This mind-bending machine completes one turn every 2.3 trillion years

[Flying Squirrel]

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/this-mind-bending-machine-completes-one-turn-every-2-3-1457516789

[hunter]

1. Hah, hah, Nature... She can mess up the most careful plans.

You could build this thing out of diamond, powered by the radiation of a small black hole in a remote region of the universe, and it still wouldn't last...

One dances with the chaos or dies.

[AtheistCrusader]

3. Yeah, it doesn't sound like it's going to last too long, even now.

[BlueJazz]

2. I suppose there's nothing truly wrong with this but it could have been done in a cooler way.

We'll be long gone before the last shaft moves a 100th of it's rotation

[nikto]

4. They need

They need to slow that thing down, bigtime.

[Rosco T.]

5. So, this is a simulation of the GOP method of running the House then?

[klook]

14. DUzy!

Har, good one!

[hedgehog]

6. I automatically assumed that the gears were turning very slowly,

but was wondering how much power was lost in each step down, and noting that the block is square, meaning that turning it would mean enough power to crush the wooden board.....so at some point I expect the mechanism to be jammed.

[PeoViejo]

8. Plus the Elasticity of the metal in the Gear Train.

Like a Torque Tube, it will just store the Energy.

[passiveporcupine]

9. Since all atoms are constantly in motion

I wonder if a turn at that speed would just mean the shaft in the concrete rotates without moving the concrete at all.

[hedgehog]

10. My brain hurts!

[Towlie]

7. This is nonsense. Nobody can possibly know if the last gear is even moving at all!

With the inevitable slop in the gear train, the last gear is probably not moving at all. Any moving that it does will be in quick spurts as friction is overcome, and there may even be times when it moves backward. All they can really know with any precision is the average revolution rate over some very long period, and the minimum value of that period is almost certainly longer than this device will even exist.

[greiner3]

16. "Nobody can possibly know if the last gear is even moving at all!"

Well, actually they can via lasers.

Physics is the way IT HAS TO MOVE and if the drill did not move, the machine is operating in a parallel universe, with different physical properties.

[Snake Plissken]

11. If you take into account the stack up tolerances and backlash of the gears, it could be off by about

a trillion years

[Peace Patriot]

12. Why?

nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. If the 1st gear is about 5cm in radius

then its circumference is about 31cm; 200 rev/min = 0.31*200/60 = 1 m/s speed on its circumference, roughly.
So the 2nd gear goes at 0.02m/s
3rd: .0004 m/s
...
6th: 3.2 nanometres/sec. Roughly the diameter of 12 iron atoms. Or about 2mm in a week.

8th gear: the diameter of a single iron atom in about 200 seconds. Less than a micron in a week - he could have set this one in concrete comfortably, I think.

10th gear: the diameter of a single iron atom in nearly 6 days - if he ran the machine that long.

12th gear: the diameter of a single iron atom in about 40 years.

[Rain Mcloud]

15. What a waste!

The money used to make that ridiculous machine could have gone to a corporate CEO so the money could go into a numbered offshore account and in an amazing coincidence,re-entered the economy in roughly 2.3 Trillion years!

[dreampunk]

17. Beautiful gear sets!

It's art!