xkcd

nilkemorya

The force balance method is probably the best way to approach the problem. So use the force bob.

nilkemorya

I'd suggest doing an angular momentum calculation to find the maximum amount of effect that 2.2 tons impacting the moon could have. Lets see. Angular momentum of the moon. Overall though, since the moon has 10 quintillion times more mass than the object impacting it, I wouldn't worry much. Were you ...

nilkemorya

This guy pretty much sums up the nitrogen vs. air debate for tires at least: http://ahotcupofjoe.wordpress.com/2008/ ... es-a-scam/

nilkemorya

You also need to take into account how close the ship would be orbiting. Perhaps by "orbit" he means a near-planet orbit like the shuttle is in, but it would be just fine in a long period orbit.

nilkemorya

Certainly some poisonous creatures aren't immune to their own poisons, for example, certain types of salamanders can excrete poisons through their skin(as so many amphibians can) but those same poisons administered orally to the salamander would kill them.

nilkemorya

If you've got a ship with a 1.5 TW constant power drive system, would the ship have a constant acceleration? First off, according to the people on the ship, and then according to a distant observer. Assume non-relativistic speeds, an unchanging ship mass, and in a vacuum. I keep getting that the per...

nilkemorya

I'm not 100% sure on this, but since the pressure differential that your eye is used to is on the order of 21 mmHg, and exposing it to vacuum would have the pressure differential at more like 781 mmHg, I'm guessing that this is more than sufficient pressure to rupture your eye. It would be quite unp...

nilkemorya

Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man. Personally I think quantum mechanics does make some kind of sense when you look at the relational interpretation of QM. Yes, but if there is no physical realism, the spin of a particle isn't ever an objective fact of nature, it is taken as...

nilkemorya

I'd also recommend starting with a simple 2D system, which could then be generalized to a 3D system if you didn't use any cheating type tricks(ie, not pure laws of physics stuff) to calculate your collisions. I had a heck of a time just making a 2D 2 ball gravitational simulator program that didn't ...

nilkemorya

The one bit here that I'm not sure about is whether current theory is stating that measuring the entangled property of one object actually FORCES the change to the other, or simply means that we know the other is the required value. If it's the second, then it's perfectly within the bounds of relat...

nilkemorya

I've analyzed some movies in depth, but I was recently watching TNGTOS The Naked Now. I'm not sure what relationship they thought antimatter had with time, besides going forward through it, but that your engines imploding would be a good thing was quite funny.

nilkemorya

This is a bit of a self plug, but this website is trying to make movie/book/video game science a little better: http://www.scienceadviser.net

nilkemorya

With any luck though, someone here has the ability to email Randall directly, and he can answer that question. Or at least be aware he'd being stolen from. Which was my purpose.

I did also send emails to the store and general stuff links provided on the comic page.

nilkemorya

To tell you the truth, being moved to general forum would be mission accomplished, since mostly I wanted to make sure that moderators and the community were aware that Randall is being stolen from. I will not take offense at being moved.

nilkemorya

I found this site today: http://www.cafepress.com/baconation.304790630
Do they have permission to reprint and sell that? Anybody?

nilkemorya

I once built a coil gun that utilized wall AC to fire small aluminium rings at the ceiling hard enough to dent it(10 foot ceiling). I admit that I never sat down and did the math beyond how many turns I would need to not fry my coil(after I fried the first one). I can try and field questions if you ...

nilkemorya

So, they simply defined freewill as the ability of a particle to behave in a certain way without being effected by all the things that have happened to it before. I'm pretty sure they picked the wording "free will" because it is sexy and will draw attention. Further, from reading the paper...

nilkemorya

I think the best one I ever saw was when some low level physics students I was helping(no calc physics) came up with a fish that was traveling at 36000 miles per hour, and they didn't see the problem with it. That's one fast fish!

nilkemorya

Thanks for all the help! Weirdly, I found the solution in a very unlikely place: http://www.mathsisfun.com/combinatorics ... lator.html

Handy thing that. Hooray for grade school!

nilkemorya

I had thought so at first as well, but the choose function doesn't take into account putting the bead back into the bag. It will always return 1 for my crazy scenario. To give my math background, I've completed a B.S. in physics, so I'm pretty solid on math...except for this.

nilkemorya

Okay, here's what I've got. You have a bag with N marbles in it, each of a unique color. You pull one out, note down the color, and then put it back in the bag. Do this N times. If order does not matter(ie RRB is the same as BRR), how many different color combinations are there? I feel like this sho...

nilkemorya

Not to mention the fact that rare earth magnets are very brittle. The explosion which can occur when two smash together may be impressive, but your eyes won't appreciate it much!

nilkemorya

Don't call me Shirley! But other than that, as far as I know photons have to undergo an interaction to do anything other than travel in a strait line at C. Now, interacting photons have average speeds much less that C all the time. Without interactions though, a happy photon shouldn't just randomly ...

nilkemorya

Well, first off the star would wiggle about, also you would probably have partial to total occlusions as the dyson sphere got between your primary and your planet. I'm pretty sure that your orbit would be odd, so you might get some effects do to close approaches to the primary. Yup, that's all I can...

nilkemorya

I would really like to see a helicopter tear itself apart on a turntable with the blades just sitting there...I kind of imagine them falling strait down with a bit of a thunk noise! BRILLIANT!

nilkemorya

Hmmm...tricky. I mean global climatology of that type is really difficult to predict. For example, maybe blocking 10% of the light ends up increasing the total ice covered surface of the world by 5% initially, but this increases the earths albedo which then causes light to reflect further cooling th...

nilkemorya

What they thought would happen would be that the particles would just blaze through without being deflected at all. Or at least very little. What they found, of course, was that most of the particles blazed on through, but some were deflected or reflected back. This was quite surprising to them. Rut...

nilkemorya

Interestingly, a lot of the lack of math and such seems to actually come from the fact that it's edited together to be more interesting to the largest group of people possible. You should listen to the Adam Savage interview on the Skeptics Guide to the Universe (http://www.theskepticsguide.org/) it ...

nilkemorya

Couldn't you just substitute in r(t) = V(t)*t. Then use separation of variables to solve it, or did I go and oversimplify it? Man, I need to practice my calculus.

nilkemorya

Hokay, first off, I'm pretty sure that a photon calmly wending it's way through space time can't spontaneously become particles, they have to react with something for pair creation. Photons are pretty content to go do their own thing. Also, even if they could just sort of spontaneously become a part...

nilkemorya

If when you see ket in a sentence, you don't assume it's an acronym, or short for something...

nilkemorya

...If, when you first heard the spherical chicken joke, thought to yourself: That's not that unreasonable an assumption, I'm sure you could get some valid data out of it.

nilkemorya

Hokay, so I'm gonna take a crack at this, but I'm not entirely sure what you're asking. First off, yeah, some of the atoms in there become partially ionized, but the the relative number compared to the total number of atoms in there should be vanishingly small, it's just that electromagnetism is ver...

nilkemorya

You could basically get as high as you wanted, it's just that the amount of energy required to do this with a heat pump is probably more than you would use if you just heated an element inside of the stove in the first place. If it's just for purposes of awesome though, as long as your compressor ca...

nilkemorya

If you find the color pleasant, use them to light your house. How sweet would that be. LED lit house! And for only 30 bucks plus the cost of power supplies and wiring!

nilkemorya

Okay, so here's the really important thing to remember, unless you are thinking of near planet engagements, space is REALLY REALLY BIG. Consider, if you've got two ships separated by the distance from mars to earth at the shortest, you're last telemetry data will be 192 seconds old when you fire, it...

nilkemorya

That's one of the good signs that something is a pseudoscience instead of a science, reliance on testimonials instead of scientific results. Also in those categories are: Resistance to traditional scientific methods like peer review, cherry picking results, and many more!

nilkemorya

I think that a directed long range microwave would be pretty cool(read super dangerous as well). I mean, you could cook food across the room from the microwave, just make sure it's well shielded for you, and that no one would be able to walk through that space!

nilkemorya

Arg...you switched dimensionality there MotorToad! Also, he was right. The two newtons which was being read on the scale was equal to the two newtons less that a strain gauge would read as the decrease on the weight of the rope. I'd say you got it dead on there Govalant. Good show and all that. You'...

nilkemorya

Nuclear Ion propulsion. That's a nifty one.

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