Other Sciences

talking from a normal, every day civilian point of view, how much of a difference does aerodynamics make? for instance the difference between crouching on a bike, and sitting up straight. the difference between having a rear wing on your car and not having one. obviously for racing it makes a difference, but does it really make a speed difference to civilians in normaly cars and bikes?

e-mailed to Scientific American in Oct 2002, not published. (1) Time : One of the dimensional axes along which action, process, or condition occurs; it is evident and expressed by change of ambience. (2) Absolute Time : Measured from extrapolated start of the Big Bang event. (3) Relative time : Measured from an arbitrary occurrence. (4) Units of Time : Defined arbitrarily, per Universe spatial locations and circumstances. DH

Over the weekend, I went to reach for a soda in the refrigerator, and a glass beer bottle fell out. When I went to pick it up it was frozen and I noticed that the cap was a little bit loose. Did the pressure change in the bottle cause it to freeze? Or is it something else? Just Wondering #fo

Hi, I'm trying to power my 40 watt lightbulb, and I've been at this for a bit, and was told this morning I would need 22,000 "C" batteries, which seems like it would make my lightbulb explode... Anyway, my standard C battery I am using has 1.5 volts and 7.5 amps when I tested it. Now, my first possible pitful of not being sure is, if I stack these batteries together, I know the volts will just add, but will the amperage stay constant? Now, assuming the amps did stay relatively constant, I figure it would take 5.3 volts to power my 40 watt lightbulb. This is using the following equation: P = iv 40 = 7.5x x = ~5.3 Now, assuming 1.5 volts per battery,…

Two things: How does a silencer (on a gun) work? How does a muffler (on a car) work?

Evolution is the study of.......... Chaos Theory is the study of......... Geography is the study of........... Physics is the study of .......... Bio genetics is the study of..... I have delibrately chose fields which are not so easily defined by any one person. For instance I could have written Biology is the study of... and the answer would be simple. Life. The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order, symmetry, and limitation; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful. Aristotle from his Metaphysica

I realy didnt know where to do this, but i wanna ask a couple of things can anything travel over the speed of light, and if so how much faster? Thanks loads (the reason for this is because my friend is trying to make me beleve cyclones on saturn travel 10 times the speed of light, and i dont realy beleive him.)

hey, i was reading new scientist and they had an article about the possiblility of a georeactor at the heart of the earth. I found some great links on it. http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/H/Herndon_Cathcart.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/earth-03k.html

What is dark energy? Why it is so mysterious for human?

From Scientific American Sept 2004 SA Perspectives : "Were Einstein alive today, he would undoubtedly still find causes for outrage" about Jews not living peaceably with Arabs and about USA foray into Iraq. This statement by The Editors of SA is a glaring example of antiscientism: (1) It is based on were/if,(2) plus an injection of the Editors' (royal s?) attitudes into Einstein's personality, (3) plus obvious ignorance of the nature of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict,(4) plus a more than just ignorant referral to Jews in lieu of Israelis. However, this is also a demonstration of The Editors' excellent editorial expertise, of how to package so many booboo…

We all know that there are electric cars out there, how they work and how efficient they are is an area for debate. But my question is this: is it possible, giving allowance to the current technological state, to build an electric plane or a boat? I'm not so sure about planes, if you think it can be done feel free to write about it. But boats are quite probable. Perhaps some sort of catamaran similar to the one in "Water world" movie would be more appropriate. One would need to install a good array of solar panels, get a cutting edge accumulator and energy efficient motor. What you have is a vessel that can travel unlimited distances. Do you think it is po…

If you dont remember ever doing something that people said you did, then, are you the same person as the "person" that actually did the "thing"?? does every second of life determine who you are, if even 1 second was missed, would you be the same person? this is kinda psychological.. but im curious

I hear that the big crunch idea is losing credibility, and i want to know why. I really like the idea because it means the universe will survive. In the lame expansion thing it just dissapates and is gone forever. But the crunch idea also makes more sense, to me. What caused the big bang? there must have been a beginning to the beginning, and it would make sense that the bang came from the crunch and it goes around forever. The dissapation idea seems to mean that something (the expanse of the universe) had no cause and will never happen again. If its just to dissapate, how can it have cause? In the bang/crunch idea it just goes on forever, it will never be differ…

Down here in Australia we have an ongoing water shortage due to a prolonged drought. This got me to thinking about water usuage and ways to minimilise it. One of the large waste of water IMO is toilets. Plants love the stuff we don't want, is anyone here also of the opinion that utilising most of our waste as food for the garden would not only benefit the garden but work us slowly away from the centralised infrastructure that is holding us back. It would save water, electricity and most of all money. Sometimes we out do ourselves in overcomplicating things such as going to the toilet...

when someone comes up with a scientific theory or discoverey, how do they publish it, i know they have to send it to a scientific journal, but what is that exactly?

im just a simple 16 year old english boy. im talkin to my friend on msn messenger and we were talking about when i was on an aeroplane and landed in Mexico during a lightning storm. I say that if the lightning strikes the plane it will have no effect as we are not grounded. He says that it will have an effect and will tear the plane in half. who is right? either of us?

I was watching the Olympics and started thinking about that. It seems every time the Olympics roll around someone sets a record. There have been a few swimming records this year. So I began thinking: why? Is it because humans are evolving and actually becoming faster/stronger, whatever. Or is it because our knowledge of science has increased and we are able to train the athletes better, get more aerodynamic suits for the athletes, etc?

Hello, I have recently found a number of weird rocks on a Long Island beach. The rocks appear to be iron based. They have red-brown currosion on them. They have a red-brown streak, and are very hard. Metallic Luster. No APPARENT cleavage, but then again, they look like they are in layers? I also found that they are highly attracted to a magnet. Even more interesting, I was able to find their polarity (+/-) using some magnets. Can someone please identify/ tell me more about this mineral/ rock???

Being an 'international' science forum I was wondering what people's lives as scientists(or at least overly inquistive at times) have been like. Is science and technology highly valued in your community/country? To what extent would you consider your govt/communities to be overall a help or hinderance? I'm curious because down here and oz we are not exactly admonished and it does not pay well to give your life to the pursuit of knowledge. Pursuing dollars is much more profitable but I fear it 'dumbs' society down to be so materialitic. Do other people occasionally have their talent slandered upon because people are afraid of what they don't understand. IMO it …

there is a new paper by Arnon Dar: http://arxiv.org/astro-ph/0408310 "The Origin of Cosmic Rays - A 96-Year-Old Puzzle Solved?" It is important to understand how GammaRay Bursts (GRB) and how Cosmic Rays (CR) are produced because more and more these days this stuff is taking the place of Particle Accelerator beams in testing new theories and exploring new high energy physics. there is a new field of "Astroparticle Physics" with conferences and people specializing in it. It is people getting out of conventional HEP (High Energy Physics) and going into the high energy physics of GRB and CR and also I guess neutrinos which are interesting particle physics if …

Thermonuclear fusion....for some the last chance of the humanity .....well romanticism appart.... About this technology the research have taked almost 60 years without clear advances (2 seconds of “glory” !!!! and billions dollars wasted!!!!!) the investigation is in wrong way???? there are political intersests???, the fusion could destroy the petroleum monopoly??? the fusion is not important???? or simplity the tech is almost impossible??? rigth now the countries in the research are USA, russia, europe, china, india, japan, there are two reactors design the “tokamak” (using an toroidal magnetic field-high temperature plasma) and the laser –inertial reactor (using…

Do the electromechanical microwaves sent to a sattelite travel at the speed of sound or the speed of light?

I was on top of a mountain not too long ago and was looking down. Hights have always sort of scared me, but not to the point that I wont walk to the edge and look or something. It just makes me real nervous. Anyway, on top of this mountain was a station with a small radio tower. This brought up something I've often noticed: 1) Looking up at a tall building makes me dizy 2) Looking down from a tall building makes me dizy/nervous 3) Looking up at a relatively tall object while at the top of a tall building makes me really dizy and nervous. I also noticed this while on the Eifle Tower. I was on the first platform (a few hundred ft or so)and looked up to the top and…

How did copper sulphate come to be known as "blue vitriol"; ferrous sulphate as "green vitriol"; zinc sulphate as "white vitriol" and sulphuric acid as "oil of vitriol" ? I get the colour part in the salt names, but why the "vitriol" ? Does that mean sulphate ?

there is some misleading posts at SFN about what the cosmological constant is, and what dark energy is. the topic needs clearing up COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT the clearest source on CC I have at the moment is a brief 2-page online thing by Sean Carroll who is one of the world's top people in cosmology. http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2001-1/node3.html Sean is at the University of Chicago and it is significant that the LivingReviews editors at Max Planck Geselschaft asked him to do their article on the Cosmological Constant. Each LivingReviews article is written by someone they think is a top expert on the topic. the articles are supposed to…