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Politics : Should God be replaced?
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To: Solon who wrote (3392)11/27/2000 11:24:47 PM
From: cosmicforce  Read Replies (2) of 28931
 
My implication was that anyone (whether totally in their right mind, or not) would deny they were unwell, if the cure was to spin them around in a chair!

I suppose it is similar to the "mechanic's whack": the calibrated application of brute force to faulty rotating mechanisms.

Consider a fast rotating eccentric shaft which you blindly hit with a massive hammer while the shaft is rotating . If we simplify to a binomial product of contingent probability (always a good approximation) we end up with the condition where we have 1/4 of the cases where the whack makes things better (correcting some of the eccentricity while not mostly worsening it) and 3/4 where it makes it worse by adding to the problem more than it takes away from it.

However, a part that is out of whack (no pun) has its bad parts spending more time outside the average radius as it rotates and has a higher chance of being hit than the good parts which are not outside the average radius. But this is only true if the dwell of the hammer is long relative to the angular velocity.

From this can we deduce that if you have a bent shaft, whacking it often is not necessarily better than whacking slowly? Or maybe that whacking it only helps if it is rigid and spinning? I'm not sure there is general application outside of the context of the "mechanic's whack". Perhaps the psychiatric community is not ready for my findings.

Okay Henri, spin Pepe faster and we smack anything that is outside his average radius. Center, Master Pepe. Center.
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