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    Re: Artificial horizons
    From: Marvin Sebourn
    Date: 2003 Jul 10, 23:54 EDT
    In a message dated 7/10/2003 10:35:14 PM Central Standard Time, ARDENW714@AOL.COM writes:

    This thread has gotten me to thinking ...

    The best thing about a liquid artificial horizon is that it is gravitationally driven to be flat and level, but it suffers from breezes.

    The best thing about a mirror artificial horizon is that it's permanently flat, but it's hard to make it level.

    Has anybody tried floating a mirror on a liquid bath? You could glue it to a piece of styrofoam, and if it were only slightly smaller than the pan it's floating in, there wouldn't be much room for wind to disturb the liquid.

    I haven't tried it (this is just a gedanken experiment) - has anybody else?

    Regards,
    Bill Arden


    Bill, all I did was think about it also, but more in the line of considering using a flat glass plate floating in a liquid of high specific gravity. I remember from geology testing of specific gravity of unknowns, that some of the heavier liquids were quite toxic though. I know there are liquids with a higher specific gravity than quartz, ~ 2.65.

    I wonder if a mechanical pendulum or two-axis leveling system connected to a reflective optical flat on the top could be (or probably has been) developed. Sounds terribly heavy though, and large.

    Marvin

    Marvin Sebourn
    osugeography@aol.com
       
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