Vagueness and the Aftermath - A sporadic diary

[RED-DOG]

Red,

Is it wagon or waggon?

Geo

They seem to be interchangeable Geo, so much so that I find myself using either, or sometimes both in the same article.

If you want to get technical, this is what Online Encyclopedia has to say about it.

http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/VIR_WAT/WAGON_or_WAGGON.html

[Geo the Sarge]

Red,

Is it wagon or waggon?

Geo

They seem to be interchangeable Geo, so much so that I find myself using either, or sometimes both in the same article.

If you want to get technical, this is what Online Encyclopedia has to say about it.

http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/VIR_WAT/WAGON_or_WAGGON.html

Thanks Tom,

I always thought it was Waggon but looking through an internet site (Ingham and Fallon) who sell "genuine Gypsy crafts" and they use both spellings.

Geo

[RED-DOG]

So you know when an electrical charge arcs across a gap on it's way to earth, it always takes the path of least resistance, right? That means that when it jumps through the air, it jumps where the gap is the narrowest. Still with me?

Answer me this then. How does it know where the gap is narrowest until after it's jumped? it's not as if it can see or anything. It doesn't say to itself... "I can't make it to that girder, but I can easily make it to that window cleaners arm.... "

You never see it jump and, with a crackly cry of "Bugger" fall short half way.

How does it know? 

[AndrewT]

So you know when an electrical charge arcs across a gap on it's way to earth, it always takes the path of least resistance, right? That means that when it jumps through the air, it jumps where the gap is the narrowest. Still with me?

Answer me this then. How does it know where the gap is narrowest until after it's jumped? it's not as if it can see or anything. It doesn't say to itself... "I can't make it to that girder, but I can easily make it to that window cleaners arm.... "

You never see it jump and, with a crackly cry of "Bugger" fall short half way.

How does it know? 

The bit of lightning that you see is the second bit, the return stroke, which only happens after that path of least resistance has been established.

Negative bits come down from the cloud, positive bits come up from tall things on the ground - they attract each other and when they meet BANG!

[RED-DOG]

Oh.

[RED-DOG]

Meh

[Colchester Kev]

Oh.

Meh

Boldie has hacked Toms account !

[RED-DOG]

Andrew made my difficult and exciting question seem both simple and boring with his fancy shmancy (and very suspect) answer.

[RED-DOG]

Going back to the speed of light debate for a moment, I found the article below very enlightening.

Also, it proves that Kinboshi is hopeless. (It doesn't really, I just like saying it)


There's a popular misconception that the speed of light is some sort of speed limit, so when you travel in space you can get almost up to the speed of light and then you just can't go any faster, and then you have to wait four years before you get to Alpha Centuri which is 4 light years  away. This is not true. You can get to Alpha Centuri a lot quicker than that, provided you don't mind much what other people think. The idea that the speed of light is a speed limit is a misconception a bit like thinking that people who live in Australia  are upside-down.

Before I try to explain Relativity and what really happens when you travel very fast, let's look at that idea about Australian people being upside-down. Well, are they upside-down? If you're in the UK, then in a literal sense, yes, Australians are upside-down. However, from an Australian perspective, they are not upside-down at all, and kangaroos leap UP in the air and then come DOWN again, etc. So, the moral of the story is: It depends on from whose perspective.

The situation with the strangeness about the speed of light is another thing where it depends on from whose perspective we are considering. If you are standing on Earth watching the passing spaceships as they fly across the sky, you notice that none of them seem to be travelling faster than light, and they always take years to get from one star system to another, according to how many light-years it is. It would be easy to imagine that the people aboard those spaceships get very bored waiting to get to their destinations. However, if you get on a flight to a distant star system, the journey time is nothing like as long as was expected. You can get from Earth to Alpha Centuri in a few hours! How can that be?!

The fact is that when you travel very fast in space you also travel in time. Going from Earth to Alpha Centuri, your watch says it's only taken a few hours, but when you arrive it's four years in the future. This fact makes it very convincing for people on the ground to think you've taken four years to get there.

After a couple of weeks' sightseeing tour of Alpha Centuri you get on the flight back to Earth. This also only takes a few hours from your own perspective, but when you arrive on Earth it's now eight years and two weeks since you set off. People you knew are now eight years older than when you saw them two weeks ago, whereas you're only two weeks older. They've experienced eight years of life on Earth, whereas you've experienced two weeks of Alpha Centuri and a few hours' flight time.

Honestly I am not making this up! It's not sci-fi, and this really is the way space and time work, according to Albert Einstein!

Here's another example: Suppose you like to drive very fast, but the cops don't want you to go faster than the speed limit of the speed of light. You've got a very fast car and you put your foot down and watch the speedometer go higher and higher. Strange as it may seem, the scenery is going past at a rate that would mean you must be travelling faster than light, as you're covering that much ground in that short a time. Mile posts are going past at a million every second. From your own perspective, you are travelling much faster than light. There's a police speed-trap ahead, so should you worry? No, because from the cops' perspective, you are only travelling at 0.95 times the speed of light or some such figure. They can clock you with a roadside radar gun and by scientific measurement you're in the clear.

The Andromeda Galaxy is two million light years away. So when you look at it through a telescope, you're seeing the history of the Andromeda Galaxy, as it was two million years ago. The light from it takes two million years to get to Earth, so, that's what you'd expect. You've got light from the Andromeda Galaxy coming into your telescope, and you know where it's come from and when it set off, so what would happen if you could ask the light how long it took to cover the distance? "Well, light, how long did it take you to get here?". Light responds "It took no time at all. I travel infinitely fast". It's not lying, you know. From light's own perspective, it really does travel infinitely fast, and covers any distance in an infinitesimal instant. However, from a ground-based perspective, light has to be seen to travel at the speed of light. That's the way it works.

One of the reasons why the laws of physics about Relativity and the speed of light seem so odd and tricky to explain, is that the speed of light is so fast that it's outside everyday experience. So, it's usual in these thought-experiments to have a hypothetical universe where the speed of light is 10MPH, or some similar speed which would fit with experience. In the world of 10MPH speed of light, you could ride a bicycle and see for yourself the way relativity distorts time and space. What you observe is very different from normal, and quite different from the misconception world of a speed limit speed of light. As you start peddling the bicycle, it's harder than expected, but you don't seem speed-limited at all. When you get up to 7MPH (which in that hypothetical universe is 0.7 times the speed of light), you think you are travelling at 10MPH, the speed of light. Lamp posts in the street are going past at 10MPH for sure. Peddling harder to put on a bit more speed, things are going past even faster, and when you look at people in the street they are moving as if they are on video in fast-forward mode! You wave at them and shout "Hey, look! I'm travelling faster than light!", but what they see is someone going past on a bicycle doing about nine and a half MPH waving very slowly and shouting in a tape-recorder-slowed-down voice "H   e   y   ,   l   o   o   k   !     I   '   m     t   r   a   v   e   l   l   i   n   g     f   a   s   t   e   r     t   h   a   n     l   i   g   h   t !". The other thing is, people look at each other and say in their chipmunk-sped-up voices that the reason you're having to pedal so hard to go at almost 10MPH is because you have become very heavy! Yet, from your own perspective, you don't feel particularly heavy at all! The reason for the difference in perception of mass is so the maths add up ok. You have to have the momentum, so therefore the different perceived speeds have different perceived masses associated with them. Anyway, having travelled at what you feel is 20MPH or 30MPH on a bicycle, you might assume that you can use this ability to get to meetings on time and not be late, even if the meeting places are so-many miles away. However, if you try this, you'll still be late, because when you travel fast, you also travel forward into the future. So, you can speed around for fun and to see the sights, but you can't use the ability to avoid being late for meetings!Banana

Don't blame me for space and time being bent like a banana! It's just the way it is!

[RED-DOG]

You know when something costs £9.99, do we really see it as being significantly cheaper than we would if it cost £10?

I'd like to think that I automatically see £9.99 as a tenner but I'm not sure I do.


Someone once told me that the £9.99 is so that the shop assistant will have to open the till to get the change rather than saying to the customer "Thanks, have a nice day" while pocketing the Ayrton.

 

[RED-DOG]

Dum de dum....

Went to bed at 3ish, got up again at 6ish. Bloody knackered, but can't sleep.

Dum de dum....

[Ironside]

Dum de dum....

Went to bed at 3ish, got up again at 6ish. Bloody knackered, but can't sleep.

Dum de dum....

no wonder you cant sleep if you keep filling you head full of rubbish

let those with nothing to do worry about breaking the speed limit

[RED-DOG]

And so, (Tank says the word "and" should never be capitalised) on to movie myths & mistakes.


Crawling Through Ventilation Shafts

In many a good action thriller movie we are taught some fundamental universally accepted facts about ventilation shafts, ducts, and their use for the purposes of crawling along, to escape or to gain access to another part of a building. Here's a brief summary about ventilation systems in movies:

* All ventilation shafts and ducts are accessible by means of a single flat metal grille which is held on the wall using four standard screws, all of the type with a slot, one at each corner. These are always loose and easy to undo, after which the grille plate can be removed and placed alongside the gap.

* All ventilation systems have ducts which are the right size for people to crawl along. There are no funny curvy bits, sheer drops, fan blades, rat grids, etc.

* Although it's a ventilation system, the air flow system will not be turned on while you are using the tunnels as a means of getting from place to place. Air flow, wind, noise, or any kind of suggestion that you're inside the pipes of a vacuum cleaner, will not be a worry, and you'll easily be able to continue with the script (though speaking quietly so your enemies can't hear you talking).

* All ventilation systems lead somewhere, usually somewhere useful. Fortunately, even though you had to undo the four easy-to-open screws on the duct by which you entered the ventilation system, the grille on your exit route will almost certainly have had the screws removed in advance and will come off easily so you won't have the problem of being on the wrong side to undo the screws.

* All ventilation shafts are well lit. No-one's quite sure why, but it may be similar to the way space helmets in many science fiction movies are lit up on the INSIDE!

* All ventilation shafts are CLEAN. Despite the fact that your computer power supply fan has dust stuck to it even after owning it a few months, these human-sized ventilation systems are spotlessly clean.

[Ironside]

And so, (Tank says the word "and" should never be capitalised) on to movie myths & mistakes.


Crawling Through Ventilation Shafts

In many a good action thriller movie we are taught some fundamental universally accepted facts about ventilation shafts, ducts, and their use for the purposes of crawling along, to escape or to gain access to another part of a building. Here's a brief summary about ventilation systems in movies:

* All ventilation shafts and ducts are accessible by means of a single flat metal grille which is held on the wall using four standard screws, all of the type with a slot, one at each corner. These are always loose and easy to undo, after which the grille plate can be removed and placed alongside the gap.

* All ventilation systems have ducts which are the right size for people to crawl along. There are no funny curvy bits, sheer drops, fan blades, rat grids, etc.

* Although it's a ventilation system, the air flow system will not be turned on while you are using the tunnels as a means of getting from place to place. Air flow, wind, noise, or any kind of suggestion that you're inside the pipes of a vacuum cleaner, will not be a worry, and you'll easily be able to continue with the script (though speaking quietly so your enemies can't hear you talking).

* All ventilation systems lead somewhere, usually somewhere useful. Fortunately, even though you had to undo the four easy-to-open screws on the duct by which you entered the ventilation system, the grille on your exit route will almost certainly have had the screws removed in advance and will come off easily so you won't have the problem of being on the wrong side to undo the screws.

* All ventilation shafts are well lit. No-one's quite sure why, but it may be similar to the way space helmets in many science fiction movies are lit up on the INSIDE!

* All ventilation shafts are CLEAN. Despite the fact that your computer power supply fan has dust stuck to it even after owning it a few months, these human-sized ventilation systems are spotlessly clean.

hands your time too much you have on

rearange the above to give you a meaningfull sentance

[kinboshi]

Going back to the speed of light debate for a moment, I found the article below very enlightening.

Also, it proves that Kinboshi is hopeless. (It doesn't really, I just like saying it)


There's a popular misconception that the speed of light is some sort of speed limit, so when you travel in space you can get almost up to the speed of light and then you just can't go any faster, and then you have to wait four years before you get to Alpha Centuri which is 4 light years  away. This is not true. You can get to Alpha Centuri a lot quicker than that, provided you don't mind much what other people think. The idea that the speed of light is a speed limit is a misconception a bit like thinking that people who live in Australia  are upside-down.

Before I try to explain Relativity and what really happens when you travel very fast, let's look at that idea about Australian people being upside-down. Well, are they upside-down? If you're in the UK, then in a literal sense, yes, Australians are upside-down. However, from an Australian perspective, they are not upside-down at all, and kangaroos leap UP in the air and then come DOWN again, etc. So, the moral of the story is: It depends on from whose perspective.

The situation with the strangeness about the speed of light is another thing where it depends on from whose perspective we are considering. If you are standing on Earth watching the passing spaceships as they fly across the sky, you notice that none of them seem to be travelling faster than light, and they always take years to get from one star system to another, according to how many light-years it is. It would be easy to imagine that the people aboard those spaceships get very bored waiting to get to their destinations. However, if you get on a flight to a distant star system, the journey time is nothing like as long as was expected. You can get from Earth to Alpha Centuri in a few hours! How can that be?!

The fact is that when you travel very fast in space you also travel in time. Going from Earth to Alpha Centuri, your watch says it's only taken a few hours, but when you arrive it's four years in the future. This fact makes it very convincing for people on the ground to think you've taken four years to get there.

After a couple of weeks' sightseeing tour of Alpha Centuri you get on the flight back to Earth. This also only takes a few hours from your own perspective, but when you arrive on Earth it's now eight years and two weeks since you set off. People you knew are now eight years older than when you saw them two weeks ago, whereas you're only two weeks older. They've experienced eight years of life on Earth, whereas you've experienced two weeks of Alpha Centuri and a few hours' flight time.

Honestly I am not making this up! It's not sci-fi, and this really is the way space and time work, according to Albert Einstein!

Here's another example: Suppose you like to drive very fast, but the cops don't want you to go faster than the speed limit of the speed of light. You've got a very fast car and you put your foot down and watch the speedometer go higher and higher. Strange as it may seem, the scenery is going past at a rate that would mean you must be travelling faster than light, as you're covering that much ground in that short a time. Mile posts are going past at a million every second. From your own perspective, you are travelling much faster than light. There's a police speed-trap ahead, so should you worry? No, because from the cops' perspective, you are only travelling at 0.95 times the speed of light or some such figure. They can clock you with a roadside radar gun and by scientific measurement you're in the clear.

The Andromeda Galaxy is two million light years away. So when you look at it through a telescope, you're seeing the history of the Andromeda Galaxy, as it was two million years ago. The light from it takes two million years to get to Earth, so, that's what you'd expect. You've got light from the Andromeda Galaxy coming into your telescope, and you know where it's come from and when it set off, so what would happen if you could ask the light how long it took to cover the distance? "Well, light, how long did it take you to get here?". Light responds "It took no time at all. I travel infinitely fast". It's not lying, you know. From light's own perspective, it really does travel infinitely fast, and covers any distance in an infinitesimal instant. However, from a ground-based perspective, light has to be seen to travel at the speed of light. That's the way it works.

One of the reasons why the laws of physics about Relativity and the speed of light seem so odd and tricky to explain, is that the speed of light is so fast that it's outside everyday experience. So, it's usual in these thought-experiments to have a hypothetical universe where the speed of light is 10MPH, or some similar speed which would fit with experience. In the world of 10MPH speed of light, you could ride a bicycle and see for yourself the way relativity distorts time and space. What you observe is very different from normal, and quite different from the misconception world of a speed limit speed of light. As you start peddling the bicycle, it's harder than expected, but you don't seem speed-limited at all. When you get up to 7MPH (which in that hypothetical universe is 0.7 times the speed of light), you think you are travelling at 10MPH, the speed of light. Lamp posts in the street are going past at 10MPH for sure. Peddling harder to put on a bit more speed, things are going past even faster, and when you look at people in the street they are moving as if they are on video in fast-forward mode! You wave at them and shout "Hey, look! I'm travelling faster than light!", but what they see is someone going past on a bicycle doing about nine and a half MPH waving very slowly and shouting in a tape-recorder-slowed-down voice "H   e   y   ,   l   o   o   k   !     I   '   m     t   r   a   v   e   l   l   i   n   g     f   a   s   t   e   r     t   h   a   n     l   i   g   h   t !". The other thing is, people look at each other and say in their chipmunk-sped-up voices that the reason you're having to pedal so hard to go at almost 10MPH is because you have become very heavy! Yet, from your own perspective, you don't feel particularly heavy at all! The reason for the difference in perception of mass is so the maths add up ok. You have to have the momentum, so therefore the different perceived speeds have different perceived masses associated with them. Anyway, having travelled at what you feel is 20MPH or 30MPH on a bicycle, you might assume that you can use this ability to get to meetings on time and not be late, even if the meeting places are so-many miles away. However, if you try this, you'll still be late, because when you travel fast, you also travel forward into the future. So, you can speed around for fun and to see the sights, but you can't use the ability to avoid being late for meetings!Banana

Don't blame me for space and time being bent like a banana! It's just the way it is!

Erm, a lot of that backs up what we were saying about people experiencing time at different rates because of the speed they're travelling.

Although the bit where it says 'light travels infinitely fast' is bollocks.  You can slow slight down, and speed it up, but anything that has a mass cannot travel faster than 'c' the constant that is the speed of electromagnetic waves in a vacuum - FACT.