A hamster enclosure in the shape of a drum, on a motor-driven spindle, with a lid that is made of clear plastic with a one way mirror finish so the hamster can't see out.
Place hamster, toys, etc in base of drum. Drum slowly and gently spins up until centripetal force is sufficent to hold hamster to inner circumference of drum.
All the hamster feels is their world being slowly and gently tilted.
A camera looking into the drum taks a picture at the same position in each rotation.
Look at the screen and see hamster running round in wheel, within bigger rotating wheel. Enjoy Zen irony.-- 8th of 7, Oct 08 2010 Ahem.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 08 2010 Bun for Bigs-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 08 2010 yes- a silent bun for [bigsleep]!-- xandram, Oct 08 2010 A spinning bun, shirley?-- pocmloc, Oct 08 2010 Nice work [bigsleep]. (I dislike the original for being a little too creepy - yours, on the other hand has too much hamster to be creepy)-- Jinbish, Oct 08 2010 All this needs is the strategic addition of a cat.....
(+)-- Twizz, Oct 08 2010 Ooooh! Oooooh! I know! A wall-of-death aquarium!!-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 08 2010 //Ooooh! Oooooh!//
Definitely from the French, non?-- Boomershine, Oct 08 2010 Ja.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 08 2010 //A wall-of-death aquarium!!// It's usually called "a washing machine".-- xenzag, Oct 08 2010 What is the centripetal force?-- baconbrain, Oct 08 2010 Bouyancy. Imagine a vertical transparent cylinder, capped at top and bottom (there could be a large hole in each cap in the middle).
Spin the whole thing up, then trickle in water, which will rapidly be dragged around to spin at the same rate. The result will be a cylinder of water with a hole down the middle.
Then add fish. They'd get a bit of jolt going in, but would quickly join the whole spin-cycle. From then on, they'd be perfectly happy fish. Uneaten food would sink to the outside, dead fish would float to the inside, living fish would be somewhere in between.
Actually, the hole in the middle would taper, being thickest at the bottom, in some sort of paraboloid conic section; this would be the paraboloid of the cones and fishes.
If you spun the whole thing up to a high speed, though, the centripugal forces would become much greater than the gravitational ones, and the central hole would approximate to a cylinder. This would also allow you to keep deep-sea fish. On the other hand, watching them would be tricky.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 08 2010 You've really submitted another (but similar) idea here, [Max]. I love it, whatever. Buns for everone! [+] [+].
This really isn't much of a Wall-of-Death anything, though, is it? Seems like more of an interesting Aquatic-Cycle-Of-Life, or something.
And help me out here...at speeds where gravity is still significant, the fish would swim tilted with their backs towards center, wouldn't they?-- Boomershine, Oct 08 2010 //the fish would swim tilted with their backs towards center, wouldn't they?// Yes, they would, unless they were very confused.
Actually, why _do_ fish mostly swim "right way up"?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 08 2010 //Actually, why _do_ fish mostly swim "right way up"?//
"RIght way up" meaning with dorsal side away from the direction of gravity, right? Perhaps for most of life's purposes--eating, mating, etc--any common collective orientation is helpful. The directional force of gravity would be the most reliable, strongest reference. (?)-- Boomershine, Oct 08 2010 That makes sense. I'm surprised, though, that there aren't many species which have found a "niche" by swimming upside-down. I know there are some that swim vertically, and of course flatfish that lie on their sides, but do any fish spend their lives upside down?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 08 2010 There's an upside-down catfish, Nigriventris.
It swims upside down feeding off the underside of lily pads and such. Its ancestors have been doing that so long that its belly is countershaded dark, hence its name.
Sometimes fishes in undersea caves just pick the nearest rock surface to belly against, so some of them swim upside down, but it isn't a lifestyle.-- baconbrain, Oct 08 2010 //That makes sense.// I've seen that phrase used very effectively here with sarcasm. I assume you were serious.
As luck would have it, I am acquainted with a fisheries biologist (not sure he's an actual ichthyologist). He just told me that in experiments where light is shone from another direction, fish swim sideways, or even upside down. This sort of shoots my gravity theory.
Naturally I asked about benthic fish. He asserted that even at great depth light of some frequencies penetrates.
To further confuse the issue, he suggested that some fish are 'bottom oriented' whatever that can mean.
Are we still on topic?-- Boomershine, Oct 08 2010 Aha! Thank you, [bacon]!-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 08 2010 The stuff on light-based orientation is intriguing - thanks! (And I'm not going near "bottom orientation".)-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 08 2010 random, halfbakery