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The Amazing Levitating Arms

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Uploaded by on Jan 17, 2009

Bellomart decides to shake things up a bit with an after school special experiment.

Music: http://www.incompetech.com

For those of you who want to know how this works:
To lift your arm from your side you use two muscles in your shoulder, called the deltoid and supraspinatus muscles. By pressing your arms against the doorway you are sending a command to these muscles to move - but they can't, because the doorframe's in the way.

As you carry on pushing against the doorway, you are still telling your muscles to move. A stream of electrical signals arrives at the nerve endings in these muscles. Masses of calcium ions are released into the muscle cells and they can't be completely cleared back into the sarcoplasmic reticulum.

When you move away from the wall, there is so much calcium in your muscles and they can finally contract in response! So even though the command from your nerves has stopped, your arm will lift itself away from your side!

Bellomart: Stupid, but educational.

http://www.planet-science.com/sciteach/index.html?page=/experiment/expts/arm_...

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Uploader Comments (bellomart)

  • Oh, that brought back some childhood memories. My sis and I used to do that all the time. Especially in changing room doorways while waiting for my mom to finish shopping...

  • haha yeah it was good to pass the time when bored, and when i was young i was bored a lot.

    kids have pretty short attention spans..

  • cool

  • im glad you enjoyed it =)

  • yeh guys u can use your pockets aswell

  • haha thats awesome! that means you can do it anyway =D

    assuming you're wearing pants that is.. haha

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All Comments (23)

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  • holy shit that scared the crap out of me when i tried it

  • OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG IT WORKS LOL HAHAHAHA NO LIE

  • WOW!!!!!!!!

  • IT WORKS IT WORKS!!! haha your so funny!!:)

  • i preffer pockets.. but doorway would do just fine

  • LOL I didn't think it'd work but it did ahaha!

  • it rlly works!

  • :D LoL, I love doin' this ^. Like your videos! <3 Australia. :)

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