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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


Idealized Science Institute – Which ramp reaches highest final speed?

An evening pause: A science quiz I suspect most of my readers will get right. Regardless, this experiment illustrates some basic fundamentals of the scientific method: Don’t guess, make no assumptions, test by experimentation, and repeat those tests multiple times to confirm your results.

The Institute that made this video appears to be a great resource for homeschoolers.

Hat tip Cotour, who tells me he “got it correct!”

To everyone: Enjoy the Labor Day weekend!

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

7 comments

  • wayne

    Cotour–
    Check out some sample mechanical reasoning aptitude tests

    https://www.practiceaptitudetests.com/bennett-mechanical-comprehension-tests/

  • Blackwing1

    Now let’s do a reductio ad absurdum experiment. Build a ramp that has a huge, say 5 foot diameter, set of spirals in it as it drops to the exit level for the balls. Make it at least 4 loops before the ball exits, which will add about (lessee, pi times the diameter is the circumference) 15 feet (ignoring the .14) for each loop, making it about 60 feet longer than the other ramps.

    I’ll guarantee you that the ball will be exiting that ramp at a significantly lower velocity than the rest of the ramps. All due to friction, which because these ramps are so short, doesn’t have time (length) to play a measurable role given their apparatus.

  • JH

    The ending velocity is the same, but the AVERAGE velocity is quite different. This is not what the quiz asks, but the underlying physics is much more interesting.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRgxJCWBKk0

  • Cotour

    This demonstration brings out the point a bit more succinctly:

    https://youtu.be/4QmpKkU1OP0?si=GU5Z6m9dFAYu5W3B

  • Jeff Wright

    Chemistry was tough for me…not so much the tests…but the labs..

    My teacher wondered how I got a different thermometer reading than the rest of the class, even though she was looking right at me.

    I could never get the bloody locker open either.
    No wonder my Dad called me a jinx.

  • Andi

    I did pretty well in physics because I could visualize what was happening and (most of the time) reason out what the result should be. Chemistry on the other hand – too much memorization!

  • John

    I thought they were going to want us to estimate the lengths of the ramps and try to factor in friction. Simple potential to kinetic energy, Blah, there was no trick or catch.

    Chemistry lab for me was just a bunch of engineer monkeys mixing stuff together psudo-randomly for ‘results’ we knew they were looking for and would pass the class.

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