Post created by: Amanda
In our every day lives, we don’t even notice the physics that is constantly going into play to help us live and function. One of the major physical forces in our world is gravity. In our physics lecture, we have discussed how the force of gravity is equal to -9.8m/s^2, and have looked at some different examples of its effects. And while we all know that it is what keeps us from floating away and allows us to fall whenever we trip, a lesser known activity gravity aids with is writing, more specifically writing with pens.
Anything you write with a pen is the result of gravity. The force of gravity pushes the ink inside the pen downward onto the tip, where it lands on a small ball (hence the name: “ball point pen”) that rotates as you move the pen along a piece of paper. As the ball spins, the side that was covered ink gets turned onto the paper, and transfers the ink onto the paper to form the letters and words that make up our everyday notes, homework, and lists.
Now that you understand the basics about pens, I want to pose a question: what if there was no gravity? The answer is pretty simple: pens wouldn’t work… or could they? The idea of making a pen that could work without gravity seemed impossible, until a man named Paul Fisher came along.
In a recent article I read, called Paul Fisher Space Pens, Fisher created a pen that was “able to write underwater, over grease, at any angle, upside down, three times longer than the average pen, in extreme temperatures (ranging from -30°F to +250°F), and in zero gravity.” People were a bit skeptical at first, but after NASA tested the pen for a year and a half, Fisher was found to be true to his word, and since then the anti-gravity pen has been used on every manned space mission.
To make the it work, Fisher modified the pen so that “the cartridge is instead pressurized with nitrogen at 35 pounds per square inch. This pressure pushes the ink toward the tungsten carbide ball at the pen's tip,” (Scientific American). It was this high pressure cartridge that allows the ink to move down the pen in the absence of gravity. The millions of dollars that has been invested into the creation of this anti-gravity pen shows just how important gravity is to our everyday life, and how even simple functions can’t live without it.
Sources:
Curtin, C. (2006, December 20). Fact or Fiction?: NASA Spent Millions to Develop a Pen that Would Write in Space, whereas the Soviet Cosmonauts Used a Pencil. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-nasa-spen/
(n.d.). About Us: Paul Fisher Space Pens. Retrieved from https://www.spacepen.com/about-us.aspx
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