Hello every one I'm drew A. In 8th grade from central school in Kewanee Illinois and our class of 5th hour science is studying brooms recently Dwyer and Micheal announced you can stand brooms up on its end around the equinox so our 8th grade class tried it and it works! but we want to figure out more about this interesting activity like can you stand it up any time of the year or only around the equinox? also how did it fall and when?

Ask your parents to attend the next PTA meeting and have your 8th grade science teacher removed.

Seconded. Or at least have him transfered to teach art, or something. Brooms standing during sunset of summer equinox... There is poetry in it. But no science whatsoever.

C M: First, the equinox has nothing to do with planets aligning; it is the time when the Sun is directly over the equator. It happens twice a year, the Vernal Equinox in the spring and the Autumnal Equinox in the fall. The rest of the year, the Sun is north or south of the equator.

Second, what did your science teacher say when your classmates said they could stand up brooms? Did he ask you to try it at other times or offer any explanation at all?

What is it about brooms that you are studying in science class?

quote:

Originally posted by buttonsdad:
C M: First, the equinox has nothing to do with planets aligning; it is the time when the Sun is directly over the equator. It happens twice a year, the Vernal Equinox in the spring and the Autumnal Equinox in the fall. The rest of the year, the Sun is north or south of the equator.

Second, what did your science teacher say when your classmates said they could stand up brooms? Did he ask you to try it at other times or offer any explanation at all?

What is it about brooms that you are studying in science class?

yea she was telling us that if the broom was standing one day and it fell the next people would ask how and why.

This broom standing thing would be more dependant on how wide the bristles on the broom are. The laws of physics is not dependant on certain times of the day

quote:

Originally posted by Sentinel7:
This broom standing thing would be more dependant on how wide the bristles on the broom are. The laws of physics is not dependant on certain times of the day

Why do I have this mental image of this huge book on the laws of physics, with an entry that states;

E=MC2 (Except between the hours of 1am - 2am and public holidays)

Or

The gravitational constant can be expressed as G=4.3 x 10-3 pc M-1 (Km/s)2 (except at weekends)

or even

The speed of light is exactly 299,792,458 metres per second between the hours of 6am and 12;30pm Monday to Saturday. At all other times the speed of light is 699,800447 metres per second.

That'd be convenient. I'd do all my interstellar travel in the afternoons.

dang..ya'll are very rude! that person was just asking a simple question and all of ya'll had to get an attitude! i think its crazy that the brooms are standing up...this hasnt happened before. and i bet none of you can explain why its happening. and i dont think ur science teacher should be removed. quit being so serious all the time...u cant learn everything from a science book

quote:

Originally posted by missjones:
dang..ya'll are very rude! that person was just asking a simple question and all of ya'll had to get an attitude! i think its crazy that the brooms are standing up...this hasnt happened before. and i bet none of you can explain why its happening. and i dont think ur science teacher should be removed. quit being so serious all the time...u cant learn everything from a science book

No, but many of us have an actual education and have some experience with reality. You can cut the bristles of a straight broom so that it will stand up if the bristles are new and stiff; it has nothing to do with the alignment of the Planets.

quote:

i think its crazy that the brooms are standing up...this hasnt happened before

Say what???

My 2-year old can stand a broom up on its bristles... day of the year, planetary alignment, what she ate for breakfast -- none of that matters. She just stands it up and lets go, and it stands there.

It IS disturbing to think the teacher may not have asked/told about days other than the equinox. It's quite possible the OP didn't give us all the details about the reaction to the classmates' "experiment" and the validity of the findings.

oh an "actual" education..i see. well i got a new broom with stiff bristles to stand.its been standing for 12 hours. so since u have an actual education, instead of telling me whats NOT making the brooms stand can you tell me what IS making them stand? i would greatly appreciate it

The center of gravity is within the area occupied by the normal forces supporting the bristles. Any small perturbation tends to result in the broom moving back to this equilibrium situation.

If the CG moves a small amount, it produces a turning moment, returning to the equilibrium -- if you move it too far, then the moment is the other way and the broom topples over.

thanks

The point would be that the gravitational interaction from the planets is so small that you couldn't detect it with a broom or any other everyday object. The planets don't "line up" at the equinox anymore than they do any other time of the year and , even if they did, it wouldn't have any effect except in the heads of Astrologers. Roof is correct about how a broom cah stand up if the bristles are new and stiff and they are cut properly.

I was dismayed by the over-reaction and negative attitude behind some of the "answers" that have been submitted. First, some responders seem to have failed to read the original posting carefully. It sounds like the notion that the phenomenon might be related to the equinox came from two students rather than from the teacher. Second, once their experiment showed that a broom can indeed stand upright, the students seemed simply to be asking for an explanation of the underlying physics.

Since the standing broom mystery seems to be spreading like a contagious disease and the students brought it up, I think the teacher was reasonable in letting them try a simple experiment rather than leaving it in the realm of an urban legend. It should have been used to provide an opportunity for an engaging discussion about how the scientific method requires that we be open to accurate and reproducible observations (like the standing broom) even if they originally seem counterintuitive based on a limited understanding of causes. What turns the observable phenomenon of a broom standing on end into a 'myth' is attributing this unexpected observation to mysterious-sounding and unmeasured causes like planetary alignment or equinoxes rather than just ordinary physics.

The problem with all your replies is its not just flat brooms. I have an angled broom and it stands at an angle. So explain that please.

also i can do it everytime doesn't take any steadying and i can even poke it a little and it wont fall.

Same reason. The center of gravity is still above the base, not far from where the handle meets the head.

If you were to have a solid steel handle, instead of a lightweight empty tube, then the Cg would be too far away from the base for it to balance.

But it works just fine with "slanted" brooms for the exact same reasons.

If you take a look at

http://blog.al.com/live/2009/0...in_prattville_s.html

you will notice that people actually pushed the broom with force and it simply stood back up. Therefore, wouldn't you throw off the center of gravity this way and it in theory would fall over. It seems that over a certain time period the broom falls over. In essence, all of the ideas that people come up with are theories then and we cannot truly prove what is happening. It is a phenomenon and you can believe what you will but please know that it is not necessarily true. Be open to new ideas.