Defying Gravity

[Stella Wright]

Stella didn't have much in the way of scientific equipment with her at school, so any experimentation she did would necessarily be qualitative rather than quantitative. However, she wasn't allowed to do magic at home, and Dad was usually too busy tospend much time doing simple spells for her to attempt science on. So trying to experiment at school was still the best option. She had wondered since they'd learned it last year about the Levitation spell and whether it really violated what muggle scientists knew about gravity. She wondered about the relations of a lot of different spells to the laws of physics, but this was one she thought she might be able to test and actually get some meaningful results, though she doubted she'd reach anything approaching a definitive answer today.

Stella had made herself a simple force-meter out of cardboard, rubber bands and paperclips*, and calibrated it using the scales in the potions classroom. Now she set it out on a desk in an unused classroom where she hopefully wouldn't be disturbed, along with her wand, her science notebook and an assortment of random objects she'd brought to test. She put a rubber band around the first of these, one of her textbooks. She used her force-meter to pick it up, and made a note of the weight. Then she cast wingardium leviosa on the book, set it floating in mid-air in front of her, and measured it again. The weight she measured was definitely less. Interesting. It seemed unlikely that the book had less mass (how could she test that? hmmm), but its resistance to gravity was lessened by the spell.


*author's note: this is a real thing you can do; instructions here

 

[Veronica Willows]

Veronica was taking a break from all her books and parchment for a while, and instead had decided to set out on a walk to collect some data for an upcoming project she was thinking of starting. It was something she'd been considering for years, ever since she had first arrived at Hogwarts and met other first years who got lost within the castle walls. Phoebe had also had vaguely similar ideas that she'd mentioned, which had inspired Veronica even more and now she finally felt ready to begin mapping out the castle for her invention. Today she was working on the second floor, and was busy noting down all the rooms and features along the corridors. Her scribblings didn't look much like a map at this point, but that was alright - the invention wouldn't end up looking much like a map either if it remained the same as the idea she was currently picturing in her head.

Coming up to what she assumed was another abandoned classroom, Veronica put pen to paper as she poked her head around the door to check that was indeed the case - and stopped short at seeing someone levitating a book into the air. Not just levitating it, but... measuring it? And not just someone, but Stella! Veronica felt a smile widen across her face - she was too curious to pass by and pretend she'd never seen anything, so it was reassuring to know that she already knew the person she was about to interrupt. Knocking her hand against the doorframe in an attempt not to frighten the younger girl out of her senses, Veronica called, "Hi, Stella!" Smiling, she came over to get a closer look at just what it was exactly the other girl was doing. "Is that a... oh, I forgot the name. But you're measuring levitation weights?" she asked uncertainly as she placed her own things down on the table as well. She thought she'd read about these types of measuring instruments once, but she was very aware that she could be wrong. It had been many years and many, many books ago.

 

[Stella Wright]

Stella looked up abruptly as someone said her name, then smiled happily when she realised it was Veronica. Who better to be interrupted by when doing science? Stella hadn't spent as much time with the older girl as she would have liked, but she knew that they shared an interest in science in general and astronomy in particular. And science was always more fun with interested company. Veronica liked to invent things, she remembered; maybe she could help with her paucity of scientific equipment . . . maybe even introduce her to some things she hadn't known about.

"Veronica! Hi! It's a force-meter, and yes, I'm . . . trying to figure out how the Levitation spell works." Veronica had clearly already realised some of what she was doing, so Stella skipped straight to the most interesting part: the results. "The book definitely has less weight under the spell - though not no weight at all, as I thought might have happened. I'm thinking that indicates that the spell lessens the force of gravity on the object, but I'm not sure how to distinguish that from the other possibility, decreasing the mass . . . And I can't figure out yet how either would make it float, in any case. Any ideas?"