Comic Genesis Forums

There are two I have but I may not know enough to ask them correctly.

#1) In quantum phenomena what counts as observation, such as in a case where particles behave differently while under observation. obviously any kind of active measurement would count. I mainly mean that when textbooks and such talk about observation affecting reality they usually seem to talk about human observation. However it seems to me that the determining factor is some form of interaction with the particle, atom, whatever that is being observed. If this is the case then what about forces such as gravity, which pretty much affects everything in the universe making pretty much everything interact with everything.


#2) as part of a physics assignment I saw a recent program on string theory. Most of it was pretty good until it started to talk about interdimensional holes which might randomly form. According to these people string theory predicts that a "string" moving through space will leave a kind of trail behind it, effectively isolating these tears in space-time. Now they provided no explanation that I could recall for both why the strings left behind this trail and why it for some reason has the ability to do what they claim it does. If you know then please tell me how string theory actually predicts this.

rkolter wrote: #2 I dunno about. I've broken both in Tae Kwon Do, and neither was very difficult. :/

As in I don't think the question itself isn't as easy as it seems. I didn't mean that doing it wasn't easy though.

RPin wrote:I don't know if you already answered or anyone already asked this, but...

1)What is antimatter, exactly?

... and now someone has revealed my other backup question.

orion wrote: #1) In quantum phenomena what counts as observation, such as in a case where particles behave differently while under observation. obviously any kind of active measurement would count. I mainly mean that when textbooks and such talk about observation affecting reality they usually seem to talk about human observation. However it seems to me that the determining factor is some form of interaction with the particle, atom, whatever that is being observed. If this is the case then what about forces such as gravity, which pretty much affects everything in the universe making pretty much everything interact with everything.

Heh, you sort of answered your own question. You're mostly right that interaction with the particle is the determining factor. Interaction with the particle that would not occur otherwise. Gravity was already there. It was there before you observed it, and your observation does not change the effect gravity has on it.

This is a good concept for a question tho.

orion wrote:#2) as part of a physics assignment I saw a recent program on string theory. Most of it was pretty good until it started to talk about interdimensional holes which might randomly form. According to these people string theory predicts that a "string" moving through space will leave a kind of trail behind it, effectively isolating these tears in space-time. Now they provided no explanation that I could recall for both why the strings left behind this trail and why it for some reason has the ability to do what they claim it does. If you know then please tell me how string theory actually predicts this.

Hmmm. I'd have to do a lot more than that. I'd have to explain string theory first, to then go on and explain this aspect of it. String Theory is a big fish to fry, but I'll keep this one in mind.

seriosity wrote:

rkolter wrote: #2 I dunno about. I've broken both in Tae Kwon Do, and neither was very difficult. :/

As in I don't think the question itself isn't as easy as it seems. I didn't mean that doing it wasn't easy though.

I'm just not sure about this particular question... taken one way it's a math question - given a plane of material x by y by z, what is the force needed to break it.

Taken another way, it's a psychology question. Psychology would be interesting, but it's the most subjective science field I'm aware of - when you're dealing with what people think, and how what they think causes them to act, what's true for one person may not be true for another.

The reason I mentioned my own experience is that when I first learned to break wood, I had a very hard time accepting that I could break a one inch board, let alone six of them in a row. When it came to breaking stone, I'd already broken wood, and was more certain that I could break stone, and had fewer problems with it overall.

It'd be difficult to draw a comic to contain this question... but I'll keep it mind anyhow.

Seriocity wrote:Fractals... fractals... fractals. <falls asleep>

Hey! Fractals are a fun topic!

One more: What is the chaos theory and what does it have to do with predicting the weather?

Shouldn't you be answering these in your comic, <i>instead</i> of here on the Forums?

ImpousVileTerror wrote:Shouldn't you be answering these in your comic, <i>instead</i> of here on the Forums?

You're right, of course.

How does anyone know if pi is truly a never-ending number?

what i want to know is - how much does a little fluffy cloud weigh and also the weight of huge storm cloud - that must be a hell of a lot of water hanging around up there so it must weigh tonnes! and as for purring cats - it's more like not why but how? do they have rasps in there or something?

I've done a few of these in the past, but it might be neat to see a comic on them-

1. Why do they dump salt on icy roads?
2. How does a Fresnel (lighthouse) lens work?
3. What's the difference between reflected (printed) colors and projected (TV/monitor) colors

And of course that eternally unanswered question:
What is the average air speed velocity of a coconut-laden swallow (African or European - I don't care...)

I can help you with the last one.

http://www.style.org/unladenswallow/

Seriocity wrote:

YarpsDat wrote:

Phalanx wrote: 2) Why do snowflakes have their 'snowflake' patterns?

Good question!, Why are they symmetrical if they are random?

Fractals... fractals... fractals. <falls asleep>

Fractals what?

I mean that snowflakes are random, aren't they? So how come all the (3 or 6) parts of a given snowflake look exactly the same? Shouldn't each of them get randomized on it's own?

What? I think this somewhere in a book. It was mentioning about some partterns in nature and how they're all made up of fractals or something. Or I need more sleep.

Okay, I have a good one:

What is the Poincare Conjecture?

Orion, thank you so much for that site. It's awesome!

But they still didn't answer the really tough question: "What is your favourite colour?"

How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie-Roll center of a Tootsie pop?

I suppose it depends on how acidic your saliva is.

Yarpsdat: The roll of dice is random, but the shape of the dice are not. They always land flat on the table, because that's how they're shaped. You never know what number will be up, because that's random.
Same with freezing water molecules that accumulate on a crystal. The shape is determined by the properties of the molecule. The arrangement of the molecules is determined randomly.
Symmetry is caused, in part, by the fact that the "hole" on the opposite side of the most-recently attached molecule causes imbalance. The flake turns in response to all forces on it (wind, gravity, static electricity, etc), moving the hole around towards where the molecules are attaching most quickly. This is complex probability, not certainty, so statistical chance determines the overall pattern. The best math for predicting/simulating this is fractal geometry. Hence the fractals.
The Hindenburg:
NASA learned early in the space program that a very large sheet of non-conducting material (mylar at NASA or cotton in the skin of the Hindenburg, for examples), covered with a conducting material (like aluminized mylar or magnesium-impregnating one side of the cotton) forms a huge capacitor. Every breath of air moving over the capacitor builds a charge. Millions of volts, hundreds of thousands of amps. An early launch vehicle in a clean room at the cape, covered with a "clean room" cloth, grounded to the chassis of a rocket. Unfortunately, the chassis of the rocket was not grounded to the igniter of the solid rocket motor. It was thought that any power surge that went to ground might fire the igniter. Then the air conditioning blowing over the surface of the drape built a charge that fired thru the solid rocket fuel to the igniter and "launched" the rocket while inside the building. Three or four people died, several buildings were destroyed. The skin of the Hindenburg was similarly composed. Nowadays, NASA would have viewed this design as being a certain disaster.
2. Why does Internet Explorer have so many vulnerabilities? Better Question: who pays for IE to be on your computer (and what are their priorities)? Not the computer owner. It was forced on us. MS has marketing partners who want to shove popups in our face, who want to be able to track our surfing, who want to send us HTML email with ActiveX content we don't have the option to ignore, who want to be able to get into our boxes. They paid for IE, and they don't give a rat's * about our security.
Why is it important to defrag a hard disk? Because stuff moves. Entropy grows in any complex system unless something counteracts it. Including your diskdrive. Again, a better question: why is Windows the only major operating system that doesn't offer the option to defrag continuously during idle operating time so you don't have to take the downtime hit? Like the IE question - follow the money, you'll find the reason.
What keeps the protons and neutrons on the nucleus together? Lots and lots of little tiny four-handed monkeys that squeeze very very hard.
One more: What is the chaos theory and what does it have to do with predicting the weather? Chaos Theory is the set of observations that chaotic systems are not entirely without order. In fact, order emerges spontaneously in any completely random system. By definition, if a system (like earth's atmosphere) is truly random, then any movement would result in less randomness. And although the atmosphere seems random, the forces that act on it (earth's rotation, diurnal heating/ nocturnal cooling, etc) are most definitely not random. Chaos theory explains what happens when non-random events happen in random (or near random) systems.
3) How can we detect black holes? By the scream of dying matter as it falls into the endless abyss. It emits gobs of radiation as it is accelerated to near-light speeds and is torn apart, first molecules into atoms, then atoms into baryonic and similar large particles, then those get shredded into quarks...
Oops...I'm not supposed to be answering these, am I?


My questions: Why is it a loud noise will cause an avalanche, but not burst an over-inflated balloon?
Why did the smallest dinosaurs that were the size of the largest mammals die with the dinosaurs instead of surviving with the mammals?
How much of global warming does it take to really cause climatic problems, seeing as we're just now coming out of an ice age anyway? ("just now" means the last 40K years or so)
Why can I exactly remember a 20-line psalm I learned twenty years ago, but not a twenty-digit number I heard 20 seconds ago?
If that bottled water you're drinking is so pure, why does the bottle have an expiration date? Yes, I really mean this. I want to know.

Q. Why doesn't acid eat through glass?



I've always wondered, but never bothered to find out.

Damn it!! I used to know that!!!!!! STUPID STUPID!!
*beats head against blind puppies*

The hard drive defrag question should be "Why is it helpful" not "Why is it necessary". It's not at all necessary, just helpful.

Anywho, here's my question.

1: Is there any known phenomena of stellar "drag" that might cause the earth's rotational speed to slow down over time? Say a period of 65 million years?

2: How did dinosaurs even exist on this planet with such large physical forms at our present represented gravity?

3: Was there possibly a thicker atmosphere? Would it cause a form of buoyancy?

4: Am I drinking too much beer?