PlasmaGryphon's Comments

Noah Webster's spelling reform is responsible for the meter spelling. At this point is somewhere between silly to ignorant to pretend dialects don't exist. If you want to be a stickler for not changing loan words, you could use metro from before the French changed it. I find it more useful to stick to official style guides for publications than risk annoying editors, so that means meter in American English and many Germanic languages.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Unless I missed something, I don't think they are saying this is what was used on Easter Island. Instead, it is just one of the prominent theories about the Moai heads that inspired this development.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
There are already a couple superconducting power transmission lines already installed around the world, although only at test lengths of a couple hundred meters to a kilometer in length. I think the main difference here is that existing ones use cuperate superconductors, while the magnesium diboride above is cheaper and might be easier to make into wire (I think... I kind of thought the cuperates were still better, but might be about trade offs). At the very least, the cuperates can be cooled with liquid nitrogen instead of helium, but CERN has plenty of liquid helium around anyway. So this seems more like something for internal use at CERN if I'm reading it correctly.

In more general electrical transmission, only a small fraction of power is lost to the resistivity of the cable (transmission in general is 94-95% efficient in the US, and there are other losses involved too). Where superconducting cables would be most useful though is for buried lines in dense urban areas. Most transmission lines can minimize losses with higher voltage and sometimes switching to DC. But that causes problems for buried lines requiring very expensive dielectric oils to insulate the cable and a complicated system for moving the oil around as it doesn't work as well if not constantly moving. Even with the cryogenic insulation, a buried superconducting cable could be smaller for the same power carrying capacity. In the end, it will come down to which of the two approaches is less of a PITA and costs less.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Uh, more than 20% of the world is vegetarian, so over a billion people get by without eating meat already. I don't know where this idea that meatus essential to living comes from, except maybe in some cases people trying to hide from themselves that they are making a choice.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
I remember that episode. They clearly said that recycling metals was still worthwhile, which is why places will pay for metal without any outside forces.

I was very disappointed a few years later to learn that whole episode was based very narrowly on a specific, single paper. The paper was being used as a horrible example of how not to do an economic approach to environmental policy ( and the people involved had no idea about the TV episode based upon it). That is not to say all of the points were wrong. I still think most glass is not worthwhile to recycle (reuse with appropriate infrastructure in a city is a different story). But issues with plastic recycling is a complex mess and can't be summed up just by the price difference of new vs. postconsumer plastic.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
The thought of something organic like a string in a ultra high vacuum system makes my stomach turn. But so does the thought of ferret fur in a UHV system. A metal cable could have been installed, but would have required probably some serious design effort for it be stowed during operation and likely it would never be used if things worked the way they expected.

I think too often other constraints limit access and features in vacuum systems. Spending a couple hours hanging upside down trying to grab a fragments of a part with a long flexible tool, blindly because the borescope only fits 90% of the way there, is sometimes easier than making a system that is easy to clean.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Discussing technical errors in pop-sci can be a slippery slope.

E.g. it is perfectly fine to say hydronium/hydroxide ions have an extra/missing hydrogen atom. The term atom doesn't imply neutral, and so in chemistry a proton is still referred to as a hydrogen atom (hence why some push to call it a hydron instead of a proton... not that I've heard anyone actually use that term used outside of work with deuterated chemicals). Saying the "pH is inversely proportional to the concentration of hydronium ion" will draw ire from some math crowds as "inversely proportional" has a very meaning (1/x) that doesn't apply to pH vs OH concentration. Equal numbers of hydronium and hydroxide ions is what is called neutral as neither dominates, so effectively they do "cancel", just cancel is a horribly imprecise word (I knew several profs, especially in math, that would call out a student using the word cancel in nearly any context as it was often too vague and misleading). Since self-ionization of water depends on temperature and mass, neutral pH being 7 only happens for light water near 25 C. "they exist in a state of natural equilibrium at pH 7" seems kind of meaningless as there will be a natural equilibrium for just about any pH once reactions have settled... ad nauseum.

In general any discussion of acids and bases in popsci is going to be a minefield, as the Arrhenius definition of acids and bases is quite narrow and effectively now almost a century out of date. But it is also way more straightforward to laymen than the Brønsted–Lowry definition and effective for common situations. There are a lot of subject like this where things are left fuzzy, vague or possibly sloppy to avoid going too far down the rabbithole.

Where to draw the line with technical correctness in popsci writing is a massive source of debate among scientists trying to write for outreach. Most discussion panels I've seen on the topic breaks down into two camps: those who say, "you have to lie a little" to effectively teach intro science and those that insist you have to do a very careful dance to be technically correct while sticking to the point. (Personally, the latter approach fails once anyone edits your writing...). Regardless of approach, a lot of people who know the science are just bad at writing anyway...
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
I hope that was intended to be hyperbole, and not a pile of projection and misunderstanding it looks like.

I have and continue to do technical work in both imperial and SI, and also several nonSI metric units. It is all quite functional with only a slight difference in effort. In the grand scheme it doesn't matter too much what units you use as long as you can convey things with necessary consistency and accuracy (hence natural/theorist units that make some fields of physics quite easier to write out than SI...).

There is plenty more in life to worry about than what units other people use. Except for cgs electrical units...those are just smell bad to anyone near by.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
There have been numerous road traffic studies that show methods that improve travel times for everyone involved... but are completely unusable because they will make people feel like they are spending more time waiting. For a lot of systems it isn't about how efficient it actually is, but how people feel.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
They are not photos, they are maps. Yes, with Photoshop you could draw whatever fake image you want, as could a person with a text editor write whatever fake words. You could look at the actual description of how maps were made and consider their provenance:

A light description of exact image used above: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/underwater-land-loss-coastal-louisiana-1932

The more detailed report of the source data, including some discussion of comparability of satellite data to pre-satellite data and separate analysis of satellite data only: http://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3164/
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
If you watch just one of these videos, it looks like a bunch of people with zero cooking skills and a bunch with advanced cooking skills. But if you watch several of them, there are plenty of these where someone clueless in one video has a lot of experience with the ingredient or skill in another video. Who ever found the people for these videos must of spent a lot of effort to find people with quite a variety of backgrounds and cooking skills.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
I've never liked that quote, as it seems to add to the black magic nature people attribute to statistics. To me it is the same as saying there are lies, damned lies and big words. If you misuse a big word or statistics, it is either a regular lie or mistake. Otherwise at some point the onus is on reader to understand, look up, or realize they don't understand.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Statistics is a very rigorous branch of mathematics. But at lower levels it is taught as if it were a bunch or oracles in black boxes that spit out answers. Learning where those tools come from can make their limits and uses much clearer. But without that knowledge, a fully well intentioned and honest researcher could get garbage out of a tool and not realize is the tool was inappropriate.

It is like giving someone a recipe vs. teaching them cooking techniques and ingredients. Things work fine if you have exactly what you need, but go awry if you need substitutes. Sometimes novices don't even realize they made a substitute. And there are the few special ones that will not realize they should sometimes peel a shrimp or remove the seeds from hot pepper, and then say the recipe is broken because that was not spelled out.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
  2 replies
I'm don't really understand why anyone would ask, "Why hold a music festival?" or, "Why would they use a gimmick to sell something?" Unless there is another why I am missing.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Login to comment.


Page 1 of 44       next | last

Profile for PlasmaGryphon

  • Member Since 2013/02/01


Statistics

Comments

  • Threads Started 290
  • Replies Posted 369
  • Likes Received 275
X

This website uses cookies.

This website uses cookies to improve user experience. By using this website you consent to all cookies in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

I agree
 
Learn More