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- Wednesday, August 19, 2009
very cool toy
Reviewed By:
jon (arlington, washington)
This is a great thing to see it looks so neat to see the floating planets.It looks so cool.
- Thursday, March 04, 2010
Room for Improvement.
Reviewed By:
Wilfred (El Cajon, CA)
At first glance, the Galileo Gravitator did look impressive. Unfortunately, on closer inspection I found that the planets' rotations were clockwise; which would have been wrong, save that the (very poor quality) planetary surface illustrations - especially with regards to Jupiter - indicate that the planets polar orientation was upside-down - at least for those customers of Edmund Scientific residing in the Earth's Northern Hemisphere; i.e., Jupiter's Great Red Spot was depicted as being located above Jupiter's equator, whereas all photos and illustrations I've ever seen show it being in Jupiter's southern hemisphere. However, since Jupiter's axial rotation as placed withn the Galileo Gravitator was clockwise, locating the Great Red Spot "above" Jupiter's equator is technically correct - and I suppose to those of Edmund Scientific's customers in Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa the Galileo Gravitator's planetary rotation might seem spot-on.
All-in-all, the planets' surface illustrations were quite disappointing. I wonder if - especially since the public-domain high-resolution images are so readily available - with a bit more effort the manufacturer could have achieved significant improvements both in the aesthetic and the technical accuracy in depicting planetary surface features.
One glaring example of "cutting corners" was that the Moon included with the Galileo Gravitator was made by joining two identically illustrated hemispheres, rotated out of phase by approximately a quarter-turn relative to each other in an attempt to make the use of this technique a bit less obvious. Yet I wonder: would it have cost too much more to have the Moon's surface illustrated in more detail and with more accuracy?
On the other hand, as a demonstration of magnetic "levitation" the Galileo Gravitator earns high marks. And if the Gravitator could be made with fewer than the four columns that support the top magnet-assem
- Thursday, February 05, 2009
Very Cool Desktop Device
Reviewed By:
David (Buffalo, New York)
Contrary to the other review, this is a very cool gadget. Easy to use, you turn it on, take one of the included Globes, carefully place it between the powerful magnets and let go. The Globe floats and slowly spins like magic. Of course its not magic its science and very cool science at that. Highly recommended.
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