Milwaukee

Milwaukee's American Tudor Revival Community (Rockway Pl. and Glenview Ave.)

I passed by this community when I leave Medical College of Wisconsin for the airport. This is a small cul-de-sac street near Glenview Ave. Most of the houses on the street are American tudor revival type.
(the last two pictures were taken on 2/7/2008 morning, after a 20" snow storm that stuck me in the hotel for two days...)



The Gravity Well at Milwaukee Airport.
It is enchanting to watch those coins revolving around the well and eventually drop into the hole....





In physics, a gravity well is the gravitational potential field around a massive body (a particular kind of potential well). Physical models of gravity wells are sometimes used to illustrate orbital mechanics. Gravity wells are frequently confused with general relativistic embedding diagrams (distorted space and time...etc.), but the two concepts are unrelated.

After you drop a coin into the gravity well, friction removes some of the energy of the rolling coin causing it to drop down into the well. When the coin drops down into the well some of its gravitational potential energy is converted into kinetic energy. The potential energy of the coin is converted to kinetic energy so as the coin drops down it has a higher velocity. So you see friction actually speeds up the coin. Not only does the coin go around in a smaller circle as it drops down into the gravity well, it travels around at a higher velocity. The result is that the coin completes orbits much more rapidly near the center of the well.

Eventually the coin drops into the well and becomes a donation to the Galley of Flight in the airport...