Ah, Gravity, an idea born in the sixteen-hundreds
when a young man named Isaac Newton was presumably
hit in the head by a falling apple.
Now he might have just observed an apple falling,
or the apple fell on someone else's head.
Whatever happened, it made him wonder why
all apples fell, you know, down; why don't
they go up, or sideways?
And holding an apple, you apply a friction
force on it, but you do feel its wight; and
when you let go, it falls.
This made Newton think there must be a force
acting on the apple, and on everything else
for that matter, the force of Gravity.
Of course, then came the Equivalence Principle,
stating that all objects fall in the same
way.
Here is the case of a heavy ball and a feather
falling in a vacuum, which proves that it's
the air friction that makes a feather fall
slower, an idea predicted by Galileo in the
16th century with his famous experiments rolling
balls on inclines and dropping objects from
the Tower of Pisa.
Yeah, people used that tower for more than
weird poses that are so common nowadays.
Later came General Relativity, a concept we've
all heard about, but very few understand it,
probably because it was conceived by one of
the greatest minds ever, Albert Einstein.
Now it depends on what phenomenon you're trying
to explain: if you're studying a ball rolling
off a table then Newtonian Mechanics is more
than enough.
If however, you're looking at particles going
around a particle accelerator, since their
speed is just a smidge lower than the speed
of light (c), you most certainly need a relativistic
approach.
Now, this so-called scientist is trying to
prove there is no gravity using his understanding
of the scientific method.
Since his experiment consists of an egg, a
glass of water and some salt, we will stick
to Newtonian Mechanics and similar experiments,
as bringing up the existence of gravitational
waves really seems a bit of an overkill.
And I know that YouTube is full of these so-called
"debunking videos" of gravity, but since this
one claims to make use of the scientific method,
I thought it deserves some actual scientific
treatment.
Now, I won't show you the whole video, as
it is over 20 minutes long and half of it
consists of webpages from his research and
"scientific-sounding" ideas unfolding over
his inspirational portrait, but I'll link
it in the description below if you're curious
and I'll just show his conclusion here.
The whole idea is centred around the variables
involved in a scientific experiment, which
are just the things that are changed or measured
by the scientist.
In simple terms, there are three types of
variables, and I will describe each using
this simple DC circuit example, where we want
to measure the current as a function of voltage
for a given resistance.
The independent variable is the one changed
by the experimenter, so it is the voltage
in this case.
Now, our "Sleeping through physics classes
Warrior" claims that you can only have one
of these, as adding another would be against
the scientific method.
Well, not really, it's just that it's way
easier to have only one to play with and then
one to measure.
And he even shows this in his video, unwillingly
I suppose.
The dependent variable is the one that's measured
upon changing the independent one, or, we
measure the current when changing the voltage.
And the controlled variable is the resistance
in this case, or the variable the scientist
prefers remains constant throughout the experiment.
But, we could swap the resistance with a variable
resistor, which implies the resistance now
becomes an independent variable along with
the voltage.
Does this mean we can no longer verify Ohm's
law, or that we're falling out of the scientific
method?
No, it just makes things a bit more difficult
for us!
Other such examples of multiple independent
variables experiments are: varying the pressure
and temperature of water and studying its
state.
Or we could graph how many people are college
educated as a function of age, gender and
country.
Going back to his experiment, yes, he changed
the density of the water, but unknowingly,
he also increased the gravitational pull on
the water, by increasing its mass with salt.
So, according to his claims, this experiment
is not within the scientific method.
And on top of all that, what he proves here
is the buoyant force (also known as Archimede's
force) is density dependent.
How does that exactly tell us there's no gravity?
If you'd ask me, gravity is actually the reason
behind this buoyant force.
But, for the sake of argument, let's assume
that he's right about the variables conundrum.
The next step in the scientific model is the
PEER REVIEW process, so Mr Sleeping Warrior,
I will now ask questions about your findings:
So basically it doesn't move unless there's 
 a force present.
Ok, it moved!
What force is this?
Could that be gravity?
Or do you just take out whatever works for
your hypothesis, and disregard the rest?
It goes up, and then it stops.
Why?
If we take gravity out of the picture, what's
holding the egg from going up with your "newly
created" force?
If there's no gravity, and objects fall because
they're denser than others, why do they go
down?
Why not up?
Or sideways?
And, I also have a simple experiment: I filled
this glass to the brim with water and put
a coaster on top.
Now both the coaster and water have larger
densities than air, why don't they fall here?
I can explain this easily with gravity, how
can you explain it?
I have a video where I describe the whole
gravity/buoyancy situation and provide answers
to the previous questions, that is if you'd
like to know the more complete scientific
explanation of your experiment.
The way I see it, the situation is like this:
you are hopefully confused and don't really
know what you're saying, which is not too
bad, as the scientific model can be tough.
I truly hope we're not in the situation where
you actually know you're wrong but still decide
to publish your video, because that would
make you a manipulative wanna-be liar who
purposefully contributes to this anti-vax,
global warming scepticism and flat Earth deception
wave!
The choice is yours, Sleeping Warrior...
