Build your own Earthquake machine.

Wouldn't it be nice to not have to worry about bombing somebody and just cause their building to crash down on them. I bet Iran would shut up if their capital joined the sand. Crackhead bugging you, destroy there building. This is all thanks to Nikola Tesla. Supposedly he build it and destroyed his lab doing so, and you can own the 172 pages of blue prints for $16.95

www.lonezone.com...

So what do you think, can it work??

I think this is what was tested on Mythbusters very recently.

Although they didnt get a earthquake what they did get was very intersting.

They set this thing up on a iron road bridge and although the machine was only like 1 foot long they were receiving vibrational readings from all over the bridge. Having the power on full maximum did nothing for them however when they slowed it down and i think they said they matched the vibration frequency to the natural frequency of the bridge their readings were showing up all over the place.

They were quite amazed by it it was good watching

this thing will NOT create earthquake. period

the reason for some bridge to claps when a team of people march across is that the team is sooo trained at marching that they managed to take steps at precisly the same time. all of their feet land on the same point. at that point, the forces coused by their feet pressing down add up to a huge force, and causes the bridge to claps

this is like saying, if there are 10 people standing on a living room bed. if one jumps, and then another one jumps after the first person jumps. this will not cause the bed to claps, because they didn't land at the same point,so their force don't add up.
however, if all 10 people jump up, and land at a percisely same time, it might couse the bed to claps because all their forces add up to one huge force.

earthquakes, on the other hand are results of shifts in earth's tectonic plates, which has nothing to do with that device.

[edit on 2/1/2007 by warset]

BTW, i stopped watching Mythbuster after the episode they claimed that a pluged hair dryer thrown into a bathtub will kill the person in the tub

which is completely none sense.
Any high school physics teacher should know better than that.

when a person is in water, any electrical device connected to the water will not shock the person. the electrical current will simply not pass onto the person.

a basic feature of electricity is that it will only pass through the material with least relative resistance.

when a person is in a tub filled with water, the electric current will only pass through/onto the water, not the person, because water has a lower resistance compared to the person.


in fact, this is common sense.
think about this: in a public swimming pool, where often there are lights installed at the bottom, of the pool. if one light happens to be defective and not water sealed, will that kill everyone in the pool? of course not! it doesn't do anything.

that episode of electrical tests has totally destroyed the image of MythBusters in my mind. it's turn out that they are just a bunch of actors...

Im not on about the episode where they had mechanical soldiers marching on a make shift bridge.

This was a very recent episode using a very real iron bridge spanning a river and the machine they used to match the frequency of the bridge was literally a foot long. I dont think they were attempting to complete a full scale earth quake but instead to demolish a bridge using very minute vibrations at a very low frequency simulating a earthquake

With a low Q, like most structures (or the Earth), you won't get much of an amplitude peak at resonance, because most of the input is dissipated as heat.

The bridge effect is caused by resonance. If a body of soldiers march at a pace that matches the resonance of the bridge, it can cause destructive effects.

(The Tacoma Narrows bridge video is usually wheeled out at this pint).

As for not getting electric shocks in water - dude, how do you think an electric eel gets its supper?

The Tacoma River Narrows bridge was a bit different though, that was a wind torque resonance on a suspension bridge.

If I remember,Direct Current can't pass through water.
I could be talking utter toot,of course.
Anyone able to correct me?

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
The Tacoma River Narrows bridge was a bit different though, that was a wind torque resonance on a suspension bridge.

Agreed, but the magic is in the resonance bit.

I'm not aware of any militray applications (yet).

There was a conspiracy that the Russians made a earthquake in a afgani city buy planting explosives in the mines under the city

Hairdryer Kills 2 Children in Bathtub

6 Cases of Suicide by Hairdryer/Bathtub

Are you sure that people can't be electrocuted by appliances in the bathtub? Because I'm pretty sure it's happened a number of times, and as Wembley mentioned, electric eels and that shocking flounder, whatever the Hell it's called, use electrical discharge to stun prey underwater - so...

Human body is mostly water anyway, what makes our resistance higher than bathwater? Hell, we're saline bags! That's like a super highway with no speed limit as far as electricity is concerned, no?

On topic, I love the idea of an earthquake machine, but I'm always 99% skeptical when it comes to 'plans for 16.95' or whatever - usually out of the back of a magazine or comic book. It's neat concept, but c'mon, if it works why isn't it advertised in a more reputable medium? That kinda stuff always raises my eyebrows and tightens my wallet...

[edit on 3-2-2007 by WyrdeOne]

Yep, you absolutely can kill a person with a hairdryer in the bathtub. Otherwise, why in the world would it be dangerous to swim during a lightening storm. Now, to be fair, a lot of companies now make dryers with saftey features to try to prevent it, but as the previous poster said, plenty of people still die like this. Of course, you could prove us all wrong by posting a video of yourself doing it with a hairdryer without a saftey feature on youtube.

But besides resonance, you have to have a high enough Q.

It's one thing to have constant wind motion across the entire span of the bridge, that's a lot of energy input.

But little taps won't get the job done, resonance or no, because the energy input is dissipated as heat. Unless you have really high Q bridge material. Maybe you could do it with glass.

Doesn't take a high IQ to push a button. And there are plenty of people in this world who can follow directions.

Oh jeez, imagine the fun you could have with something like that!

Almost as much fun as with those 150mW lasers.

Originally posted by Royal76
Doesn't take a high IQ to push a button. And there are plenty of people in this world who can follow directions.

Ur, not IQ, Q.

Q describes how lossy a system is in resonance. You can have a structure/circuit/whathaveyou that actually IS resonant, but not build up any sort of oscillatory amplitude because the structure is losing all the input energy as heat.

That's why you can't have little taps on a bridge bring it down. If the structure had very very high Q, then most of the input power from the taps would be conserved and over time would build up. But it doesn't, because the flexing of the bridge dissipates the taps as random heat throughout the structure - the bridge has a relatively low Q.

Originally posted by Wembley

The bridge effect is caused by resonance. If a body of soldiers march at a pace that matches the resonance of the bridge, it can cause destructive effects.

(The Tacoma Narrows bridge video is usually wheeled out at this pint).

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
The Tacoma River Narrows bridge was a bit different though, that was a wind torque resonance on a suspension bridge.

Herd bout our famous wobbly bridge?

This was a new design of foot bridge, worked fine in testing, opened it up to the crowds they noticed a rather obvious effect!

People filled the bridge, as we are British, we walked politely - almost in a queue across it. Almost marching left right etc.

An unexpected occesilattion in the vibrations created was set up, not as cool as the Tacoma River Narrows - the M bridge is still there thanks to the dampers fitted as an 'after thought' still, makes you think!!

That's a cool looking design. Sadly, my civil engineering experience is limited to the statics, dynamics and materials classes we had to take in EE, and blowing them to hell classes I took in the Army.

It looks sort of like a suspension bridge.

The trick to getting a destructive resonance is to either put in enough energy to overcome the losses, or to have a material that has very little flex losses. A glass bridge would be a bad idea. That's why I'm sort of not planning to ever get on that cantilevered glass loop over the Grand Canyon.

There's a bridge in Huntsville that I never cared for. You can actually feel the damn thing bouncing up and down when a heavy load goes over it. I'd give you odds that you could vibrate THAT one to death. I'm not sure the bridge bearings are right.

Speaking of odd bridge designs, what about the Millau viaduct?

Yeah - not a suspension bridge, at least in the traditional way, the forces are held in a more horizontal way, as opposed to the vert, don't know much myself, but it's very interesting to lecturers engineers etc.

(edit) thats a suspension bridge, that little pic in my last post im on about

Worth looking up if your interested, there are two millineum bridges, one in London, one in Newcastle. This one is the London one.

The other one is cool too, it dont 'raise' to let boats through, it rotates! (horezontally)
newcastle millennium bridge

[edit on 21/2/2007 by Now_Then]


[edit on 21/2/2007 by Now_Then]