Interesting findings on the internet

[tggzzz]

How do we know there aren't? We can't even do an accurate head count when our lives literally depend on it.

mnem
*toddles off to school widda chiddlers*

I'd rather have thought that, looking around any crowd, there are a lot of suspects for the rôle of "Alien Visitor".

Certainly there are far too many people who aren't living on planet Earth

[mnementh]

How do we know there aren't? We can't even do an accurate head count when our lives literally depend on it.

mnem
*toddles off to school widda chiddlers*

I'd rather have thought that, looking around any crowd, there are a lot of suspects for the rôle of "Alien Visitor".

Oh yeah... they'd totally stand out.

mnem
I prepared Explosive Colors today.

[mnementh]

No his problem is summed up in one sentence:

The theory of "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction" does not stack up in that example, neither does it in other forms of motion

Someone who says the latter clearly has not learned Newtonian mechanics because he has just denied the veracity of Newton's third law of motion.

While all scientific knowledge is consensual and conditional on "unless we learn better in the future" I can think of no law of physics more accepted, less conditional nor more supported by the weight of everyday evidence than Newton's third law. Sure, in the last century or so we've had to qualify it with "unless things are too massive(general relativity), too fast (special relativity) or two small (quantum mechanics)" but it is the most tested and proven law of physics at everyday masses and speeds.

Graham's literally arguing with something that has had universal scientific consensus since relatively shortly after Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica was published 336 years ago. There's no way to sugar coat that.

A much simpler analogy to your rather convoluted torque converter one is a garden hose.

When I was a small child I loved playing with the garden hose (I still do). I quickly learned that you could, instead of watering the garden as you'd told dad you would do, push things about with a jet of water (and get told off). A jet of water (a fluid) in no different to a jet of gas (also a fluid) aka wind. I also quickly learned that the jet of water would push the hose backward and that if there wasn't a force applied by hand to deal with that "equal and opposite reaction" the hose would shoot off on its own. The jet has to have something to push back against so that it can push things in front of it. So by about age 5 I had a solid empirical understanding of Newton's 3rd law, as did all the rest of us that played with garden hoses. I was about 12 or 13 before I was formally taught that phenomenon had a name: "Newton's third law of motion" and that it also happened with more rigid things like the floor pushing up to resist my weight.

Different models for different concepts. A more convoluted model was necessary for something as complex as "the nature of wind on a global scale", and I was looking for some analogy I knew he had some understanding of. Also, as I said, an imperfect model.

Agreed, Newtonian physics are settled science... but instead of putting a dunce cap on Graham, maybe we should try to figure out how it is that he doesn't understand, and try to help him understand.

Speaking of imperfect models... Just in my lifetime we have gone from being taught in school that:

The Universe is infinite.

to

The Universe is probably finite, but we have no idea how big it really is.

to

The Universe is finite, and we can count it.

to

The Universe is finite, and we counted it, but it just doesn't add up.

to

The Universe is finite, and we've counted it, and we've figured out where the missing matter is; it's in a magical voodoo substance we can't directly sense in any way, but we can conjecture what it is and we can indirectly observe it by looking for how it interacts with things we can directly sense.

Sortof.

mnem

[AVGresponding]

One person, I forget who, said that if interstellar travel was practical then we'd already know because earth would be a tourist attraction. Why? How rare is a planet that has a moon just the right size to just fit over the sun during a total solar eclipse?* So, if interstellar travel was practicable every total solar eclipse there would be hoards of aliens amoungst the crowds of humans watching the eclipse.

*At this point in time. A few millennia ago, the moon was close enough it would be bigger than the sun in an eclipse, and in a few millennia more, it will be far enough away to only provide annular eclipses.

[AVGresponding]

or two small (quantum mechanics)

Nice pun...

[BU508A]

Machining and Microwaves has a new video.

"3D Microwave Focussing Lenses EXPLAINED for non-specialists!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUcUKF9AdQM

[Specmaster]

When I was a small child I loved playing with the garden hose (I still do). I quickly learned that you could, instead of watering the garden as you'd told dad you would do, push things about with a jet of water (and get told off). A jet of water (a fluid) in no different to a jet of gas (also a fluid) aka wind. I also quickly learned that the jet of water would push the hose backward and that if there wasn't a force applied by hand to deal with that "equal and opposite reaction" the hose would shoot off on its own. The jet has to have something to push back against so that it can push things in front of it. So by about age 5 I had a solid empirical understanding of Newton's 3rd law, as did all the rest of us that played with garden hoses. I was about 12 or 13 before I was formally taught that phenomenon had a name: "Newton's third law of motion" and that it also happened with more rigid things like the floor pushing up to resist my weight.

The point I was trying to make was just as you describe above with "the floor pushing up to resist my weight", that is what I call an equal and opposite reaction, but if the floor was not strong enough to resist your weight, it would simply give way, and you would go through the floor and continue falling until you landed on something that was strong enough to push back and stop your fall.

So in that case initially there was not an equal and opposite reaction, hence you fell through the floor.

[Cerebus]

Machining and Microwaves has a new video.

"3D Microwave Focussing Lenses EXPLAINED for non-specialists!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUcUKF9AdQM

Hasn't he been burned at the stake for practising black magic yet?

[mnementh]

When I was a small child I loved playing with the garden hose (I still do). I quickly learned that you could, instead of watering the garden as you'd told dad you would do, push things about with a jet of water (and get told off). A jet of water (a fluid) in no different to a jet of gas (also a fluid) aka wind. I also quickly learned that the jet of water would push the hose backward and that if there wasn't a force applied by hand to deal with that "equal and opposite reaction" the hose would shoot off on its own. The jet has to have something to push back against so that it can push things in front of it. So by about age 5 I had a solid empirical understanding of Newton's 3rd law, as did all the rest of us that played with garden hoses. I was about 12 or 13 before I was formally taught that phenomenon had a name: "Newton's third law of motion" and that it also happened with more rigid things like the floor pushing up to resist my weight.

The point I was trying to make was just as you describe above with "the floor pushing up to resist my weight", that is what I call an equal and opposite reaction, but if the floor was not strong enough to resist your weight, it would simply give way, and you would go through the floor and continue falling until you landed on something that was strong enough to push back and stop your fall.

So in that case initially there was not an equal and opposite reaction, hence you fell through the floor.

mnem

[mnementh]

Machining and Microwaves has a new video.

"3D Microwave Focussing Lenses EXPLAINED for non-specialists!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUcUKF9AdQM

Hasn't he been burned at the stake for practising black magic yet?

Not yet... he has very good aim.

mnem

[BU508A]

For those who haven't seen or heard it:
The Final Countdown from Europe, played by the Floppotron. It is version 3.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-WakfBNHD0

[Specmaster]

For those who haven't seen or heard it:
The Final Countdown from Europe, played by the Floppotron. It is version 3.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-WakfBNHD0

Thanks for sharing, I think that must have taken up a hell of a lot of time building, programming and setting it all up, to say nothing about the sheer power he must have used to power everything.

[mnementh]

According to the Kill-a-Watt, approx 0.5kW peak running balls to the walls.

mnem
*toddles off to nuke a trike*

[Specmaster]

According to the Kill-a-Watt, approx 0.5kW peak running balls to the walls.

mnem
*toddles off to nuke a trike*

Also a metric ton of 12v and 5v connections plus data lines.

[Specmaster]

Some of you, especially the UK members might remember the incident where a Range Rover was being driven along Western Ave (A40) at high speed and crashed taking out some Tesla High Speed Chargers and coming to rest on top of Park Royal underground station and killing a woman in the process, well this footage has been released after the driver appeared in court. It is claimed he was doing 110mph at the time and looking at this footage I can believe it.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/d ... d=msedgntp

[BU508A]

5D chess, available on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1349 ... me_Travel/

The reviews of this game are great!

[mnementh]

Fuck, I can't even remember which tab has where I want to go in its history; I'd be that guy who always winds up in the corner looking at his feet... well, until somebody frags me.

mnem
Revisionist chess...? Sounds like something they'd do in that special Hell...

[BU508A]

Someone has built a Tesla coil circuit with only three components:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHsG_dBZyCM

[mnementh]

https://planetcalc.com/8047/

Tripped over this last night; a online substitution cipher decoder that will attempt to (and did successfully for me) determine the substitution key needed for the decode.

mnem
Qa-pl'a!

[BU508A]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmavUlb8eAQ

One user wrote below in the comments:
"This video has reinforced my belief, as both a mechanical and AI/ML engineer that has built and flown hardware in space, that RF engineers are dark wizards in possession of eldritch magic."

[tautech]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmavUlb8eAQ

One user wrote below in the comments:
"This video has reinforced my belief, as both a mechanical and AI/ML engineer that has built and flown hardware in space, that RF engineers are dark wizards in possession of eldritch magic."

And who doesn't know that after dipping ones toes into RF ? That you learn real quick !

[mnementh]

Yeah, RF burns are the worst.

mnem
another mnemory... my buddy Brian and I were futzing around on Children's Band (hey - we WERE kids then) trying to reach his dad doing a long haul in his truck upstate, and I was messing around with the cover off of my Yaesu FT-101EX, trying to trim the multiband antenna that came with the rig (imagine your favorite "two buddies drinking story", complete with one of them nose buried in an instruction pamphlet) and he noticed the glowing 6JS finals...

"Hey... whadda these do..."
*I look up just in time to see him pointing towards one shiny exposed anode cap*
"DON'T TOUCH TH..."
*ZZZZZZZZAAAAAAPPPPP!!!*
"AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!"

[vk6zgo]

Yeah, RF burns are the worst.

mnem
another mnemory... my buddy Brian and I were futzing around on Children's Band (hey - we WERE kids then) trying to reach his dad doing a long haul in his truck upstate, and I was messing around with the cover off of my Yaesu FT-101EX, trying to trim the multiband antenna that came with the rig (imagine your favorite "two buddies drinking story", complete with one of them nose buried in an instruction pamphlet) and he noticed the glowing 6JS finals...

"Hey... whadda these do..."
*I look up just in time to see him pointing towards one shiny exposed anode cap*
"DON'T TOUCH TH..."
*ZZZZZZZZAAAAAAPPPPP!!!*
"AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!"

A friend of mine, many years ago, had "a nice little earner" fixing tube type audio amplifiers (which were the most common types at that time).
He wasn't really very knowledgeable about such things at the time, but pretty much "muddled through" with a few simple tricks, one of which, was with older amps, using WW2 surplus (or earlier) tubes that had the grid connection on a top cap, to touch the grid with his finger, injecting a bit of ambient 50Hz hum, which could be heard in the speaker if that stage & later ones were OK, making it relatively simple to isolate the faulty stage.

One such amp, a rather neat unit, obviously "homebrew", but otherwise of unknown provenance, had a couple of 807's in push pull as output tubes.
Along came our hero, touching top caps following his usual fault tracing method.
He came to the 807s, & zappp!.
It seems that the tubes were cheaply available ex surplus, but not so, the insulated anode connectors, so the constructor "made do" with a readily available "grid clip"------after all, what could go wrong?

[vk6zgo]

Around 6WF/6WN, which, apart from 55 kW on 720Khz & 10kW on 810kHz, in the old days also included some highish power HF broadcast transmitters plus some HF comms stuff, you could get a "bit of a tickle"(& sometimes considerably more), from quite a few bits of random metal around the place (you could get a "mini-zap" from the aluminium edging on the table in the "cuppa" area in one building).

I remember one warm spring afternoon, being dispatched to clean up the inside of the three tuning huts of the "Triple Tuned Alexanderson" antenna, which was the standby antenna for 6WF.
Not the worst job in the world, entailing a nice stroll in the open air, a bit a sweeping, & tidying--what wasn't to like?

Anyhow, I opened all three huts, swept them out, then noticed that the coils & capacitors in the LC tuning units were a bit tarnished.
Determined to make a really good job of this, plus stay out of the Boss's sight for a while, I grabbed a damp cloth & some cleaning materials.
To my woe, as soon as I touched the inductor, I received a nice RF burn.

In reaction to this, I indignantly shouted "Golly, Gosh, Gee Whiz!!!" or something of that nature.
How could I get a burn off an inactivated antenna??
A few seconds thought, gave the answer-----tuned antenna, active antenna a few 100yards away, DUHHH!

The burn stopped hurting a couple of days later, although it still looked funny for a couple of weeks, but the lesson lasted a lifetime.

[mnementh]

Yeah, that's why I say "RF burns are the worst"! They burn life a mofo at first, so much worse than you would ever imagine from what you can see, then just when you can't bear it, the burning turns into itching, but it's like inside and there's no way to even get close to it...

*cringes at just the memory of it*

The closest thing I can relate is having a itch inside a cast.

mnem
I hate you now for reminding me. . .