Your personal experiences of unusual phenomena?

[zoobyshoe]

I think what is most fascinating about that story is that you sat there and watched it. I don't think I could have prevented myself from reaching out and stopping it in that circumstance.

 

[Chi Meson]

I'm not sure if this is physically explainable - I'm hoping someone says it is because otherwise it's just going to lurk in my mind as the cognitive dissonance it has been for quite some time.

Anyhoo, I was in the bathroom once, on the jon, and I turned and bumped the toilet paper rack with my elbow. Apparently I had bumped it just right, as the full roll of toilet paper (yes, it was just put on) proceeded to completely unravel onto the floor. Of course the last bit stayed attached because it's usually glued. Of course my biggest problem was "How in the world can that happen?" then later on my problem was having all the toilet paper on the floor. Not the best place for a phenomenon, but hey, I didn't choose it!

Off the topic - is the search function not working for anyone else? I can't seem to find the thread on best physics colleges.

This would happen at my Gran's flat (apartment) in Glasgow. I first watched it when I was 6 years old. I never saw it anywhere else. In retrospect, I figured it out: the weight of the paper between the roll and the floor creates more torque on the roll than the friction of the spindle.

My guess is that it was a "fancy" TP holder, with nice low-friction bearings as opposed to a simple rod that the TP core slides over. You need that friction otherwise what you saw will keep happening.

Oh, Zoobyshoe, it's mesmerizing! You just can't stop it! You have to wait to see if the whole roll goes!

 

[Janitor]

When I read Decker's observation about the toilet paper roll, I thought he was putting us on. But since Chi is backing Decker up on this, I am inclined to think it is for real.

It kind of reminds me about how European scientists a few centuries ago were skeptical of tales of stones falling from the sky. They chalked it up to superstitious folk myths. In that particular case (meteorites!), it turned out the laugh was on the conservative scientists--though usually it is the other way around, I would say.

Decker, the search function does not work for me either.

 

[KingNothing]

It really is amazing. I'm glad chi came along so no Janitors make me out to be a liar. It really is mesmerizing. It's still hard to picture in my head though, I mean - there would have to be an incredibly low amount of friction, seeing as the only force continually applied on it is maybe 2.5 feet of toilet paper hanging off the roll at anyone time. I'm guessing you would have to 'bump' or 'hit' the toilet paper in a line almost perfectly tangent to the circle (or cylinder, but its circular shape is all that really matters) so as to not waste any force just pushing it in or out (relative you yourself).

 

[Janitor]

In my long and distinguished career, I have never had that happen.

It would make things more difficult for me if the schools bought the low-friction devices.

 

[KingNothing]

Don't try to draw any conclusions as to why it happened to me then;). I don't want to hear the words 'directly proportional to' at all in response to that 'phenomena'.;)

 

[Andre]

I happened to be on the right spot at the right time (slightly west of Stassbourg Fr) to see the solar eclipse of august 1999. Millions of people have only seen the darker side of the clouds. Awesome indeed.

But on another occasion most unexpectedly there was the green flash during sunset.

 

[Janitor]

Andre,

Thanks for the picture link. The text that goes with it is at

http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/GF/

 

[waynet]

One weird thing I experienced about 20 years ago, late one summer night right before I went to bed I saw some light coming in the window. I took a look outside and everything was lit up. It was brighter than a full moon during the winter, and I could see distant hills were lit up also. It was lightly overcast, so I couldn't see above the clouds, but they were lit up too. The light flickered like a candle in the wind, meaning the intensity of the light varied quickly up and down, but remained bright for at least a minute. There were no unusual sounds when I observed this. After a minute, the light went out like someone turned off the switch. It just went away.

The only thing I can think of is maybe a large meteor grazed through the atmosphere, but I couldn't see it because of the cloud cover. The light went out when it exited the atmosphere. I didn't hear any sonic booms afterwards, and I don't know if I would if it was really high up and exited back into space.

 

[Janitor]

Waynet,

That sounds pretty spooky. If the meteor idea were correct, I would think enough others would have noticed it for it to be a local news story the next day. Also, I would think a full minute is mighty long for a meteor to be casting light down on one particular locale.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Here is something else [recent] on the green flash.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040321.html

I noticed this at the grocery store. If you take an imperfect cylinder, such as a typical bottle found in the food cabinet or refrigerator, a coke bottle or a mayonnaise jar for example, and place it so that it can roll on the moving conveyor belt at the check out stand, if the belt is running continuously the bottle mostly just rolls and stays in place, but if you have chosen your bottle correctly, it can also move slowly in the direction opposite to that of the moving belt. It can even get a quick bump and take off relatively quickly. I really annoy checkers.

This happened to Tsunami while she was cooking a chicken dinner. She was using a large Pyrex casserole dish, perhaps 8" X 16" X 2", to prepare some chicken. I don't remember exactly why, but she ended up placing the dish on the stove top to finish cooking the piecemeal bird. Note that we have the solid cook top type of stove with embedded heating elements; so the top of the stove is completely smooth. So, we have about two thirds of the dish over the heat and the remaining third of the dish, the ends, over no heat. The dish shattered spontaneously with surprising force. To me it sounded like baseball crashing through the kitchen window. Glass was everywhere. The dish had actually blown apart with an explosive-like force. I should have seen this one coming.

When I was a young lad of 18 or so I spent a lot of time driving a dune buggy on the LA freeways. The buggy had a fiberglass body, small, narrow front tires, and beefy wide rear tires that were good for any off road venture; anytime...pretty much your classic 70's, canary yellow dune buggy. One night I was on the freeway driving home from work when I felt a funny and significant wobble. It did get my attention but this was not really unusual since the roads can sometimes have ruts, fractures, or ridges that have much the same effect on light vehicles. I noticed this sensation briefly a few more times and then forgot all about it. Maybe ten minutes later while cruising along at about 60 mph I felt a hard bump. This time I knew something was wrong. I pulled over and checked the tires, and I kid you not, there were no lug nuts holding on the passenger rear wheel. The lug bolts had all sheared off flush with the drum. When the buggy came to a stop the rim had wandered away from the drum by about 1/2" and was just balancing on the center axle. The weight of the vehicle had apparently held it in place. That's all that I know for sure.

The sodium acetate, supersaturated solution demo is quite cool to see. I think it is about 180 grams of sodium acetate salt put into 100 grams of water. Heat until just before boiling and make sure the salt completely dissolves. Let stand until cool. Then drop a pinch of sodium acetate salt into the solution and watch the entire vessel of liquid turn solid in about 5 seconds. It is quite dramatic. I used to do this using our microwave which smelled like acetic acid forevermore.

Edit: You can get sodium acetate salt from your local pharmacist. The same solution can be used over and over again; just keep some salt on the side for future demos. The saturation level of the solution is critical...I will get the exact amount later if no one else knows. It was either 140 or 180 grams to 100 grams of water...as I remember.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Okay one more. I love this stuff.

I was called out due to electrical problems on a mobile CAT scan unit. The old 70's era TTL circuits were going nuts and nothing seemed to make sense to the EMI engineer. I started tracing signals and a some nasty transient voltages back through to the power supplies and then to nowhere. It seemed to be everywhere. I went outside stood on the bumper of my truck in order to reach an access panel on the exterior wall of the scanner. When I touched the CT unit I felt a shock. I then measured something like 180 VAC between my truck bumper and the scanner's body - both of which are sitting on rubber tires. The scanners frame is well grounded. I looked up and what did I see? High tension power lines running directly over the scanner; I think lengthwise...since this was over twenty years ago I'm not sure about the direction. Anyway, we repositioned the scanner and everything was fine.

 

[whitelighter]

standing on a road about 20 years ago on and island of the coast of Tasmania Australia, looking in one direction a half circle rainbow could be seen and then turning and facing the opposite direction another half circle rainbow could be seen.

Two rainbows seen from opposite directions...my wife witnessed this too.

also not so unusual...on a beach the sun was big and setting in the West and at the same time a big full moon was rising.

 

[Integral]

standing on a road about 20 years ago on and island of the coast of Tasmania Australia, looking in one direction a half circle rainbow could be seen and then turning and facing the opposite direction another half circle rainbow could be seen.

Two rainbows seen from opposite directions...my wife witnessed this too.

Perhaps a strong reflection off a large body of water?

also not so unusual...on a beach the sun was big and setting in the West and at the same time a big full moon was rising.

What would be unusual is to see a full moon rising at ANY OTHER time.

I spent some time on the south coast of Cuba. I could never get used to the sun raising and setting into the water.

 

[rogersj]

Green Flash

Hey Janitor
I did a little research on that green flash from the sun from your original question. The green flash IS true and is quite easily explained. The phenomenon is caused by the layers of Earth's atmosphere acting like a prism. I got that from the website below. I encourage people to look at the website every day; NASA posts new pictures everyday. It's pretty cool.

My reply would have been sooner however I only just joined.

 

[rogersj]

forgot the URL (hahahah ) sorry:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040321.html

 

[rogersj]

sorry - I didn't realize that someone had already answered the question.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Perhaps a strong reflection off a large body of water?

I was thinking that it may have been due to sunlight being reflected by a large cloud. I know that light from a white cloud can cast a shadow.

whitelighter?

 

[pago]

I've also seen some weird stuff.

One evening when I was bicycling home from a friend, I looked at the sky and noticed the clouds where green. The sun was not visible at the time it was probably only around an hour before it was completely dark outside.

And another evening and this time I was walking home from another friend, I saw this very bright green light in the ditch. And at first I thought this was someones dropped cellphone, but as I looked closer it began to move around. So it must have been some kind of bug, however I didn't know we had insects that lit here in Sweden :/

And one day when my computer exploded, it gave a way this strong blue light and the weird thing is, as I live on the upper floor of our house and all doors to the downstairs was closed, my mother and my sister could see this blue light. And the only possibillity I can think of that they could have seen it is that either the light went through the floor, or out the window and then into the window downstairs... Anyways I thought it was weird.

 

[Searush]

This page is probably done being looked at, but I just heard a story from my Grandma about a day in the 50's or so when she was hanging up laundry and in the clouds saw a ship - a queen elisabeth - and could even hear music playing and see them dancing. She was near a lake in Michigan at the time and later found out it was an occurrence of a reflection involving a ship at sea, on the ocean, and crystals in the cloud. But what about the audio? Could this be possible? What is this phenomenon called?

 

[Integral]

This page is probably done being looked at, but I just heard a story from my Grandma about a day in the 50's or so when she was hanging up laundry and in the clouds saw a ship - a queen elisabeth - and could even hear music playing and see them dancing. She was near a lake in Michigan at the time and later found out it was an occurrence of a reflection involving a ship at sea, on the ocean, and crystals in the cloud. But what about the audio? Could this be possible? What is this phenomenon called?

The optical effect is know as looming and is closely related to a road mirage, the difference being a temperature gradient in the atmosphere, rather then at the road surface.

I am not sure about the audio part.