[time-nuts] Q/noise of Earth as an oscillator

Dan Kemppainen dan at irtelemetrics.com
Wed Jul 27 19:15:48 UTC 2016


On 7/27/2016 10:04 AM, time-nuts-request at febo.com wrote:
> Exciting the Earth with a new frequency (and an adeguate amount of
> energy) sets a new rotational speed: you cannot retune a (for example)
> quartz crystal in the same way...

Sure you can. Spin it at 100 RPM, or 1000, RPM or even 25000  RPM... :)

Interesting conversation. I tend to agree the earth is not a classic 
harmonic oscillator. Energy is not exchanged between different storage 
mechanisms. It's rotational period has no natural harmonic frequency. 
i.e. rotational period could be anything.

However I also agree it exhibits characteristics of other items that Q 
can be calculated for. Rate of slowing, loss of energy per cycle, etc.
And since the definition of Q is varied and used quite widely, it seems 
Q is also appropriate here.

Maybe Earth is a special case since after all it DID give us the second, 
and we DO set our atomic clocks to IT every 6 to 12 months...

...now I'll be thinking of this all night...  ...I think Tom is just 
toying with us now...

Dan







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