*Afterthoughts & Addenda* The conclusions I made in this video *have now been shown to be incorrect* - a lot of the observations here still stand, but the notion that the chain loop rises *purely* because of an excess of energy in the falling side, has been pretty conclusively shown to be false. It actually does appear to be a weird mechanical property of the chain that allows it to 'push' against the beaker or chain heap at the bottom of the rising side. Updated video is here: th-cam.com/video/gJYMM-odvfE/w-d-xo.html
I was watching this video on "drowning machines" and the part on fluid dynamics around 4:45 really reminded me of these chain experiments, so came back here to post it... th-cam.com/video/KaeqEVI0uCk/w-d-xo.html I wonder if this idea, of something at a "critical" speed effecting the rest of the system at a "sub-critical" speed has anything to do with it? It might just be the diagrams used in that part of the video reminded me of yours 😂 EDIT: Had another look at his video, and hadn't noticed earlier on theres a part where "critical speed" water hits non-critical water and causes a waterfall that jumps up
The Cambridge explanation is rubbish. There is never a bonus-kick at the container/jar/beaker. There is indeed a bonus-kick when a falling chain-link hits (collides with) the floor of the laboratory, & this adds to the downward pull of a chain, & increases the size of the fountain etc (by say 1%). But that extra (bonus) force is initiated by the falling/colliding link itself. Meanwhile, back in the jar, a rising/yanked link will indeed get a kick from the floor of the jar (or from the links supporting that link), but, that kick is not initiated by the rising link, it is initiated by the preceding link. The preceding link has a limited amount of impulse to give. The kick from the jar results in a similar (but opposite) kick being given to the preceding link. But the kick from the jar is not a bonus-kick. The initiating impulse from the preceding link is not added-to by the kick from the jar. The impulse of the kick experienced by the rising/yanked link has been borrowed from the preceding link. In reality, borrowed from the full/whole chain. Hence, at the jar, links or beads, it makes no difference. In reality, there is no rising/yanked link. Duznt happen. What i mean is, we mostly have a rising/yanked arc, made of many links. In slow-mo u can see that there is mostly a long arc of moving links (talking bout metal beads here). And the movings usually involve being dragged gradually horizontally for a time, & gradually upish. There is no sudden kick -- it is a gradual kkkiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiicccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkkkk. Look in slow-mo at a bead chain fountain. There are say 4 adjacent beads acting as pseudo-links being yanked/jerked up. (a) But, these pseudo-links are not rigid, they have a lot of give. (b) And, these & the trailing say 5 or even 10 beads are moving horizontally & have daylite under them. (c) The pseudo-links never have a solid floor to kick (down) against. (d) And, even if the last bead in the pseudo-link does enjoy an upwards (very very weak) kick, this kick is off a slippery & lose bead or two, & the kick moves thems beads sideways (or forwards)(or backwards)(they are after all lose in every way). So, beads do not provide anything like a solid surface to kick offa. Sheeeesh! Stone the crows! Milo give me strength! Are we blind! The fountain (ie the arch)(the half circle) is simply due to the inertia of a chain. If a stationary chain lays over the top of a wall, it forms a sharp V-bend. If the chain is pulled down on one end, then it will rattle up & over the wall, with some speed. If the speed is sufficient, the sharp V-bend will become a U-bend, due to centrifugal/centripetal forces opening up the V. If speed increases, the U-bend opens further. If speed increases a lot, the rising chain leaps up clear of the wall, & stays clear, the zenith/crest depending on gravity, & the U-bend opens some more. And we have our fountain. The height of the crest/fountain depends on speed (& is probly higher if chain heavier). The radius of the U-bend/fountain depends on speed (& is probly larger if chain heavier). Steve Mould & others say that the radius of curvature cancels out in the equations, & doesn't play any roll in these dynamics. Steve is wrong. If he were correct, then that would mean that the radius can vary greatly, for any given setup. It might mean that if u initiated the fountain with a given radius then it would affect the final (maximum)(steady state) radius. But i reckon that the radius (for a given setup) tends to one number. And i reckon that the radius (for a given setup) varies with speed (ie varies with drop). Just koz the radius cancels out in some dynamical equations duznt mean that radius duznt play any roll in the dynamics. Steve Mould shows how a horizontal tight pattern of rows of chain (beads) gradually moves away to the west (due to the kick-effect) when the end of the chain is pulled east. Yes, there is some kick effect, due to the pseudo-links. But, the greater part of the effect is due to a chain's inclination to retain a pattern. Here, we see that at each end of each row the chain forms a loop, looping around & back throo say 220 deg, such that the rows are hard up to each other. As the end of the chain is drawn east, the end loops move across & back & across & back etc. Now, Steve knows that a chain has a memory, ie it tends to retain a pattern. In this case, that pattern is a 220 deg loop. And, as the loop or loops traverse across & back etc, the loops slowly push the rows west. That westwards slow pattern-push is a different animal to the quick jerk of a pseudo-link kick. The slow pattern-push duznt suffer from the hi losses suffered by a pseudo-link kick. Pseudo-links are not rigid, they have give. Give aint a problem for a slow westward pattern-push. I said that yes there is some kick-effect. But, i have already said that these kicks are not bonus-kicks. They borrow from the overall power of the chain system. They don’t add to the fountain. It is virtually impossible to load/store a chain in a jar without having loops. And loops result in jumps. If u have a close look (in slow-mo) u can see that chains have a lot of horizontal movement before exiting vertically, & the chain sometimes suffers little jumps in the jar, as each leg of each loop jumps (horizontally) over its mate. Jumps magnify the fountain, kicks dont. OOPS. No, i am wrong. These little jumps are not bonus-jumps, just like the kicks are not bonus-kicks. Any vertical impulse gained by a jump must have been borrowed from preceding links. Also, the horizontal movements seen in the container/jar/beaker are a waste of impulse. But, in any case, we don’t need bonus-jumps nor bonus-kicks to achieve a growing fountain, & to achieve a very high fountain. All we need is lots of speed. The chain will crest at any height, depending on speed. There is no limit. The idea that something special (like a bonus-kick) is needed (if the chain is to rise above the edge of the jar) is silly. One thing that everyone has missed, in every youtube re the chain fountain (that i have seen), is that vertical jump effects & vertical kick effects (etc) are cumulative, and lasting (tautology alert). Or at least partially cumulative & lasting. Air friction, & link friction see to that. Anyhow, cumulative/lasting effects are the reason for some of the slightly weird gyrations/waves. For example, it (lasting accumulation) is why we eventually get a persevering, vertical component of arc (a mini fountain) when the test seems to be strictly in the horizontal. In fact, the lasting/cumulative effect is the main reason for the fountain. There needs to be an initial vertical rise out of the jar. A horizontal initial exit wont do the trick.
@@atheistaetherist2747 your entire hypothesis goes down in flames in your final line. You claim that the Mould Effect won't happen if the chain isn't lifted off the stack in a beaker, but there are multiple experiments done _with no beaker_ where the effect *still* shows up. There are also experiments done which actually prove the exact think Mould is explaining in *his own* videos, done by people who are totally uninvolved in the entire back & forth between the two gentlemen. So, sorry about that, but you've been shot down in flames.
@@atheistaetherist2747 watch the following video, where they show, definitively, the Mould Effect in action, and *with no beaker involved.* th-cam.com/video/I31GfljDEWA/w-d-xo.html
Totally unrelated to this video, but you made a video a while ago where you inspected your hands. You made an off-hand comment about how you stopped biting your nails "recently", and I felt so inspired by that simple phrase that I made the same decision myself. It's now been 16 days since I last bit my nails, and some of my friends that bite their nails are actually being inspired by ME, and have begun attempting to stop doing it themselves. Although this journey and this path is my own, you were the one who really made me seek the start of it, and I really want to thank you for that.
Nice! It can definitely be done with just determination - I bit mine down to stumps for *years*, and eventually I just managed to stop... Painting them helped, because I didn't want to bite the paint! Now I do still bite them but only to "trim" them, which is some pretty cool self control in my own opinion (normally "cold turkey" is the best bet so I find it interesting I'm able to hold back!).
@@OhSoUnicornly I wouldn't nearly be able to bite them without chewing them all off. I went off and got my nails done but having fake ones on them felt so much worse, so I'm considering painting over them instead, too. But I've been complimented on my drive to simply NOT bite them. It is hard, though, but keeping a journal helps as well. I find writing about my stresses helps me understand them better, and combat them accordingly.
At its core you have perfectly encapsulated the scientific process, you observed a phenomena, constructed a hypothesis, designed and performed experiments to stress test the hypothesis and then formed reasoned conclusions. Well done science shrimp!
I don't think he showed that link chain is actually pulling in unstable directions while the chain is falling. A high speed camera could probably do that
My favorite quote -- "Let's not allow nitpicks to get in the way of interesting questions and observations." This is a timelessly wise appeal. Thank you. I previously saw one of the referenced prior videos on this and was also a bit disappointed in some gaps in acknowledgment of the phenomenalogical observations in force transfer and linear communication in wave behavior. I'm glad this motivated you to make this video. Watching it was like experiencing a long anticipated cadence to completion of a musical composition. The above quote reminded me of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. I'm now subscribed to your channel as I appreciated your refreshing presentation. Thanks again.
Thanks. Yeah, I can deal with discussions about whether or not I got the principles wrong. Those are things worth debating. But nitpicks about using the wrong word make me sorry I got out of bed
three of my favorite youtubers recently uploaded videos discussing the Mould Effect! that’s awesome to get a third person in on this to see it from so many angles.
Hopefully they'll find this video- it raises some interesting points! I wasn't entirely happy with either explanation, truth be told, but the propagating wave idea seems promising. Not to mention, just breaking down the question already makes it so much easier to approach
God bless you too Babutunde, you show us a side of the world most of us will never see and give us insight into your culture with no nonsense just you. Hope you and your family are well.
@@itsWelshy is africa everyday still using the maximum number of mid-video ads, ads at the beginning and end of each video as well as plugging his patreon in every video? I stopped watching him because of him doing that. If he has stopped then I'll go back and watch his content
I love Steve Mould, but I really think that he could use a reminder that you learn a heck of a lot more from trying to prove yourself WRONG than trying to prove yourself RIGHT.
Its not Steve Moulds theory, it was done by the University of Cambridge. Electrobooms theory is wrong though, he ignores gravity and then "proves" it with a chain on the ground moving perpendicular to gravity which is a different set of forces as the gravity in that case is acting against a surface.
@@paulosullivan3472 ElectroBOOM put the chain on the ground to eliminate gravity, then he pulls on the chain to simulate a downwards force from gravity. He shows that the exact same phenomenon occurs.
@@alex15095 If you change the physical forces in an experiment you havent proven anything. He made the same mistake in his disagreement with Professor Lewin. In electrical engineering you can ignore certain forces and he brings that into his physics discussions, incorrectly. The scary thing is these discussions were being had by people in the 18th century, its part of what gave birth to the scientific method. You cannot change the physical forces in an experiment which are central to the force itself and claim to have proven anything. The very fact that he eliminated gravity is what I am pointing out is the complete flaw in his argument. Its not the same set of forces acting on the ball chain.
I'm pretty sure they had this issue on tall sail ship rigging hence the pulleys having rollers above and below the ropes. I think the anchors also caused this if not lowered under control.
I used to do this with some Christmas decorations we had when I was a child. Doing this trick was my favourite part of decorating (much to the annoyance of my mother).
Oh interesting - were they metal? Steve has said the plastic bead types don't do it so I'm interested to hear if you managed to get it working with plastic?
Thank you so much for explaining this in such a way that i can FINALLY understand whats going on here. I watched Action Labs video on this about a year ago and I've been scratching my head over it for so long.
The wave is a nice way to think of it. Its like a wave of accumulated time delays. Each little delay or displacement is due to one chain link transferring its energy after the one before it. So you end up with an accumulation of time where nothing could happen due to the forces in play. So even as one end falls the wave goes up higher as more chain links add to the delay time. Each chain link is very efficient at holding onto the time delay and passing it on, while adding it's own delay to the situation. I think its more like the classic video feedback ghosting effect in that way where the image is delayed due to the frame rate delay. In this case each chain link is like a frame passing on the delay to the next frame.
You asked for semantic corrections, so I’m a physics teacher here to make sure everyone understands these terms: Work = a transfer of energy due to a force (such as gravity pulling an object down and speeding it up) Force = a push or pull between two objects (such as adjacent links of the chain) Energy = the ability of a system to cause changes in motion due to its position (height) or movement (velocity)
Your conclusion is a very elegant way of explaining what Mehdi's ultimate point was, I think. The effect doesn't happen because of moments within the chain, it happens because the ball chain is a more efficient medium of energy transfer.
As a physicist, your initial questions are very good. To #3: This happens to anchor chain as well, where the links are larger than your fist. Not just ball chain. Mehdi didn't explain well, but a recent paper said the balls act as levers and this launches it up. The same effect happens with Mardi Gras beads, with string between the beads. So that entirely negates any lever action.
I wonder if "they" 'll give a honorary doctorate to Mr. Mould for discussing the Newton's beads effect... or name a star or some legacy level recognition like a bronze or even a Nobel prize or whatnot... he sure made a lot of noise about something discovered a loooooong time before he was born and now people refer to this discovery and attach his name to it... I don't understand. If I talk about tornadoes on TV, will it make this wind phenomena become the PandemoniumMeltDown effect? I really hope it wouldn't.
@@PandemoniumMeltDown thank you... i thought I was the only one extremely disgusted by the very fact that they called this the 'mould' effect when he simply... transmitted information that was already available, and apparently didn't even transmit it well anyways. But whatever, let them have their vapid gold star of recognition
I adore this channel because it's always something different and exciting. Like messing with scammers, teaching you foraging or some small physics experiment. Thank you for always delivering great content!
This reminds me of my AP physics course in high school. This would be an excellent topic to talk about and do a lab on because of the easily accessible materials, and the interesting phenomenon that could be pretty easily explained as long as you're pushed a little bit in the right direction. All in all an incredible video and I think you did a really good job answering the questions that you posed for yourself.
Let’s go right back to when the chain starts to fall. Imagine a link of the chain has bumped into the lip of the glass and rebounded so that the path of the chain forms a tight loop over the glass-lip. The centrifugal force inside that loop will force it to expand in diameter until the tension in the chain (centripetal force) balances out the centrifugal force of the chain loop. Now what happens as the chain speeds up? The tension in the chain stays relatively constant because it is determined by the weight of the small length of chain still inside the glass. But the centrifugal force will increase in proportion to the speed of the chain flying around the loop. The net centrifugal force is actually acting upwards, so the loop will rise up as the chain speed increases. It’s as simple as that.
First I thought the forces would not apply here, then I realized I'm an idiot and centrifugal force only requires angular velocity, not necessarily rotation. So I think this might basically be the explanation as to why the chain rises upwards. The movement of the chain speeds up until the falling part achieves terminal velocity, up to that point the angular momentum and therefore centrifugal force would be constantly increasing in the circular part of the loop. However, I think I have a small correction to your explanation: The downwards force on the loop would only be applied by the weight of the chain loop itself, not the chain part in the container. The weight of the chain that remains in the container just acts against the movement of the chain along it's curved trajectory,. As the chain itself becomes part of the loop, it can not pull the position of the loop downwards, just slow down the speed at which the chain moves along the loop. (I hope I explained that well enough, but as you seem to have some understanding of physics, I'm pretty sure you'll get what I mean, even with my suboptimal explanation.) Props to you for making the connection to centrifugal force, I did not see it, despite having studied physics for long enough to have learned about centrifugal force on university level.
@@creativedesignation7880 I actually didn't mention the weight of the loop, but you can see that it is compensated for by the centrifugal forcce in the loop, otherwise the loop would fall down. Which it doesn't do. I don't have the time right now, but I think it would be a good idea to get real here and go back and estimate the chain speed and the loop diameter and actually get some numbers. Then we would be a bit more certain of the facts.
Didn't Steve show the numbers for that, and conclude that the radius cancels out? So the loop diameter is not driven by the weight or velocity, but can be anything.
This channel is quickly becoming my favourite. No limits to new video ideas... very logical explanation here and analogies... I just love how Mike isn't afraid to try new things, not ashamed at failures and not intimidated to enter a space which may have experts that might disagree with him. I am very interested in the "Shrimp Effect"... (I hope that isn't given to anything else) Most youtube channels with success are limited in very specific areas. Uploading varied content and being able to near towards 750k subs is incredible. I don't know another channel that has managed to do this... as disinterested people in some content, unsubscribe. Usually as soon as someone uploads a few videos that people aren't so interested in, the subs give up supporting the channel, leaving a snotty comment (complaint) and hit unsubscribe. You have a great audience that are happy with some content they don't like (or maybe they do) but are willing to stay subscribed for all the great content they do.
Thank you for the very kind words. I don't really know how it happened with the channel - I just kept doing the same thing (or rather, different things) and it just kept working. All of the tutorials on growing your channel warn against doing variety, and I have no doubt that specialising does bring about more rapid growth, except for when it just doesn't - if you're going to specialise, you also kind of have to be really good at that one thing - as a generalist, maybe I can get away with failure, or mediocrity on any given occasion, because the next one might be better, or at least, different.
@@AtomicShrimp You know, I have to agree with OP: it’s so refreshing to see a creator who does what he wants and not only what everyone else wants. I must admit that I find you’re scambaiting videos the most interesting to me (as do many), but I have huge respect to you for not only doing what’s popular. This ideology makes people like me feel more like we’re watching a real person and not just some actor or entertainer. I’d love to see more channels like this!
Realise I'm a year late to it but I've been rewatching the Mould Effect saga and found this comment, and I have to fully agree. It's that exact philosophy of "if you like this, feel free to subscribe, but don't be surprised if the next stuff is different" that got my interest in the first place. There's a level of honesty there that's kinda... discouraged by TH-cam, almost.
I most defiantly do also think this is a wave property, we have very similar ideas of what and how it works. This is why I liked your video because it reinforces my own believes. I also think that if you'd take a thread and wax it up a bit to make it stiffer but still freely bend you'd get mould effect out of that.
YES. Finally someone discussed wave propogation!!! That's been my hypothesis as well so it's lovely to see someone put it into practice and not use that weird "lever" explanation Mould went with. Whip the rope, wave travels along length. Pile the rope, wave travels into pile until energy ceases. Continue the whip unceasingly into the pile, the wave travels upward as energy in the system grows. It's also akin to the size wave you create when you add that energy. A huge whip tends to travel faster that a small ones, so it makes sense that the fountain happens only when the chain approaches a higher speed. Fantastic content. Thanks for taking the time to share! I hope the science people see this and add this idea to their thought process. I'd like to see some pros give it a look.
First off, you were concerned about using the wrong terms for physics concepts - as far as I can tell, you actually nailed it! I honestly think a lot of the controversy happens because people think of the same problem differently. The two competing hypotheses focus on momentum (Mehdi's explanation) and link-to-link forces (Steve's explanation), respectively, when the forces are what cause said momentum and the chain's momentum causes the forces to change. In other words, both hypotheses are correct, but neither describes the full picture. :^)
The way I see it is very simple, the speed of the chain falling is causing the chain in the beaker to rise rapidly. It rises so quickly that it has enough energy (momentum, inertia ?) to go higher than the rim of the beaker and lift the falling chain a little too. The falling chain has to be much longer than the rising length so that it's weight is enough to create sufficient speed for the rising chain. That's all there is to in my mind !
The plastic pulley experiment seemed like a really cool idea. Would adding a heavy weight to one end of the chain allow the chain to lift off the pulley more, without ruining the effect?
This explanation ticks all the boxes as far as I can tell and also explains ElectroBOOM's findings for horizontal chains. I was undecided before since nobody could really explain it without it just feeling wrong somehow. I am no longer undecided. Thank you for this!
Your videos bring me so much joy even though I have no idea what some are about I watch and enjoy them all! Even if I just have them on in the background while doing homework. I appreciate you sooo much for teaching me new things!
Great vid, I am wondering if this experiment can get scaled up such that the size of the balls are tennis ball size and the lengths between them are about 7-8 cms. Would it do the same? I have a theory but its pretty weak and more like an uneducated opinion. I think it is because you cant fold the chain back on its self, that when it starts to go over the edge, it cant flop over immediately, but it forms a loop with a radius. With more load on the other end, the radius gets bigger due to centrifugal force acting on it, it just swings out when it is falling faster, just like if you were swinging a ball on an elastic, the faster the swing, the wider the radius. Maybe or maybe not. Who knows.
I’m new to the Mould effect, but have watched several videos over the past few days. I like your observation that lateral momentum of a particular ball can impart vertical forces on the one trailing, thus generating lifting forces, without the need for an initial “kick” as the chain initially lifts off. I believe that tension forces can provide the explanation. It appears to me that the speed of the chain remains constant, once the distance from jar to ground has been established. For chains flowing in a curved path at constant speed, the tension required to maintain the centripetal force is λv², where λ is the mass per unit length. (Note; Independent of the radius of curvature.) This provides the tension at the top of the arch, thus the net lifting force, sufficient to balance the weight of the chain hanging below it. The tension will decrease on the way down, becoming zero upon landing. (But the force on the ground due to momentum change also computes to λv²) A longer drop generates greater tension at the top of the arc, requiring higher velocity to generate the extra tension. This becomes the cause of higher speeds and greater lifting forces. I would like to see experiments done with the use of force sensors to monitor the weight of the jar, to verify that no net upward kick is felt as the chain leaves. In an ideal world, we could also insert a tensionmeter in the chain, to track tension levels throughout the journey. Thanks for your observations and suggestions. I believe you have brought fresh insights into this problem.
I think this is a much more intuitive and well-explained version of essentially what Medhi was arguing. This is how I thought of the problem anyways and it seemed to line up best with Medhi's hypothesis when I watched the explanations. I could potentially be misinterpreting anybody's argument, but I feel confident that I have done at least a decent job being an engineer myself. I agree with you and Medhi to be clear it seems to be a momentum-based effect derived from the fluid-like properties of this chain its equal density etc.
I liked your physics explanation of the Mould Effect, and I thought it was very interesting! It is true though that what you said isn't the technical definition, but it is technically correct. At around 7:22 you said the effect was from Conservation of Momentum, while the technical definition is actually about inertia. The thing is that Conservation of Momentum and inertia are both heavily interlinked, so it is possible to interchange the words depending on the subject and circumstance. The fact that many topics in Physics are connected to each other makes studying the subject really interesting as well! Overall, I really liked the video and the explanations were spectacular as it is! Keep it up!
I have this "half Flywheel" idea stuck in my head due to an experience from my boating life 45 years ago. My older and much wiser Brother, David, had purchased a skiing boat that was powered by an outboard motor, we water skied and became bored with the performance of the boat so my Brother (an engineer by trade) decided to install a 2 litre ford inboard engine with a Z-drive. I was impressed by his skill in machining the universal joint between the motor and the Z-drive. All was well, it felt like a Viva Aquarama. To get to the point. One day we were working on the engine with the universal coupler taken out, the motor was started and the throttle jammed full open, before we could kill the motor the poor thing seized and stopped abruptly. The result was something that belongs in an horror movie. The flywheel bolts sheared and the flywheel shot off towards my Brother who was standing alongside, luckily for him the flywheel struck a sea cock (valve) which deflected it upwards. Phew!! But it didn't end there, it ran up the wall of our home and at some 6m height it hovered while cutting a grove in the concrete of the wall, by this time my Brother was way down the street and I was barricaded in the house. It took what seemed like minutes to stop its growling grinding noise before I dared to go outside. I found the flywheel in a drain and upon close examination the flywheel had almost no teeth left, just short stumps. That's where I picture the power of the fountain, a flywheel (half) trying to fly!
You are correct in the last part of the video re. different types of chain. I would use the terminology 'degrees of freedom' and more specifically internal degrees of freedom to describe this. The chain essentially has total energy E=K+P+(internal kinetic energy). Where K is the kinetic energy of the centre of mass of each link summed, P is the potential energy of the chain and the internal kinetic energy would be some sum over all rotational energies of each link about each link's centre of mass. You can see that for chains that are quite 'loose', there are more configurations for rotational motion of each link and therefore more scope for the total energy to be 'soaked up' by internal motions. It is also a result of chaotic behaviour, any impulse from link N to N+1 which does not reside exactly along the chain direction results in a rotational motion off-axis for the link N+1 which propagates down the chain. In the real world there is noise, simply adding noise to the impulses (this would be the result of friction, each chain being slightly different than the other, snagging etc.) you can see how a lot of the energy ends up being soaked in impulses off the plane in which the chain resides. In short, loose chains can hardly be described in the same way as the ideal case as internal motions become very important; not quite dominant, but significant in the result of the motion. For simple ball chains, the internal degrees of freedom end up being negligible to the motion of the unit as a whole, even noise would be damped out.
What distinguishes the different chain types is the amount of degrees of freedom they have. That's the term you were describing when explaining why we see this effect in only the ball chain. The ball chain links have the least degrees of freedom and that's why this chain displays the Mould effect best.
@Hallam Crafer - Yeah Steve Mould actually discovered it, or at least was the first person to formally present it as an interesting phenomenon in any way, so it ended up being named after him.
@@carlz0r Steve Mould did not discover the effect, or was the first to describe it. I saw this in physics class before TH-cam existed. Mehdi also mentions that it existed and was renamed "Mould effect" once his video got famous.
I think your explanation is spot on as in moulds video he demonstrates using a normal chain(showing the effect not working) except it does work but only for a few links at a time as in the normal chain it is extremely reliant on orientation and once it gets to a link not in the correct orientation it loses the upward momentum
I would like to add that ball chain might work because one of the balls getting stuck on the rim provides the initial jerk required to get the wave started, hence why on a smoother object the wave takes longer to start.
hi, aspiring astrophysicist here (grad student). first let me say: your description of how the balls pull on each other and generate upward forces very much clears up the whole muck of this problem. well done presenting that, and showing some simulations. i think it is a qualitative restating of what the Cambridge folks published, but actually using balls rather than modeling the chain links as rods (weird move on their part). further, breaking things down and looking at pairs of two or three chain links and then zooming back out to the broader picture is the exact kind of thinking that needs to be used when solving physics problems, so very good job with that. some more thoughts: 1. momentum vs. inertia thing: "conservation of momentum" doesn't mean a ball wants to keep going in the same direction. that's actually the definition of inertia, pretty much. although, from what i've seen scientists tend to not talk about inertia because it's not a very precise thing to discuss. 2. waves on water (as long as it isn't turbulent) are described by the same math as waves on a string, just with an extra dimension ;) however-i am really struggling to see how a wave equation would arise from the balls falling over the edge of a beaker. waves generally arise when things resonate-drums, light, coffee in a mug in a loud cafe. now, the Mould effect after some amount of time actually becomes a steady-state process: a fixed length of chain (from floor/ground to the beaker) dumps energy into the links inside the beaker and raises them up via the forcing mechanism you described at the start of the video. no waves needed! also, no resonances, so that's why i am skeptical of the wave description. 3. finally-discussing the chain as a fluid is brilliant. you are spot on with the energy analysis (from what i can tell). i'm not sure if saying ball chain is like "laminar flow" is the best phrasing, but if chains were fluids, ball chain would almost certainly be the least _viscous_! in any event... great video!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)
Agreed that periodic waves are often generated by something resonating, but a single wave (or at least something that looks like a single peak of a wave) can be generated by something that just dumps a bunch of energy into a wave-supporting medium; probably the most notorious example being a tsunami - it's not a periodic wave, but it has a wave function. Likewise when the chain is laid out on the table, it's possible to create a single peak that travels along it - in both that case and the tsunami, the phenomenon runs out of medium in which the wave can continue to propagate - but if the medium is made to continually recede, the wave can continue.
Algadoo is a great idea for a quick verification. I used it ages ago but never thought of actually using it to quickly test ideas like this. Great video
I think the cause lies in the fluid effect mentioned and likely has the same cause as an analgous effect in water and air. I've noticed that when the loop is high and stable, you see a spiral in the rising portion of the ball chain. I think what that is showing is part of what is effectively an inverted whirlpool or funnel cloud effect. The ball chain allowing movement in all directions not only allows for the upward movement, but once it has time to stabilize it imparts a circular movement centered around the mass of the bulk chain in the jar. It is effectively funneling from the disorganized mass below and up to the most energy efficient point at the top of the loop to start the journey back down.
I have a BSc degree and majored in physics, and honestly everything you said checks out to me. None of the vocab stuck out to me as being particularly wrong either. Double- and triple-pendulums qualitatively exhibit some similar 'weird' upward force effects in my opinion, and as a ball chain is effectively an n-component pendulum without a fixed end it should exhibit nonlinear effects like the Mould effect. I also think you're right about normal chains not experiencing it due to the extra degrees of freedom requiring more energy to pull the chain up, my gut feeling is that pulling the chain with enough force would cause the effect anyway but I'd have to do some research on that though.
I love this channel. And for that my feedback is this video seemed rushed and the tempo much quicker than normal Love your chilled out vibes and hope they don’t go anywhere soon
1. Why does the chain rise above the beaker? Mould Effect Q&A 1a. why is the height of the loop greater when the beaker is further above the ground? The pulling tension force is equal to the sum of masses of the falling beads times gravitational acceleration. Hence, the pulling force will increase until the first bead in the chain reaches the floor, after that the pulling force will be constant. 2. How does a downward motion/force outside the beaker translate to upward motion/force inside the beaker? A chain in tension is an efficient system to transfer mechanical forces, therefore each bead resting in the pile will be yanked out in succession by this pulling force. 3. why does this only happen with ball chain? Friction forces and untangle forces are very low in this type of chain. The system is therefore very efficient in translating kinetic energy into potential energy
This is honestly a rather unique and interesting perspective into the Mould Effect, I honestly never thought about it like a wave of water. It honestly makes a lot of sense, and like many other commenters, I'd love to see Steve and Medhi's response to these thoughts on this theory.
Nice video. I think the effect seen at 5:09 where the chain rises as it goes over the spindle is further evidence for @ElectroBOOM's argument that it is momentum driving the Mould Effect as there is nothing for the beads to push down against. Mehdi also explains why you don't see anything until the very end as the shorter chain is still applying a downwards force that needs to be overcome (as well as friction and other losses of energy).
I have seen this happen when dismantling an overhead conveyor chain, which was made up of sections of steel channel each about 18" long with a pivot at each end and about 100ft long and weighing around 2000 lb. was pretty spectacular to watch.
Your window experiment would work the way you expected if you placed your chain feed on a table just inside the window. in fact you would probably have some cool results if you set the chain perpendicular to the window on the table in long back and forth loops while the chain is on a pully falling out the window.
You get the same effect with the long trains of carts they use to carry luggage on and off planes at airports. the front end can be round a couple of corners but the rest all follow the path it took.
I don't think that's quite the same effect. In a baggage train, the carts are linked to each other's axles. Each link and axle forms a rigid T-shape which is attached to the cart by a small vertically oriented hinge at, or very near, the point of intersection of each T's two line segments. If the linking bar is pulled to one side, the connected axle turns in the same direction around the hinge. The T-shape may be replaced by some sort of isosceles triangular frame, but the same basic idea still applies.
It's because the beads on the chain are so close together, the faster it comes out of the beaker, the closer the beads are. This forms a solid link-up, and it's momentum and solidity of the chain makes it rise. Simples!
The balls can move along the piece of wire that connects them. The sudden movement when falling passes along the chain. This jerks the chain inside the cup making the ball slide faster along its small piece of wire passing energy along the chain and lifting it up over the rim of the cup higher if the pulldown is stronger. Putting a weight on the end of the chain should give a stronger effect until this weight stops falling.
great vid - another potential source of upward force for the Moulding balls is ricocheting off the edge of the container, which explains the oscillation between running out of the container normally and Moulding.
This is the only explanation so far that I've seen that makes intuitive sense, to me specifically. Like, I can actually understand the forces in play with this sort of explanation.
It's a good question. I initially wanted to say it's just because of the way the chain uncoil out of the heap, but it's too consistent and regular for that. You can see the same shapes on the loops of chain when I make it flow across the table, when I am comparing it to a fluid.
Huh. I never really thought about that, but it instantly sounded familiar like a thing I'd seen before when you showed it. Your "Boring answer" to 1 and 1a is exactly what I presumed too and it's satisfying enough for me.
I don't know if I agree with studio Shrimp's conclusion on experiment 1, however, I think the experiment did tell us something. The end of the chain lifted up because the momentum(inertia?) of those balls exceeded the pull of gravity on them, and just like Medhi's demonstration with the vacuum hose, this makes plenty of sense to us when it's a lightweight end of a chain/rope. We see this whip effect happening anywhere pull-chords are used too. Now, where you were trying to get the effect to happen when the short side was always supporting the entirety of its side of the chain, I believe the Mould effect is caused by the fact that the weight of that side of the chain is mostly supported by the beaker, leaving very little weight to pull against that upward momentum, simulating the end-of-chain whip effect.
I agree with your analysis - the setup studio shrimp is describing might only be possible as a thought experiment, rather than in reality - because spinning a very tall loop of chain up to enough speed so that the momentum of the upward side carries it (sustained in part by the falling of the downward side) might be simply impossible without first either running out of chain or something getting tangled. I think for very long loops, the ball chain won't exhibit the lovely stability we see at normal scales.
At some point during your video I had a thought; Have you ever seen those toys that consist of a motor spinning a pulley, and there's a loop of string wrapped around the pulley? This seems like the same or a similar phenomenon. I do like your theories on chains being chaotic motion versus laminar flow, and I think the reason it doesn't happen with string is just their weight; they don't have enough downward energy to trigger the phenomenon.
I think this is the best intuitive explanation of what’s going on. The skateboard Ollie description never made any sense to me, likely because it seems to be incorrect. Awesome stuff!
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*Afterthoughts & Addenda*
The conclusions I made in this video *have now been shown to be incorrect* - a lot of the observations here still stand, but the notion that the chain loop rises *purely* because of an excess of energy in the falling side, has been pretty conclusively shown to be false. It actually does appear to be a weird mechanical property of the chain that allows it to 'push' against the beaker or chain heap at the bottom of the rising side. Updated video is here: th-cam.com/video/gJYMM-odvfE/w-d-xo.html
I was watching this video on "drowning machines" and the part on fluid dynamics around 4:45 really reminded me of these chain experiments, so came back here to post it...
th-cam.com/video/KaeqEVI0uCk/w-d-xo.html
I wonder if this idea, of something at a "critical" speed effecting the rest of the system at a "sub-critical" speed has anything to do with it?
It might just be the diagrams used in that part of the video reminded me of yours 😂
EDIT: Had another look at his video, and hadn't noticed earlier on theres a part where "critical speed" water hits non-critical water and causes a waterfall that jumps up
The Cambridge explanation is rubbish.
There is never a bonus-kick at the container/jar/beaker.
There is indeed a bonus-kick when a falling chain-link hits (collides with) the floor of the laboratory, & this adds to the downward pull of a chain, & increases the size of the fountain etc (by say 1%).
But that extra (bonus) force is initiated by the falling/colliding link itself.
Meanwhile, back in the jar, a rising/yanked link will indeed get a kick from the floor of the jar (or from the links supporting that link), but, that kick is not initiated by the rising link, it is initiated by the preceding link.
The preceding link has a limited amount of impulse to give.
The kick from the jar results in a similar (but opposite) kick being given to the preceding link.
But the kick from the jar is not a bonus-kick.
The initiating impulse from the preceding link is not added-to by the kick from the jar.
The impulse of the kick experienced by the rising/yanked link has been borrowed from the preceding link.
In reality, borrowed from the full/whole chain.
Hence, at the jar, links or beads, it makes no difference.
In reality, there is no rising/yanked link. Duznt happen.
What i mean is, we mostly have a rising/yanked arc, made of many links.
In slow-mo u can see that there is mostly a long arc of moving links (talking bout metal beads here).
And the movings usually involve being dragged gradually horizontally for a time, & gradually upish.
There is no sudden kick -- it is a gradual kkkiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiicccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.
Look in slow-mo at a bead chain fountain.
There are say 4 adjacent beads acting as pseudo-links being yanked/jerked up.
(a) But, these pseudo-links are not rigid, they have a lot of give.
(b) And, these & the trailing say 5 or even 10 beads are moving horizontally & have daylite under them.
(c) The pseudo-links never have a solid floor to kick (down) against.
(d) And, even if the last bead in the pseudo-link does enjoy an upwards (very very weak) kick, this kick is off a slippery & lose bead or two, & the kick moves thems beads sideways (or forwards)(or backwards)(they are after all lose in every way).
So, beads do not provide anything like a solid surface to kick offa.
Sheeeesh! Stone the crows! Milo give me strength! Are we blind!
The fountain (ie the arch)(the half circle) is simply due to the inertia of a chain.
If a stationary chain lays over the top of a wall, it forms a sharp V-bend.
If the chain is pulled down on one end, then it will rattle up & over the wall, with some speed.
If the speed is sufficient, the sharp V-bend will become a U-bend, due to centrifugal/centripetal forces opening up the V.
If speed increases, the U-bend opens further.
If speed increases a lot, the rising chain leaps up clear of the wall, & stays clear, the zenith/crest depending on gravity, & the U-bend opens some more.
And we have our fountain.
The height of the crest/fountain depends on speed (& is probly higher if chain heavier).
The radius of the U-bend/fountain depends on speed (& is probly larger if chain heavier).
Steve Mould & others say that the radius of curvature cancels out in the equations, & doesn't play any roll in these dynamics.
Steve is wrong.
If he were correct, then that would mean that the radius can vary greatly, for any given setup.
It might mean that if u initiated the fountain with a given radius then it would affect the final (maximum)(steady state) radius.
But i reckon that the radius (for a given setup) tends to one number.
And i reckon that the radius (for a given setup) varies with speed (ie varies with drop).
Just koz the radius cancels out in some dynamical equations duznt mean that radius duznt play any roll in the dynamics.
Steve Mould shows how a horizontal tight pattern of rows of chain (beads) gradually moves away to the west (due to the kick-effect) when the end of the chain is pulled east.
Yes, there is some kick effect, due to the pseudo-links.
But, the greater part of the effect is due to a chain's inclination to retain a pattern.
Here, we see that at each end of each row the chain forms a loop, looping around & back throo say 220 deg, such that the rows are hard up to each other.
As the end of the chain is drawn east, the end loops move across & back & across & back etc.
Now, Steve knows that a chain has a memory, ie it tends to retain a pattern.
In this case, that pattern is a 220 deg loop.
And, as the loop or loops traverse across & back etc, the loops slowly push the rows west.
That westwards slow pattern-push is a different animal to the quick jerk of a pseudo-link kick.
The slow pattern-push duznt suffer from the hi losses suffered by a pseudo-link kick.
Pseudo-links are not rigid, they have give. Give aint a problem for a slow westward pattern-push.
I said that yes there is some kick-effect.
But, i have already said that these kicks are not bonus-kicks.
They borrow from the overall power of the chain system.
They don’t add to the fountain.
It is virtually impossible to load/store a chain in a jar without having loops.
And loops result in jumps.
If u have a close look (in slow-mo) u can see that chains have a lot of horizontal movement before exiting vertically, & the chain sometimes suffers little jumps in the jar, as each leg of each loop jumps (horizontally) over its mate.
Jumps magnify the fountain, kicks dont. OOPS. No, i am wrong. These little jumps are not bonus-jumps, just like the kicks are not bonus-kicks. Any vertical impulse gained by a jump must have been borrowed from preceding links.
Also, the horizontal movements seen in the container/jar/beaker are a waste of impulse.
But, in any case, we don’t need bonus-jumps nor bonus-kicks to achieve a growing fountain, & to achieve a very high fountain.
All we need is lots of speed. The chain will crest at any height, depending on speed. There is no limit.
The idea that something special (like a bonus-kick) is needed (if the chain is to rise above the edge of the jar) is silly.
One thing that everyone has missed, in every youtube re the chain fountain (that i have seen), is that vertical jump effects & vertical kick effects (etc) are cumulative, and lasting (tautology alert).
Or at least partially cumulative & lasting. Air friction, & link friction see to that.
Anyhow, cumulative/lasting effects are the reason for some of the slightly weird gyrations/waves.
For example, it (lasting accumulation) is why we eventually get a persevering, vertical component of arc (a mini fountain) when the test seems to be strictly in the horizontal.
In fact, the lasting/cumulative effect is the main reason for the fountain.
There needs to be an initial vertical rise out of the jar.
A horizontal initial exit wont do the trick.
Right or wrong, I really enjoyed your video on this 👍
@@atheistaetherist2747 your entire hypothesis goes down in flames in your final line. You claim that the Mould Effect won't happen if the chain isn't lifted off the stack in a beaker, but there are multiple experiments done _with no beaker_ where the effect *still* shows up. There are also experiments done which actually prove the exact think Mould is explaining in *his own* videos, done by people who are totally uninvolved in the entire back & forth between the two gentlemen. So, sorry about that, but you've been shot down in flames.
@@atheistaetherist2747 watch the following video, where they show, definitively, the Mould Effect in action, and *with no beaker involved.*
th-cam.com/video/I31GfljDEWA/w-d-xo.html
You know it some serious science when the Wobble Dog comes out.
this made me laugh way too hard
just got started on the video, and now i have to finish it just to see
Friend: "So what's this Atomic Shrimp channel all about?"
Me: "Yes"
Totally unrelated to this video, but you made a video a while ago where you inspected your hands. You made an off-hand comment about how you stopped biting your nails "recently", and I felt so inspired by that simple phrase that I made the same decision myself. It's now been 16 days since I last bit my nails, and some of my friends that bite their nails are actually being inspired by ME, and have begun attempting to stop doing it themselves. Although this journey and this path is my own, you were the one who really made me seek the start of it, and I really want to thank you for that.
Well done!
Nice! It can definitely be done with just determination - I bit mine down to stumps for *years*, and eventually I just managed to stop... Painting them helped, because I didn't want to bite the paint! Now I do still bite them but only to "trim" them, which is some pretty cool self control in my own opinion (normally "cold turkey" is the best bet so I find it interesting I'm able to hold back!).
@@OhSoUnicornly I wouldn't nearly be able to bite them without chewing them all off. I went off and got my nails done but having fake ones on them felt so much worse, so I'm considering painting over them instead, too. But I've been complimented on my drive to simply NOT bite them. It is hard, though, but keeping a journal helps as well. I find writing about my stresses helps me understand them better, and combat them accordingly.
I'm at 6 months myself. You can do it!
I've also stopped chewing about a year ago!
We should try to get Mould and Medhi to see this, and see what they think. I think Mike has some really good ideas here.
@@mercster he already covered it
they may well have already come across it
@@therealvbw He covered AS' response to the topic?
@@transfo47 no
Woooooww! So apparently THREE of my favourite youtubers are discussing about the mould effect now.
I love it.. It's like when everyone started making videos on the faster than wind car that Veritasium drove.
@Ben Lane OMG YESSS
Right? It's so crazy! I love it so much!
Has Matt Parker talked about it yet? I thought he did, but now I'm doubting my memory.
@@thewiseturtle I'm pretty sure he hasn't
At its core you have perfectly encapsulated the scientific process, you observed a phenomena, constructed a hypothesis, designed and performed experiments to stress test the hypothesis and then formed reasoned conclusions. Well done science shrimp!
\\[T]//
Praise The Sun
@@jimdandy2024 What precisely is incorect?
I don't think he showed that link chain is actually pulling in unstable directions while the chain is falling.
A high speed camera could probably do that
@@lomiification Thanks.
I can't help but be amused at the fact that you constructed a ramp with a book called Concrete. A nice touch.
He has a wonderful sense of humor.
My favorite quote -- "Let's not allow nitpicks to get in the way of interesting questions and observations." This is a timelessly wise appeal. Thank you. I previously saw one of the referenced prior videos on this and was also a bit disappointed in some gaps in acknowledgment of the phenomenalogical observations in force transfer and linear communication in wave behavior. I'm glad this motivated you to make this video. Watching it was like experiencing a long anticipated cadence to completion of a musical composition. The above quote reminded me of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. I'm now subscribed to your channel as I appreciated your refreshing presentation. Thanks again.
Thanks. Yeah, I can deal with discussions about whether or not I got the principles wrong. Those are things worth debating. But nitpicks about using the wrong word make me sorry I got out of bed
three of my favorite youtubers recently uploaded videos discussing the Mould Effect! that’s awesome to get a third person in on this to see it from so many angles.
You mean Newton's beads?
Hopefully they'll find this video- it raises some interesting points! I wasn't entirely happy with either explanation, truth be told, but the propagating wave idea seems promising. Not to mention, just breaking down the question already makes it so much easier to approach
I'll forever be grateful and cherish you Atomic Shrimp.
And we are grateful we get to enjoy content from you too 🙂
God bless you too Babutunde, you show us a side of the world most of us will never see and give us insight into your culture with no nonsense just you. Hope you and your family are well.
@@itsWelshy is africa everyday still using the maximum number of mid-video ads, ads at the beginning and end of each video as well as plugging his patreon in every video? I stopped watching him because of him doing that.
If he has stopped then I'll go back and watch his content
@@edward4828 adblock
@@edward4828 mate,he's a youtuber in Africa what do you expect,he NEEDS every fucking penny
I love Steve Mould, but I really think that he could use a reminder that you learn a heck of a lot more from trying to prove yourself WRONG than trying to prove yourself RIGHT.
I question his ethics, I think he's only continuing to disagree because of the publicity and views. ElectroBOOM made a pretty strong case
Its not Steve Moulds theory, it was done by the University of Cambridge. Electrobooms theory is wrong though, he ignores gravity and then "proves" it with a chain on the ground moving perpendicular to gravity which is a different set of forces as the gravity in that case is acting against a surface.
@@paulosullivan3472 ElectroBOOM put the chain on the ground to eliminate gravity, then he pulls on the chain to simulate a downwards force from gravity. He shows that the exact same phenomenon occurs.
@@alex15095 If you change the physical forces in an experiment you havent proven anything. He made the same mistake in his disagreement with Professor Lewin. In electrical engineering you can ignore certain forces and he brings that into his physics discussions, incorrectly. The scary thing is these discussions were being had by people in the 18th century, its part of what gave birth to the scientific method. You cannot change the physical forces in an experiment which are central to the force itself and claim to have proven anything. The very fact that he eliminated gravity is what I am pointing out is the complete flaw in his argument. Its not the same set of forces acting on the ball chain.
You make a good point, but I think in Steve's case he has a youtube persona, and he has to stay "in character".
"And I'm going to demonstrate that with the help of the Wobble Dog..."
right.
Any day the Wobble Dog 9003i comes out is a happy day.
I'm wobbling In anticipation
90031 is a zip code in Los Angeles... you know... because waves :S
You were just waiting for an excuse to bring back the wobble dog machine, weren't you?
Always
I'm pretty sure they had this issue on tall sail ship rigging hence the pulleys having rollers above and below the ropes. I think the anchors also caused this if not lowered under control.
I used to do this with some Christmas decorations we had when I was a child. Doing this trick was my favourite part of decorating (much to the annoyance of my mother).
Used to‽ I still do it!
Oh interesting - were they metal? Steve has said the plastic bead types don't do it so I'm interested to hear if you managed to get it working with plastic?
@@OhSoUnicornly I've always done it with plastic beads.
@@OhSoUnicornly They were a ceramic style material if memory serves.
Thank you so much for explaining this in such a way that i can FINALLY understand whats going on here. I watched Action Labs video on this about a year ago and I've been scratching my head over it for so long.
You could talk about paint drying and make it interesting. You have the most engaging voice!
You got a point there.
The wave is a nice way to think of it. Its like a wave of accumulated time delays. Each little delay or displacement is due to one chain link transferring its energy after the one before it. So you end up with an accumulation of time where nothing could happen due to the forces in play. So even as one end falls the wave goes up higher as more chain links add to the delay time. Each chain link is very efficient at holding onto the time delay and passing it on, while adding it's own delay to the situation. I think its more like the classic video feedback ghosting effect in that way where the image is delayed due to the frame rate delay. In this case each chain link is like a frame passing on the delay to the next frame.
You asked for semantic corrections, so I’m a physics teacher here to make sure everyone understands these terms:
Work = a transfer of energy due to a force (such as gravity pulling an object down and speeding it up)
Force = a push or pull between two objects (such as adjacent links of the chain)
Energy = the ability of a system to cause changes in motion due to its position (height) or movement (velocity)
Your conclusion is a very elegant way of explaining what Mehdi's ultimate point was, I think. The effect doesn't happen because of moments within the chain, it happens because the ball chain is a more efficient medium of energy transfer.
Bingo! ✅
I love the random variety on your channel you produce content just like how my mind works random interesting things
As a physicist, your initial questions are very good. To #3: This happens to anchor chain as well, where the links are larger than your fist. Not just ball chain.
Mehdi didn't explain well, but a recent paper said the balls act as levers and this launches it up. The same effect happens with Mardi Gras beads, with string between the beads. So that entirely negates any lever action.
I wonder if "they" 'll give a honorary doctorate to Mr. Mould for discussing the Newton's beads effect... or name a star or some legacy level recognition like a bronze or even a Nobel prize or whatnot... he sure made a lot of noise about something discovered a loooooong time before he was born and now people refer to this discovery and attach his name to it... I don't understand. If I talk about tornadoes on TV, will it make this wind phenomena become the PandemoniumMeltDown effect? I really hope it wouldn't.
@@PandemoniumMeltDown thank you... i thought I was the only one extremely disgusted by the very fact that they called this the 'mould' effect when he simply... transmitted information that was already available, and apparently didn't even transmit it well anyways.
But whatever, let them have their vapid gold star of recognition
I had not heard of the Mould effect until this video. Thank you for introducing me to this.
Welcome to our planet, visitor. :)
I adore this channel because it's always something different and exciting. Like messing with scammers, teaching you foraging or some small physics experiment. Thank you for always delivering great content!
This reminds me of my AP physics course in high school. This would be an excellent topic to talk about and do a lab on because of the easily accessible materials, and the interesting phenomenon that could be pretty easily explained as long as you're pushed a little bit in the right direction. All in all an incredible video and I think you did a really good job answering the questions that you posed for yourself.
Let’s go right back to when the chain starts to fall.
Imagine a link of the chain has bumped into the lip of the glass and rebounded so that the path of the chain forms a tight loop over the glass-lip. The centrifugal force inside that loop will force it to expand in diameter until the tension in the chain (centripetal force) balances out the centrifugal force of the chain loop. Now what happens as the chain speeds up? The tension in the chain stays relatively constant because it is determined by the weight of the small length of chain still inside the glass. But the centrifugal force will increase in proportion to the speed of the chain flying around the loop. The net centrifugal force is actually acting upwards, so the loop will rise up as the chain speed increases. It’s as simple as that.
Best qualitative explanation so far! Doing a quantitative analysis could be possible with a physics simulator.
First I thought the forces would not apply here, then I realized I'm an idiot and centrifugal force only requires angular velocity, not necessarily rotation.
So I think this might basically be the explanation as to why the chain rises upwards. The movement of the chain speeds up until the falling part achieves terminal velocity, up to that point the angular momentum and therefore centrifugal force would be constantly increasing in the circular part of the loop.
However, I think I have a small correction to your explanation: The downwards force on the loop would only be applied by the weight of the chain loop itself, not the chain part in the container. The weight of the chain that remains in the container just acts against the movement of the chain along it's curved trajectory,. As the chain itself becomes part of the loop, it can not pull the position of the loop downwards, just slow down the speed at which the chain moves along the loop. (I hope I explained that well enough, but as you seem to have some understanding of physics, I'm pretty sure you'll get what I mean, even with my suboptimal explanation.)
Props to you for making the connection to centrifugal force, I did not see it, despite having studied physics for long enough to have learned about centrifugal force on university level.
@@creativedesignation7880 I actually didn't mention the weight of the loop, but you can see that it is compensated for by the centrifugal forcce in the loop, otherwise the loop would fall down. Which it doesn't do. I don't have the time right now, but I think it would be a good idea to get real here and go back and estimate the chain speed and the loop diameter and actually get some numbers. Then we would be a bit more certain of the facts.
Didn't Steve show the numbers for that, and conclude that the radius cancels out? So the loop diameter is not driven by the weight or velocity, but can be anything.
@@JohnDlugosz do you have a link/reference for that? I can't find it anywhere.
This channel is quickly becoming my favourite. No limits to new video ideas... very logical explanation here and analogies... I just love how Mike isn't afraid to try new things, not ashamed at failures and not intimidated to enter a space which may have experts that might disagree with him.
I am very interested in the "Shrimp Effect"... (I hope that isn't given to anything else) Most youtube channels with success are limited in very specific areas. Uploading varied content and being able to near towards 750k subs is incredible. I don't know another channel that has managed to do this... as disinterested people in some content, unsubscribe. Usually as soon as someone uploads a few videos that people aren't so interested in, the subs give up supporting the channel, leaving a snotty comment (complaint) and hit unsubscribe. You have a great audience that are happy with some content they don't like (or maybe they do) but are willing to stay subscribed for all the great content they do.
Thank you for the very kind words. I don't really know how it happened with the channel - I just kept doing the same thing (or rather, different things) and it just kept working. All of the tutorials on growing your channel warn against doing variety, and I have no doubt that specialising does bring about more rapid growth, except for when it just doesn't - if you're going to specialise, you also kind of have to be really good at that one thing - as a generalist, maybe I can get away with failure, or mediocrity on any given occasion, because the next one might be better, or at least, different.
@@AtomicShrimp You know, I have to agree with OP: it’s so refreshing to see a creator who does what he wants and not only what everyone else wants. I must admit that I find you’re scambaiting videos the most interesting to me (as do many), but I have huge respect to you for not only doing what’s popular. This ideology makes people like me feel more like we’re watching a real person and not just some actor or entertainer. I’d love to see more channels like this!
Realise I'm a year late to it but I've been rewatching the Mould Effect saga and found this comment, and I have to fully agree.
It's that exact philosophy of "if you like this, feel free to subscribe, but don't be surprised if the next stuff is different" that got my interest in the first place. There's a level of honesty there that's kinda... discouraged by TH-cam, almost.
I most defiantly do also think this is a wave property, we have very similar ideas of what and how it works. This is why I liked your video because it reinforces my own believes.
I also think that if you'd take a thread and wax it up a bit to make it stiffer but still freely bend you'd get mould effect out of that.
Wave functions are everywhere - of course, the fact that there's a wave doesn't invalidate other ways to frame the mechanics of it
@@AtomicShrimp Agreed, I would wager that it wouldn't work with just waxed thread, it requires the inertial mass off the individual beads.
Can't wait for an unrelated ramble on the Mould effect while trying to bait scammers.
Hmm, now than I look at it, your explanation actually makes most sense
YES. Finally someone discussed wave propogation!!! That's been my hypothesis as well so it's lovely to see someone put it into practice and not use that weird "lever" explanation Mould went with.
Whip the rope, wave travels along length. Pile the rope, wave travels into pile until energy ceases. Continue the whip unceasingly into the pile, the wave travels upward as energy in the system grows.
It's also akin to the size wave you create when you add that energy. A huge whip tends to travel faster that a small ones, so it makes sense that the fountain happens only when the chain approaches a higher speed.
Fantastic content. Thanks for taking the time to share! I hope the science people see this and add this idea to their thought process. I'd like to see some pros give it a look.
"I have a truly marvelous explanation of how this works but this comment is too small to contain it."
The alternative reality where Fermat chose to study physics
@@IronMan-mj1kx Or had a TH-cam channel featuring foraging and trying canned food as well as mathematics.
Laminar flow and turbulent flow mentioned in the same video!!! Dustin and Derek are quaking in their shoes.
Loving the videos recently!! 👍
I want a Steve and Medi reaction to this video
First off, you were concerned about using the wrong terms for physics concepts - as far as I can tell, you actually nailed it!
I honestly think a lot of the controversy happens because people think of the same problem differently. The two competing hypotheses focus on momentum (Mehdi's explanation) and link-to-link forces (Steve's explanation), respectively, when the forces are what cause said momentum and the chain's momentum causes the forces to change. In other words, both hypotheses are correct, but neither describes the full picture. :^)
I'm very happy to see the Wobble Dog again.
The way I see it is very simple, the speed of the chain falling is causing the chain in the beaker to rise rapidly. It rises so quickly that it has enough energy (momentum, inertia ?) to go higher than the rim of the beaker and lift the falling chain a little too.
The falling chain has to be much longer than the rising length so that it's weight is enough to create sufficient speed for the rising chain.
That's all there is to in my mind !
The plastic pulley experiment seemed like a really cool idea. Would adding a heavy weight to one end of the chain allow the chain to lift off the pulley more, without ruining the effect?
That seems like it should be equivalent. Of course, you would have to convince everyone who would argue against it anyway that it is.
I'll add it to the list of experiments I'll do tomorrow.
I think this is a really good analysis on the whole situation!
Very simple and yet, it explains what the effect is about pretty well.
I can confidently say I'm still rather confused
Same here. Math and physics were... NOT my best school subjects.
This is way to smart for me
This is so surreal. I followed it so far, but the book on beetle's threw me 🐞
This explanation ticks all the boxes as far as I can tell and also explains ElectroBOOM's findings for horizontal chains. I was undecided before since nobody could really explain it without it just feeling wrong somehow. I am no longer undecided. Thank you for this!
Your videos bring me so much joy even though I have no idea what some are about I watch and enjoy them all! Even if I just have them on in the background while doing homework. I appreciate you sooo much for teaching me new things!
Ooooooohhhh. I bet studded maritime anchor chain will demonstrate this behavior running out of a chain locker on a ship!
Great vid, I am wondering if this experiment can get scaled up such that the size of the balls are tennis ball size and the lengths between them are about 7-8 cms. Would it do the same? I have a theory but its pretty weak and more like an uneducated opinion. I think it is because you cant fold the chain back on its self, that when it starts to go over the edge, it cant flop over immediately, but it forms a loop with a radius. With more load on the other end, the radius gets bigger due to centrifugal force acting on it, it just swings out when it is falling faster, just like if you were swinging a ball on an elastic, the faster the swing, the wider the radius. Maybe or maybe not. Who knows.
I’m new to the Mould effect, but have watched several videos over the past few days. I like your observation that lateral momentum of a particular ball can impart vertical forces on the one trailing, thus generating lifting forces, without the need for an initial “kick” as the chain initially lifts off. I believe that tension forces can provide the explanation.
It appears to me that the speed of the chain remains constant, once the distance from jar to ground has been established. For chains flowing in a curved path at constant speed, the tension required to maintain the centripetal force is λv², where λ is the mass per unit length. (Note; Independent of the radius of curvature.) This provides the tension at the top of the arch, thus the net lifting force, sufficient to balance the weight of the chain hanging below it. The tension will decrease on the way down, becoming zero upon landing. (But the force on the ground due to momentum change also computes to λv²)
A longer drop generates greater tension at the top of the arc, requiring higher velocity to generate the extra tension. This becomes the cause of higher speeds and greater lifting forces.
I would like to see experiments done with the use of force sensors to monitor the weight of the jar, to verify that no net upward kick is felt as the chain leaves. In an ideal world, we could also insert a tensionmeter in the chain, to track tension levels throughout the journey.
Thanks for your observations and suggestions. I believe you have brought fresh insights into this problem.
This explains it so much better. Nice work!
I think this is a much more intuitive and well-explained version of essentially what Medhi was arguing. This is how I thought of the problem anyways and it seemed to line up best with Medhi's hypothesis when I watched the explanations. I could potentially be misinterpreting anybody's argument, but I feel confident that I have done at least a decent job being an engineer myself. I agree with you and Medhi to be clear it seems to be a momentum-based effect derived from the fluid-like properties of this chain its equal density etc.
I liked your physics explanation of the Mould Effect, and I thought it was very interesting!
It is true though that what you said isn't the technical definition, but it is technically correct. At around 7:22 you said the effect was from Conservation of Momentum, while the technical definition is actually about inertia. The thing is that Conservation of Momentum and inertia are both heavily interlinked, so it is possible to interchange the words depending on the subject and circumstance. The fact that many topics in Physics are connected to each other makes studying the subject really interesting as well!
Overall, I really liked the video and the explanations were spectacular as it is! Keep it up!
These are my thoughts exactly. I was going to write what I thought was going on but you nailed it.
I have this "half Flywheel" idea stuck in my head due to an experience from my boating life 45 years ago. My older and much wiser Brother, David, had purchased a skiing boat that was powered by an outboard motor, we water skied and became bored with the performance of the boat so my Brother (an engineer by trade) decided to install a 2 litre ford inboard engine with a Z-drive. I was impressed by his skill in machining the universal joint between the motor and the Z-drive. All was well, it felt like a Viva Aquarama. To get to the point. One day we were working on the engine with the universal coupler taken out, the motor was started and the throttle jammed full open, before we could kill the motor the poor thing seized and stopped abruptly. The result was something that belongs in an horror movie. The flywheel bolts sheared and the flywheel shot off towards my Brother who was standing alongside, luckily for him the flywheel struck a sea cock (valve) which deflected it upwards. Phew!! But it didn't end there, it ran up the wall of our home and at some 6m height it hovered while cutting a grove in the concrete of the wall, by this time my Brother was way down the street and I was barricaded in the house. It took what seemed like minutes to stop its growling grinding noise before I dared to go outside. I found the flywheel in a drain and upon close examination the flywheel had almost no teeth left, just short stumps. That's where I picture the power of the fountain, a flywheel (half) trying to fly!
You are correct in the last part of the video re. different types of chain. I would use the terminology 'degrees of freedom' and more specifically internal degrees of freedom to describe this. The chain essentially has total energy E=K+P+(internal kinetic energy). Where K is the kinetic energy of the centre of mass of each link summed, P is the potential energy of the chain and the internal kinetic energy would be some sum over all rotational energies of each link about each link's centre of mass.
You can see that for chains that are quite 'loose', there are more configurations for rotational motion of each link and therefore more scope for the total energy to be 'soaked up' by internal motions. It is also a result of chaotic behaviour, any impulse from link N to N+1 which does not reside exactly along the chain direction results in a rotational motion off-axis for the link N+1 which propagates down the chain. In the real world there is noise, simply adding noise to the impulses (this would be the result of friction, each chain being slightly different than the other, snagging etc.) you can see how a lot of the energy ends up being soaked in impulses off the plane in which the chain resides. In short, loose chains can hardly be described in the same way as the ideal case as internal motions become very important; not quite dominant, but significant in the result of the motion.
For simple ball chains, the internal degrees of freedom end up being negligible to the motion of the unit as a whole, even noise would be damped out.
What distinguishes the different chain types is the amount of degrees of freedom they have. That's the term you were describing when explaining why we see this effect in only the ball chain. The ball chain links have the least degrees of freedom and that's why this chain displays the Mould effect best.
Wow, I've heard of this but never heard it called the Mould Effect before! Thought it was going to be about mildew or something
@Hallam Crafer - Yeah Steve Mould actually discovered it, or at least was the first person to formally present it as an interesting phenomenon in any way, so it ended up being named after him.
@@carlz0r Steve Mould did not discover the effect, or was the first to describe it.
I saw this in physics class before TH-cam existed. Mehdi also mentions that it existed and was renamed "Mould effect" once his video got famous.
I think your explanation is spot on as in moulds video he demonstrates using a normal chain(showing the effect not working) except it does work but only for a few links at a time as in the normal chain it is extremely reliant on orientation and once it gets to a link not in the correct orientation it loses the upward momentum
Chains are weird, especially that feeling of letting a necklace chain fall onto your hand.
LOL this is the first thing I do if I find something chainy, it has to pass the palm test xD
I would like to add that ball chain might work because one of the balls getting stuck on the rim provides the initial jerk required to get the wave started, hence why on a smoother object the wave takes longer to start.
hi, aspiring astrophysicist here (grad student).
first let me say: your description of how the balls pull on each other and generate upward forces very much clears up the whole muck of this problem. well done presenting that, and showing some simulations. i think it is a qualitative restating of what the Cambridge folks published, but actually using balls rather than modeling the chain links as rods (weird move on their part). further, breaking things down and looking at pairs of two or three chain links and then zooming back out to the broader picture is the exact kind of thinking that needs to be used when solving physics problems, so very good job with that.
some more thoughts:
1. momentum vs. inertia thing: "conservation of momentum" doesn't mean a ball wants to keep going in the same direction. that's actually the definition of inertia, pretty much. although, from what i've seen scientists tend to not talk about inertia because it's not a very precise thing to discuss.
2. waves on water (as long as it isn't turbulent) are described by the same math as waves on a string, just with an extra dimension ;)
however-i am really struggling to see how a wave equation would arise from the balls falling over the edge of a beaker. waves generally arise when things resonate-drums, light, coffee in a mug in a loud cafe. now, the Mould effect after some amount of time actually becomes a steady-state process: a fixed length of chain (from floor/ground to the beaker) dumps energy into the links inside the beaker and raises them up via the forcing mechanism you described at the start of the video. no waves needed! also, no resonances, so that's why i am skeptical of the wave description.
3. finally-discussing the chain as a fluid is brilliant. you are spot on with the energy analysis (from what i can tell). i'm not sure if saying ball chain is like "laminar flow" is the best phrasing, but if chains were fluids, ball chain would almost certainly be the least _viscous_!
in any event... great video!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)
Agreed that periodic waves are often generated by something resonating, but a single wave (or at least something that looks like a single peak of a wave) can be generated by something that just dumps a bunch of energy into a wave-supporting medium; probably the most notorious example being a tsunami - it's not a periodic wave, but it has a wave function. Likewise when the chain is laid out on the table, it's possible to create a single peak that travels along it - in both that case and the tsunami, the phenomenon runs out of medium in which the wave can continue to propagate - but if the medium is made to continually recede, the wave can continue.
Algadoo is a great idea for a quick verification. I used it ages ago but never thought of actually using it to quickly test ideas like this. Great video
The sound design of this video really made me question what birds are again.
“Rise above the beaker, Loop. Feel the mould force”
I think the cause lies in the fluid effect mentioned and likely has the same cause as an analgous effect in water and air. I've noticed that when the loop is high and stable, you see a spiral in the rising portion of the ball chain. I think what that is showing is part of what is effectively an inverted whirlpool or funnel cloud effect. The ball chain allowing movement in all directions not only allows for the upward movement, but once it has time to stabilize it imparts a circular movement centered around the mass of the bulk chain in the jar. It is effectively funneling from the disorganized mass below and up to the most energy efficient point at the top of the loop to start the journey back down.
I have a BSc degree and majored in physics, and honestly everything you said checks out to me. None of the vocab stuck out to me as being particularly wrong either. Double- and triple-pendulums qualitatively exhibit some similar 'weird' upward force effects in my opinion, and as a ball chain is effectively an n-component pendulum without a fixed end it should exhibit nonlinear effects like the Mould effect. I also think you're right about normal chains not experiencing it due to the extra degrees of freedom requiring more energy to pull the chain up, my gut feeling is that pulling the chain with enough force would cause the effect anyway but I'd have to do some research on that though.
I love this channel. And for that my feedback is this video seemed rushed and the tempo much quicker than normal
Love your chilled out vibes and hope they don’t go anywhere soon
Yeah, I think I was just a bit excited - I agree, the pace is rushed
1. Why does the chain rise above the beaker?
Mould Effect Q&A
1a. why is the height of the loop greater when the beaker is further above the ground?
The pulling tension force is equal to the sum of masses of the falling beads times gravitational acceleration. Hence, the pulling force will increase until the first bead in the chain reaches the floor, after that the pulling force will be constant.
2. How does a downward motion/force outside the beaker translate to upward motion/force inside the beaker?
A chain in tension is an efficient system to transfer mechanical forces, therefore each bead resting in the pile will be yanked out in succession by this pulling force.
3. why does this only happen with ball chain?
Friction forces and untangle forces are very low in this type of chain. The system is therefore very efficient in translating kinetic energy into potential energy
This is honestly a rather unique and interesting perspective into the Mould Effect, I honestly never thought about it like a wave of water. It honestly makes a lot of sense, and like many other commenters, I'd love to see Steve and Medhi's response to these thoughts on this theory.
Love the "look around you" reference. I heard that text.
Nice video. I think the effect seen at 5:09 where the chain rises as it goes over the spindle is further evidence for @ElectroBOOM's argument that it is momentum driving the Mould Effect as there is nothing for the beads to push down against. Mehdi also explains why you don't see anything until the very end as the shorter chain is still applying a downwards force that needs to be overcome (as well as friction and other losses of energy).
I have seen this happen when dismantling an overhead conveyor chain, which was made up of sections of steel channel each about 18" long with a pivot at each end and about 100ft long and weighing around 2000 lb. was pretty spectacular to watch.
Shame you didn't video it - think of the views that would get!
I never saw this effect before. I tried but failed to get it to occur using my 1 metre length of ball chain and a small spice jar.
I really like the way you approach this, dismantling the experiment into its constituent parts and trying to see in which of them the effect appears.
Your window experiment would work the way you expected if you placed your chain feed on a table just inside the window. in fact you would probably have some cool results if you set the chain perpendicular to the window on the table in long back and forth loops while the chain is on a pully falling out the window.
You get the same effect with the long trains of carts they use to carry luggage on and off planes at airports. the front end can be round a couple of corners but the rest all follow the path it took.
I don't think that's quite the same effect. In a baggage train, the carts are linked to each other's axles. Each link and axle forms a rigid T-shape which is attached to the cart by a small vertically oriented hinge at, or very near, the point of intersection of each T's two line segments. If the linking bar is pulled to one side, the connected axle turns in the same direction around the hinge. The T-shape may be replaced by some sort of isosceles triangular frame, but the same basic idea still applies.
I was thinking about 10:50 for almost the entire video. I think that’s the key, and that you’ve hit the nail on the head with this explanation.
The "Look Around You" music here really makes it.
write that down in your copy book now.
Wonder if a fine/small link chain (like those in a necklace) would flow similarly to the ball chain?
Man I love this channel. I am a big ElectroBOOM fan and seeing AtomicShrimp wade into this debate has me all giddy.
It's because the beads on the chain are so close together, the faster it comes out of the beaker, the closer the beads are. This forms a solid link-up, and it's momentum and solidity of the chain makes it rise. Simples!
Simple as
Thanks for this video.
It is interesting and the explanations sounded plausible.
The balls can move along the piece of wire that connects them.
The sudden movement when falling passes along the chain. This jerks the chain inside the cup making the ball slide faster along its small piece of wire passing energy along the chain and lifting it up over the rim of the cup higher if the pulldown is stronger.
Putting a weight on the end of the chain should give a stronger effect until this weight stops falling.
You make some very very good points in this discussion. I'm subscribed to all 3 of you. This is really an interesting one.
great vid - another potential source of upward force for the Moulding balls is ricocheting off the edge of the container, which explains the oscillation between running out of the container normally and Moulding.
@Atomic Shrimp what i want to know is how do they get the figs in the fig rolls? now thats a question for the ages
I don't know why and you call me crazy, but the fact that you still have the wobble dog machine makes me very, very happy.
This is the only explanation so far that I've seen that makes intuitive sense, to me specifically. Like, I can actually understand the forces in play with this sort of explanation.
Another question is why does the chain spin/twirl as it rises out of the container?
It's a good question. I initially wanted to say it's just because of the way the chain uncoil out of the heap, but it's too consistent and regular for that. You can see the same shapes on the loops of chain when I make it flow across the table, when I am comparing it to a fluid.
Red pipe goes here took me a second but was very good
Huh. I never really thought about that, but it instantly sounded familiar like a thing I'd seen before when you showed it. Your "Boring answer" to 1 and 1a is exactly what I presumed too and it's satisfying enough for me.
So many of my favourite TH-camrs are getting involved in this! I love it!
Huh. Fewer springs than I was expecting, but this effect is bizarre.
I don't know if I agree with studio Shrimp's conclusion on experiment 1, however, I think the experiment did tell us something. The end of the chain lifted up because the momentum(inertia?) of those balls exceeded the pull of gravity on them, and just like Medhi's demonstration with the vacuum hose, this makes plenty of sense to us when it's a lightweight end of a chain/rope. We see this whip effect happening anywhere pull-chords are used too.
Now, where you were trying to get the effect to happen when the short side was always supporting the entirety of its side of the chain, I believe the Mould effect is caused by the fact that the weight of that side of the chain is mostly supported by the beaker, leaving very little weight to pull against that upward momentum, simulating the end-of-chain whip effect.
I agree with your analysis - the setup studio shrimp is describing might only be possible as a thought experiment, rather than in reality - because spinning a very tall loop of chain up to enough speed so that the momentum of the upward side carries it (sustained in part by the falling of the downward side) might be simply impossible without first either running out of chain or something getting tangled. I think for very long loops, the ball chain won't exhibit the lovely stability we see at normal scales.
At some point during your video I had a thought; Have you ever seen those toys that consist of a motor spinning a pulley, and there's a loop of string wrapped around the pulley? This seems like the same or a similar phenomenon. I do like your theories on chains being chaotic motion versus laminar flow, and I think the reason it doesn't happen with string is just their weight; they don't have enough downward energy to trigger the phenomenon.
I think this is the best intuitive explanation of what’s going on. The skateboard Ollie description never made any sense to me, likely because it seems to be incorrect.
Awesome stuff!
But is the resistance caused by the spool reducing the upward motion of the chain?
You're a bloody GENIUS, Shrimp! That brilliantly intuitive tennis-ball-gun demo blew my little mind.