I was suddenly reminded of this one...
One night, many years ago Young Sparkie and her friends enjoyed a late night socialising, and we watched a strange documentary on the subject of gyroscopes. It was on very late, but we're pretty sure we got all of the details correctly. The gist was, that if you got a big enough gyroscope to spin fast enough, you could alter the way that the Earth tilted on it's axis. Moving the UK closer to the equator thus giving us a climate similar to, oooh say Portugal?

Now we forgot it for a while, until one of our number, let's call him Jack (It's not his name, but he has a responsible job) spotted a gyroscope toy kit at a car boot sale "Ah Ha! just the ticket!" he thought "No more tedious foreign travel for me!" paid the £1.50 asking price and toddled happily away with it under one arm. That night we all sat at *Sarah and Andy's place looking at the gyroscope and wondering..
Just then a train rattled past along the track at the back of the house...And the space near the ceiling filled with lightbulbs of inspiration, as the science heroes caught their muse and decided that with hammer and nails and some fishing line, they could achieve their dreams of weather improvements..

Fishing line was found, and wound around and around the gyroscope until we were really fed up with it. Then hammers and nails were dug out of cupboards, and we headed up the embankment at the back of the house. Many hands made light work of firmly attaching small brackets of angle iron to the fenceposts and then fishing line to one side, and the gyroscope to the other. It was a Sunday night, and there weren't many trains (thank goodness!) Soon all was in place for the maiden attempt...

We decided to observe from a place of safety (the back kitchen) and waited..

The intercity 125 zipped past noisily, and in the ensuing racket in the darkness, we couldn't actually see what happened, but as Jack pointed out "I don't think it's worked, it's no warmer, is it?" Soo.. we climbed back up the embankment, and found both the gyroscope, and the fishing line where they were, only with a big snap in the line, so we detached it all and returned to the drawing board....Two further attempts with doubled, and quadrupled fishing line proved similarly flawed, so that was that, or so we thought..

Andy sprang to his feet, and grabbed the doubled over fishing line, his full racing motorbike leathers and his crash helmet, and ran down to the shed, his face a mask of concentration.

After we found coats and shoes, and scampered off after him, we arrived at the shed just in time to see him clad in his leathers, holding the now tightly wound gyroscope in a vice, and attaching the other end of the fishing line to the electric drill he had in his other hand. Before we could stop him, he fired up the drill....

We dropped to the ground, and looking up, I could see Andy and a huge tangle of fishing line, and I could hear pinging and glass breaking, as his final attempt at climate improvement disintegrated, the bits tinkling through the shed windows, and cracking assorted jars and wine bottles as they flew...

"It's still no warmer though, is it?" Said Jack...


*Not their names either, but they're teachers, sciencers etc.
(Beer Elf Thought this was like a campfire, anyhow, on, Tue 25 Aug 2009, 21:35, 2 replies)

Pedantic scientific bit
If you could change the Earth's tilt, you move the tropics and polar regions, but the Equator stays where it is.

To actually move the Equator, you'd need to get the Earth to spin round a completely different axis.

Good luck though.
(Vice Admiral Sir Charles Cockbrush KCB MBE DSO, who is finding it increasingly difficult to log into b3ta.com wants to duck your aunt and kick your puppy, Wed 26 Aug 2009, 10:56, closed)

Come to think of it
The Earth's angle of tilt does vary with time anyway - there are monuments in South Korea marking the Tropic of Cancer which are no longer actually on the Tropic of Cancer.
(Vice Admiral Sir Charles Cockbrush KCB MBE DSO, who is finding it increasingly difficult to log into b3ta.com wants to duck your aunt and kick your puppy, Wed 26 Aug 2009, 10:58, closed)