The Lounge

Question: If I fell 100 feet into a large, deep pool, which of the following would take LONGER to touch the bottom of the pool. 1. Plastic balls (like a kid's playroom) 2. Polystyrene balls (in beanbags) Thanks!

Just doin' a little research based on curiosity. Do you actually believe IQ correlates with intelligence? Or do you think it's all crap. Also, how do you think you'd score on one to ten in regards to social prowess?

http://www.fsffrance.org/news/article2005-11-25.en.html Are they actually suggesting to get rid of open source? What about companies like Novell or IBM? Wouldn't the bill be specifically designed to remove these companies from France? This truly amazes me. How can anybody be so stupid? And wouldn't this be unenforceable? Frech developers could just distribute their software on servers outside of France.

Hi there everyone! I was bored today so I threw together a little script that calculates the Mr of any compound, it can be found here: http://www.allscience.spiralmindsinc.com/Testing/ChemCalc.php It works with compound formats: H2O 2H2O Hg(NO3)2 Hg(NO3)2.2H2O The last one is still 50/50 - I'm not shure if it works correctly yet. Or any combination of the above, please try it out and any feedback is welcome (Note, I threw this together in about half an hour so it probably has bugs ) Cheers, Ryan Jones

got any ideas?

Hello all, I am looking for some advice as to which I should Major and Minor in between Physics and Engineering. My dream is to be able to work on new space technologies for satelites, probes, space shuttles ect. Basically anything that advances the space program. Do you think I am better off majoring in Physics and minoring in Engineering or vice versa?

Hi, Why some people get angry when are faced with difficulty,and try to put blame on others even if it is there own mistake? From: Mab

Has anyone else seen this article? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6940417 How cool, $25,000 to tell the USAF that a Star Trek style transporter "The concept of transporting any large amount of matter is highly impractical and looks to be highly impractical well into the future." Heck, I could have told them that. I like the blokes style in his recommendations though. For a mere say 75,000 of that, I'll keep track of the Aussie research.

I read in a book once, einstein when he was youNg had a question,''IF WE HAD A SMALL MIRROR IN OUR HAND AND WERE TRAVELLING AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT, WE LOOKED AT THE MIRROR HOPING FOR A REFLECTION, WHAT WOULD WE SEE?'' As reflection itself is light travelling at 3,00,000 kms/sec, is it possible for a reflection.

Situation: You're confused, fustrated and sad. You think that you did badly for an exam and your future is ruined. You are completely devastated? What can you do??? To prevent yourself from entering into a state of depression?

Hi, I'm looking for an exceptionally precise definition of sound so i can go an kick some philosophers butt tommorow night.. i've got so far planning my argument.. and just realised if i dont define sound i have a slight problem... How is sound created? Just air particles vibrating? Or will any particles vibrating create sound? Also exactly what is sound (strict definition) Thanks :D

Creation doesn't cut it, dudes.The universe evolved!!! Around 1836---judging from his notebooks---Darwin figured out an evolutionary process capable of explaining why all these species, and thus he saved God the trouble of having to create them one at a time. The analogous puzzle in our day is why the universe has all these numbers which seem to be "just right" in a certain vague sense. The most familiar example is the strength of electromagnetic interaction which is 1/137 in natural units. Longlived stars, the chemical elements, life chemistry, all depend on this being just what it is and not a percent off. An evolutionary mechanism has been discovere…

Hey, I just finished the Ender's series, and I decided to read one of Asimov books because I thought it would be interesting, so I picked one "the positronic man", and it was way cool! I want to read more books like that, does anyone have any suggestions??

I've been thinking about supposed IQ tests that are used to test "intelligence". What do they really test? My point is this: intelligence, as I see it, is the ability to solve a problem in an unknown situation using the tools and knowledge one has. IQ tests have all these questions which, to a large extent, are composed of maths (or math for the Americans) and language questions. But these things are a matter of education. One can be taught to do well in an IQ test. But what if someone off the street, who has had no education, takes an IQ test, and can't answer 2+2, merely because he or she has never been taught maths. That person's results would be awful, and…

Are we being hit by disasters of biblical proportions? Or is our world based news making us precieve things as such, lots of so called prophets say that divine intervention is causing our planet to lash out at its bad tennants (us), are we getting more disasters now then before and why is this ?

Just wanted to say hi. I'm 16 and in school, and want to know as much as I can about cosmology. That's me in the photo.....I'm gonna look around. Bettina

A guide book for creationists: A DEFINITIVE REPLY TO EVOLUTIONIST PROPAGANDA http://www.harunyahya.com/definitivereply01.php

I just thought I'd throw this out. We can all visualise ourselves falling down an incredibly deep chasm, the feeling of falling to a certain death when we hit the rock hard floor that's waiting at the bottom of the chasm. But we're all falling down a deep chasm all the time, aren't we?? There's no way of stopping the fall and once we hit the bottom we're going to be dead. I tried to do something clever with it to help visualise time dilation. You can mark off every foot in the hole in the ground so you can work out your feet per seconds. We have clocks and watches that we can use to work out our speed through the hole called time too but that gives us our…

Saw this on slashdot, thought it'd be interesting to hear everyone's beliefs. Hopefully this thread won't fill up with religious ideologies, that's not what I'm looking for.

What has happened to natural selection? I don't mean this at all in an evolutionary way, or I would have posted it in a different forum, but... Arg! This is perhaps the time when natural selection / survival of the fittest would do the most good! It's still around in nature, sure - but have we, as a species, progressed too far for our own good? Is cheating evolution really a good thing? Sometimes I wonder... People can be so stupid and destructive sometimes. Maybe we should just make artificial selection. You know, do it ourselves - in a "moral" way - maybe send the people who deserve to stick around to Mars or something, so that they don't have to deal with Earth's probl…

Here's a not so quick-to-answer question. What are the bare minimum requirements for a society/nation to survive? In other words, food, water, etc. What do you guys think? [Edit: Sorry if that's too vague. I don't quite know how else to pose the question. It might be a little less vague if I said, "what are the top ten most important things for a government to supplu its nation and its people," but I'm not necessarily looking for ten, and I'm not necessarily looking for government. What I mean is, throughout history, what are the things that a society/nation (as a whole) could not live without? Not just physical needs, like food, water, and shelter, but …

Im writing a paper as part of Coursework. Im thinking along the lines of Evaporating black holes. Now it needs to be a question aparantley so i thought; Black Hole Evaporation; Hawking Radiation or String Theory? is that correct or are the two the same? can anybody think of any better titles to use?

I'm in a 9th grade and I need to know which subject should I take I have two choices. Commerce and Science.. Which one should I take ? which one of them is more beneficial ? I would really appreciate if you guide me.. Thanks.. - Diesel

I've long been pondering the effectiveness of an alternative system to rockets as a means to get into Earth Orbit. Escape Velocity is generally defined as about 9.0 kilometres per second and is the velocity at which an object will escape the pull of Earth's gravity and obtain orbit. So here's my alternative system. It uses a massive gravitational and magnetic accellerator to throw something into orbit. It would work like this - you have a *VERY* long U-shaped tube that is wide enough to fit a module/projectile within it (Just like this picture). Wound around this tube are many, many electromagnets. Past the electromagnets are fixed magnets. The module (which …

I think quotes are helpful for us to understand the world and be inspired to do the right things. You may create a quotation/take someone else's quotation and post it but please give the credits to those who said them. "Why be a man when you can be a success?" -Bertolt Brecht (1898 - 1956) "Life's like a play;it's not the length but the excellence of acting that matters" -Seneca (Roman philosopher, mid 1-st century AD) "A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward." -Jean Paul Richter (1763 - 1825) "Anger is a momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you." -G. M. T…