Undeniable Friday: The Balancing Spoon Trick

It's Undeniable Friday! Every Friday, in addition to an odd little factoid, UndeniableFacts.com gives you a fun puzzle, illusion, or activity to enjoy and share.

Today: "The Balancing Spoon Trick"

Update: the same trick done with a spork.

Here's another great one for parties!



The effect:
A seemingly ordinary spoon is set down on end. Rather than immediately falling over, the spoon balances and wobbles around.

The setup:
This one takes a little preparation, so make sure and plan at least two weeks ahead. First remove the hubcap on one of your car's tires (kids: get your parents' permission first). Next you need to affix the spoon to the exact center of the wheel. Hot-glue can work, but I prefer duct tape. Replace the hubcap over the spoon, and drive for approximately 500 miles. This doesn't have to be all at once, but make sure that you drive at least 500 total miles before removing the spoon. Caution: avoid backing up as much as possible. For every foot that you back up, you must drive an additional 30 miles forward. Excessively sharp turns may also interfere with the process. If you're planning a road trip through say, Nevada or Kansas, you have an excellent opportunity to set this trick up.

When you perform the trick, simply set the spoon on the end of its handle and bask in the amazement of your audience.

The explanation:
To explain this effect, it is important to first cover the topic of gravitational domains. Every subatomic particle has a specific number of quanta called gravitons which orbit it. The number of gravitons is proportional to its mass. Electrons have exactly 3 gravitons, while protons and neutrons each have approximately 5,500. These quanta are responsible for many of the effects which in classical physics are attributed to "mass". Gravitational force, for example, is not an attractive force between objects based on their mass, but a force between the gravitons which massive objects possess. Therefore, if we can change the positions of the gravitons in an object, we can change the way gravity affects that object.

When you attach an object to the center of a spinning axis which is attached to a heavy load (i.e. your car), a considerable centrifugal force acts on the object. Centrifugal force is, like gravity, dependent on mass. Unlike gravity, however, centrifugal force does not act on gravitons, but on the real mass of the object. By placing the spoon at the center of the axis, the spoon's mass is constantly pulled away from the center. Its gravitons, however, are negligibly affected by the centrifugal force, and tend to stay in the same place, relative to the particles they orbit. As a result, the gravitons realign within the individual atoms, reorienting the gravitational momenta of those atoms based on their distance from the center. This causes the formation of "Gauss domains" - areas in the structure of the spoon which have uniformly oriented gravitational momenta - because the atoms of the spoon which are near each other are, by definition, a similar distance from the axis of rotation, and thus are similarly oriented.

The end result of all of this is that the spoon's distribution of gravitational mass is no longer consistent with its distribution of "real" mass. Therefore, the spoon can be balanced on either end, where the gravitational domains are largest.