance there to make us bad drivers? Are warranties there to cover poor manufacturing? Nobody ever has an accident?
Warranties are almost always a waste of money; the same with insurance.
Thanks for proving my point.
This would really mess with those YouTube drop testers. Try as they might to drop it on it's screen, the darn thing just never does.
The coolest thing would be if mini retro-rockets came out and it repulsively landed
I predict a three-hop landing to a shady place.
A patent for clumsiness. I guess Apple wants us all to become clumsy.
Another useless comment. Is insurance there to make us bad drivers? Are warranties there to cover poor manufacturing? Nobody ever has an accident?
Warranties are almost always a waste of money; the same with insurance.
Thanks for proving my point.
it didn't prove your point because you didn't have one... but your idiotic post earned you a permanent place on my ignore list.
There's already a proximity sensor, and 2 cameras, they could be used.
not the Iairbag runout again.
What is interesting is this is a mostly software change. Vibrator might be modified, already got accelometer/gyroscope. What more is needed.