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From: phillips@cisden.UUCP (Tom Phillips)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: Electric Brae
Message-ID: <504@cisden.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 11-Feb-86 15:29:09 EST
Article-I.D.: cisden.504
Posted: Tue Feb 11 15:29:09 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Feb-86 05:45:55 EST
References: <764@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Reply-To: phillips@cisden.UUCP (Tom Phillips)
Followup-To: net.physics
Distribution: net
Organization: ConTel Information Systems, Denver
Lines: 25

In article <764@brl-smoke.ARPA> stratton@brl-smoke.ARPA(Sue Stratton) writes:
>   "My cousins took me to see this neat thing called the 'Electric Brae'.
>    Have you ever heard of it?  A brae is a hill, and this one has a 
>    peculiar property: it defies gravity!  We got over the crest of the
>    hill, and cousin Tom put the car in neutral; now, it should have 
>    rolled down the hill, right?  But no--the car coasted to a stop and
>    then started backing up the hill!  And my cousin's wife said if you're
>    riding a bike down the hill, you have to pedal; if you're on horseback
>    or even on foot, you have to exert extra effort; and if you pour water 
>    on the road it runs up the hill! [Not all the way...but significantly!]
>    They said scientists from many places have come to study it, and no one
>    knows exactly how it works.  Anyway, I was duly impressed."

There's a place in central Florida (near Lakeland) called Spook Hill where
you have a similar effect.  However if you take a plumb line you find out
that it is your eyes and not the car (or water or bike or whatever) that is
confused about which way is downhill.
But then, I've never been to Scotland.
-- 

						Tommy Phillips
From the banks of the great grey-green greasy Limpopo River,
all set about with fever-trees.

				cisden!phillips