Observant Muslims are strongly encouraged to visit the Kaaba at least once in their lifetimes, and walk around it seven times counterclockwise.
All of that sea of human-powered torque could be used to generate at least an electrostatic charge using some typical brush-type system, so that it could be more likely to be struck with lightning in some impressive fashion. Or maybe turn an appropriately-geared generator flywheel.-- RayfordSteele, Jul 07 2015 So there's actually a paper out there... http://www.savap.or...2)/2014(5.2-07).pdfComplete bollocks to encourage the faithful it seems... [RayfordSteele, Jul 07 2015] Rotating_20Kabba_20Hajj Why not go further and turn the entire event into a giant generator? [xenzag, Jul 07 2015] What happens if someone walks clockwise?
If the crowd is large enough, is its direction of pointless milling determined by Coriolis forces?
What does the rotation have to be relative to? Could people not save energy by just sitting down somewhere near the kaba for a week?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 07 2015 From this paper...
"The best way to discharge the body of positive electrical charge is by placing the forehead on the ground more than once [Ref]. As the Earth has negative charge, it discharges the positive charge from the body. Scientific studies have proved that Mecca and the Kaaba are at the center of the Earth’s axis [Ref] Hence, the Islamic practice of offering prayers to the creator facing the Kaaba leads an optimization of discharging the positive charge from the body."
I think it would be interesting just to see it attract lint and flotsam from the prayer mats and goat hairs floating around.-- RayfordSteele, Jul 07 2015 //at the center of the Earth’s axis// now is the centre of the axis at the centre of the earth, since from there the axis is equally infinitely long in either direction? Or is that true of every point on the axis? Or, if you stand at the South Pole, is the axis below you infinitely longer than the axis above?-- pocmloc, Jul 07 2015 //From this paper... // If they're that crazy, it's just as well they're not violent.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 07 2015 Or are we envisioning the axis as a line, but if you zoom in close enough it gets a bit fuzzy or pixellated, so at super high magnification you can see a sharper line down the centre of the actual axis itself (which has gone a bit blurred), and that sharper line is the centre of the axis? Presumably then you could zoom in a bit more untill the centre of the axis became fuzzy, and make a new sharp line to be the centre of the centre of the axis?-- pocmloc, Jul 07 2015 Shock the casbah, shock the casbah…-- ytk, Jul 07 2015 <sigh>
Electrostatics aren't much good for power generation; high voltages, very low currents. And that would also require efficiently insulating the Kaabah from contact with the earth.
Electromagnets would let you build an alternator, but the rotational speed would be very low.
A treadmill or turntable might have possibilities.-- 8th of 7, Jul 07 2015 Great for random godlike effects though.
Maybe it could power an orrery...-- RayfordSteele, Jul 07 2015 Isn't an idea like this how 21q got his account deleted?-- bungston, Jul 08 2015 random, halfbakery