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Old 11th Jul 2021, 10:50 am   #5
Radio Wrangler
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Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Fife, Scotland, UK.
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Default Re: Rosin flux needle bottle users

Great video!

Planet Earth is a bit more complex than a hard bottle filled with lossy fluid. The surface is somewhat fluid/flexible and floats on the core fluid. The rotation causes forces which make it an oblate spheroid, so the rotation about the axis with maximum moment of inertia is interesting because the rotation sets which axis has the maximum moment of inertia. There seems to be a loop of causality. This could be stable or unstable and I don't know enough to work out which.

Additionally, the fluid core is magnetically active, and there are further forces as a consequence. Oh, and there's the movement of the two bulges in the oceans... the tides caused by the moon (and lesser ones due to other bodies...) So now the lunar orbit gets thrown into the mix.

It's left me wanting a tennis racquet.

Back to radio, soldering and flux. Liquid flux is sticky-messy enough in a nice reliable gravitational field. I'm not sure I'd want to go soldering in zero gravity and releasing little particles of spatter to float around. Solder particles are conductive and flux is chemically active. Nice!. Murphy says they will move to the place of maximum mischief.

Needle bottles of liquid flux may not be desirable in orbit.

David
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