Gravity?

On 22-Jun-2003, "[Only registered users see links. ] \(formerly\)" <dlzc1.cox@net> wrote:


Since you insist:

To levitate: verb

Oxford: to cause to rise and float in the air.
Merriam Webster: to rise or float in the air, especially in apparent
defiance of gravitation.
Cambridge International: To rise or float in the air without any physical
support.
American Heritage: To rise or cause to rise and float in the in apparent
defiance of gravitation.
Dictionary.com To rise or cause tor ise and float in apparent defiance of
grvity.
Unalingua: To be suspended in air. Syn. hover
Websters Abridged: To rise or tend to rise, as if lighter than the
surrounding medidum - to become buoyant. Opposed to gravitate. This is all
what Onluine Plaintext says.

Your reference: Wordnet: caise tp rose amd f;pat om tje aor as of om
defoamce pf gavotu/ 2. levitate, hover. be suspended in the air as if in
defiance of gravity. (It then uses the following sentece as an example of
use.) 'The guru claimed he could leitate. '

Now if the use of 'suspend is correct, we should see come correlation
between suspend and levitate in the definitions for 'suspend.' Otherwise,
the suee of suspend is simply incorrectg and the authors of the dictionaries
which use that definition are wrong.

to suspend:

Oxford: To hand up. Eampless: dangle, hand, swing. (No floating; and
notice all of these require some connection to something other than the
suspended item.)

Merriam Webster: Hang. To hand so as to be free on all sides except AT THE
POINT OF SUPPORT. Requres a connection and cannot float.
b. To keep from FALLING or sinking by some invisible support. (Notice that
it says ntohing about having caused the 'something' to rise in the first
place. And support is implied AFTER the mass is once levitated.

Even Wordnet has no reference to levitate or levitation in any way.

Susend requires a apoint of support by some physical means.
Levitate requies no support by physical means.

Therefore they cannot be synonymous.

Therefore the books you cite are simply mistaken in their definitions.


An illogical definition is stupid and not refutation or fulfillment of my
challenge.

Done. Most

Untrue. What definition requires or even allows levitation of an object
from the ground; i.e., to cause it to rise and float in the air without
physical support. Lifting something with some mechanism is doing it with
physical supports, eliminating levitation.

Suspend, as is shown through all definitions, requires handing from a point
of physical support. Such an item cannot float in the air against gravity.
It needs that support.

Describe to me what you have witnessed being caused to rise from the surface
or ground without some connection to a physical mechanism for support.

How can you suspend something on the floor? To suspend something you need
to first get it up somewhere and then hang it on some support point, or lay
it on a table. In no case is the item floating.

In no case did the mass rise up without some outside physical support.

Your reference fails testing.

but hold it
You said it yourself: 'hold it in the air.' Tell me of something you have
witnessed which floated in the air without any physical support.

Typo or ignorance?

I will refine the challege:

o


_______o______

'o' is mass on ground. Describe how you can levitate it to a point 5 inches
above the surface with nothing touching 'o', it being an inanimate mass, and
nothing above or below it other than the surface of the ground and the
gravity above it. Cause it to rise and float in the air without any
physical support or connections to the mass.

To prove that it actually floats, take some item, a pencil or such, and push
it down and it must rise upa gain and float where it was before it was
pushed down. Do that over and over, and the mass should always return to
its designed height.

If it doesn't float in the air, it is not levitated but suspended by some
physical support.

Maginsta