Levitating Liquid Pendulum

That is pretty cool....the work being done by the oscillator is equal to the work needed to elevate the water, plus losses...

Hey, is that a pig balancing on a ball entering a train station with a ticket in his mouth?

The little piglet is balancing on air as well....

According to my interpretation of the green arrows, the piglet is exiting through the entrance.

He's still learning the in's and out's of commuter based travel...

That is very cool. I like the stability explanation, too. I was slightly surprised that nothing was mentioned about the small amount of liquid dripping down the inverted boat. I think that small but consistent amount of liquid loss relates to the imperfection to the bottom surface produced by the boat. I suspect adding the inverted boat makes for a smaller "sweet spot" of successful levitation parameters.

The thought occurred that it would be cool if a similar trick could be applied to Tokamak plasma instabilities. (I'm sure the smart people who design them have already thought of it.)

https://phys.org/news/2018-05-small-instabilities-tokamaks-disruptions.html

If they were smart they'd invest in making this the 21st century lava lamp and leave the reactor business alone.

Of course tossing billions away in the name of science has benefits.

I was slightly surprised that nothing was mentioned about the small amount of liquid dripping down the inverted boat. I think that small but consistent amount of liquid loss relates to the imperfection to the bottom surface produced by the boat. I suspect adding the inverted boat makes for a smaller "sweet spot" of successful levitation parameters.

The inverted boat was a nice touch! The air underneath supports the boat just as it supports the water, and the air cannot rise because the vibration keeps the water (and boat) balanced in place, blocking it.

Maybe the drip on the boat was enough uncoupled from the vibration that gravity took over.

The drips of water were clearly falling from gravity. I would have liked some discussion or speculation why the dripping water was no longer levitated back up to where the rest of the water resides. I suspect the multiple factors of drop surface area geometry, wicking ship geometry, drop density and surface tension all play a part but that's only my speculation.

I would guess that there is some static electricity occurring on the boat surface and the water is attracted to it, causing some added forces at work beyond those mentioned...

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-water-attracted-to-electrically-charged-objects

I don't think there is any static electricity or surface tension involved in keeping the boat in place.

Left alone (no vibration) a wave would form on the bottom of the water pendulum, and the boat would fall down. The reason that neither of these happens is that the vibration forces the bottom of the water pendulum, which is heavier than the air underneath, to be flat (think again of the inverted pendulum), and it forces the boat, which is also heavier than the air underneath, to stay on the bottom of the water pendulum. Either the water starting to fall down or the boat starting to fall down is corrected by the vibration, just as it makes the inverted pendulum return to vertical.

The drips are loosely connected to the boat and are sufficiently decoupled from the vibration that gravity is able to overcome the stabilization, the same as the inverted pendulum will fall down past a certain angle. Less vibration means less stabilization for these drips.

could be vibrational nodes and the liquid that wets the boat moves is outside of it. the surface tension may be stronger than the vibration and moves along the surface of the boat beyond where gravity wins.

Fascinating! This is one of those things I'd have to study repeatedly before understanding it.

To answer the rss question, RSS = Remote Sensing Society