Ever Feel the Need to be Inspired?

So I was laying in bed one night thinking about what I would do to highlight all of my favorite think big ideas with little or no amount of money, technology, or skill and I came across a couple of key ideas that might be of use to someone one day. For instance, when I stumbled upon the YouTube video some years back of a man in particular who built the stonehenge in his backyard using only his two arms, basic physics, and due diligence I started to think about what else can be done to build something similarly. That something does not have to be extraordinarily huge, respectable, or remarkable, albeit had to be something worth noting about and a contribution to third world countries, people such as myself who do not have a lot of money, or the likes of the human race.

Technology has gotten so complex these days that without a doubt if someone pulled the plug out of your computer or the batteries out of your calculator, we would almost certainly have to go back to the cave ages just to rebuild what he had made in the first place. Complicated blueprints map out the intricate details of our houses, illustrate our photos and videos, and even show us how to make computer chips. But what if one day all of our instruction manuals were tossed out? Then what would we do? Certainly not just anyone can even remotely begin rebuilding the modern society's concept of life. Cell phones, LCD monitors, televisions, and well, even electricity all depend on the extremely, mind boggling technology that we have built from the ground up today. God forbid we lose electricity for a day, no wait, an hour, a minute!

So returning to my original thesis, back to the human race's roots. Are there any alternative methods for creating the magnificent and marvelous modern day items we enjoy every day? Could we build, say, a house without oil or the need for heavy duty machinery? Could anyone really be self-sufficient?

There are really only two concepts that I would like to write about for the time being in relation to this topic. Both concepts face very large adversity and triumph over what would seem like the impossible, even with the technology that we have today.

The first concept I would like to explain directly relates to the man who built Stonehenge in his backyard using only the basic knowledge and principles of physics dating all the way back to when Stonehenge was built, a whopping 5,000 years ago, which some say is before the wheel was used. One single man, a retired construction worker, built an exact replica of the Stonehenge in his backyard by himself, without the aid of heavy machinery, wheels, or help. Most of the blocks of stone that he was using ranged from 2 tons, all the way up to 40 tons. The weight of one man is approximately 1/10 of one ton.

The way he accomplished this, using only the technology used back in that time, was by utilizing four basic concepts of physics: gravity, center of mass, fulcrums, and potential energy.

A fulcrum can best be visualized by thinking about the middle wedge of a teeter totter. This allows the center of gravity ( or mass of the load ) to be split in two (one person on either side). This means that the teeter totter would likely spin very easily if there were two people of equal weight sitting on either end, and if someone wanted to turn it into a Merry-Go-Round, they very easily could. In this case, a small child could spin two grown men in circles all day long, as long as they were the same weight.

What this also allows for is the clever usage of actually moving objects by placing fulcrums at each and every center of gravity point along whichever point of view line you would like your object to eventually rotate to and end up at. In this case, one would have to imagine as if they were building a railroad track for a train to go somewhere, except instead of railroad tracks, it would be evenly placed fulcrum stands at each midpoint the object would end up at after each rotation. This perpetuates the motion of the object in such a manner where again, it required very little force. Essentially, gravity is doing the work. You could alternatively think of this as an impromptu "wheel", but different.

Now that we know how to pivot and move our heavy objects, how do we stand them up and position them upright? The answer here is even more clever - Teeter Totter your way up! Just as we use carjacks today, a similar approach can be utilized to levitate our heavy objects! This time we think about piling up any dirt or extra weight on each side of our fulcrum to make our object tip down to planet earth. Then, when tilted up towards the sky, we can slip in a little extra piece of wood to make our fulcrum taller. Using this method, we teeter totter our way up to whatever height we wanted, slowly but surely.

Since we are already hypothetically playing on an imaginary "playground", I would like to keep playing there to help illustrate my next example concept - this time on swings. A swing is essentially a giant pendulum, made for kids and adults . Except when adults swing it may not have anything to do with playgrounds at all ;).

This concept involves how one can turn 'another something small' into 'something really big', a giant palace of energy, if you will. When you are pushing a friend on a swing, you do not just push him once or twice until he can muster up the courage to jump from the maximum height, you push him repeatedly until he gets up there. Each time he swings, you push him on his way down, adding more and more energy to his swing. Imagine, for instance, if your friend jumped off at the height of the swing with one push. It would be like you throwing him 10 feet in the air, 15 feet away. You would have to be very strong to have done that!

I pull the last example into the writing to help better illustrate another great and ingenious design by a famous inventor, namely, Nikola Tesla. Tesla claimed to have built a device the size of a human head that could literally shake the foundation of a large building to its core. Mythbusters, a show on the Discovery channel, recently tested the legitimacy of this claim. The story's claim was that Tesla could shake an entire 80 foot building using nothing but his electrical oscillator, which was the size of a human head.

At first, they seemed very doubtful of whether or not the device would work at all, well, because the device was only a fraction of one percent of the weight of the so claimed building in question.

What they came to discover in their trials and efforts was that a single oscillation, when put into harmony of the energy moving throughout the device, would amplify the peak wave previously running through it. Similarly to the swing example above, and similar to say a wave in the ocean, each wave was amplified, slowly but surely throughout the object is was radiating through, gaining more and more energy the entire time. As long as they applied the energy at the peak rebound rate of the energy, the frequency would stay the same, and it would grow as well.

All in all, the Mythbusters found out that the small human head sized electrical apparatus that Tesla made, when finely tuned, actually did simulate earthquake-like conditions within these large structures! Likewise, this technology could be used to move just about anything.

So how do these concepts aim to inspire? Simple, really. They both allow for construction of not so everyday type of structures and the magnificent usage of physics concepts to harmonize together. When we do not have oil, how will we think big for ourselves? In this case, we do not need anyone but ourselves to build great things.

Both concepts note that the final result is not impossible, as you can clearly see the results in both situations. For some, completely irrational conclusions have come about as a result of seeing some of these things occur in nature. UFO sightings, aliens, 'magic' - as it may seem that way, it just takes some time to make things like catapults and Stone Henge come to life.

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