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From: Marvin Sebourn (no email)
Date: Thu Jul 10 2003 - 23:54:35 EDT
In a message dated 7/10/2003 10:35:14 PM Central Standard Time,
writes:
> This thread has gotten me to thinking ...
>
> The best thing about a liquid artificial horizon is that it is
> gravitationally driven to be flat and level, but it suffers from breezes.
>
> The best thing about a mirror artificial horizon is that it's permanently
> flat, but it's hard to make it level.
>
> Has anybody tried floating a mirror on a liquid bath? You could glue it to a
> piece of styrofoam, and if it were only slightly smaller than the pan it's
> floating in, there wouldn't be much room for wind to disturb the liquid.
>
> I haven't tried it (this is just a gedanken experiment) - has anybody else?
>
> Regards,
> Bill Arden
Bill, all I did was think about it also, but more in the line of considering
using a flat glass plate floating in a liquid of high specific gravity. I
remember from geology testing of specific gravity of unknowns, that some of the
heavier liquids were quite toxic though. I know there are liquids with a higher
specific gravity than quartz, ~ 2.65.
I wonder if a mechanical pendulum or two-axis leveling system connected to a
reflective optical flat on the top could be (or probably has been) developed.
Sounds terribly heavy though, and large.
Marvin
Marvin Sebourn
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