exchemist

The link accords with my understanding and makes no reference to the time taken for the transition to take place. So I'm afraid it sheds no light on this odd remark of Whiffen's about the duration of the transition.

There is no such thing as a "scientific burden of proof." Science deals in reproducible evidence, not in proof. The rest of your post appears to be nonsense.

A friend at work once went for a medical and returned to say, with a grin, he'd been told he was 1kg short of being "technically obese". We all thought "technically obese" was a wonderful expression.

This passage is curious as it seems to say "yes, repeat no". I can't at the moment see how if the uncertainty in energy results from the brevity, as it were, of the excited state, he can then also say it depends "in a sense" on the time the transition itself takes. Unless what he has in mind that the lifetime of the excited state is so short that the duration of the transition process is comparable with it. But that is not going to be the case in general. Does he say anything else that sheds light on this odd "in a sense" comment?

Just to clarify, my understanding has always been that it is the lifetimes of the participating states that determine the uncertainty in energy of the transition, rather than the time it takes for the transition between states to occur. So, as I understand it, states with a short lifetime have large uncertainties in energy, whereas long-lived states have small uncertainties in energy. Is that what you mean, or are you saying it is the duration of the transition process itself that is the issue? Untrue. The transition takes place within the atom or molecule that is absorbing or emitting. Uncertainty broadening is nothing to do with uncertainty as to which atom or molecule in an ensemble is going to absorb or emit. In principle it applies even to single, isolated atoms or molecules - though it would be fairly hard to measure in such a case, admittedly. You may possibly be confusing this with pressure broadening, which is another line-broadening phenomenon, due to collisions between atoms or molecules shortening the lifetimes and/or perturbing the energies of their states.

There is no distortion.

Surely if it is a square root there should be both +ve and -ve solutions, shouldn't there?

OK if you've apologised for the use of pretend I must have missed it, but fair enough.

The issue I have been disputing in this thread is the claim that a religious person has to "pretend", in some way, in order to do science. Palin, although certainly an ocean-going ignoramus, is not relevant to that. I do realise that some of the assumptions and attitudes in the thread are influenced by the US experience, in which one particular variety of redneck Protestantism seems to make all the running where perceptions of religion are concerned. The danger of that is people can end up with a completely false picture of how religions more generally, and the various denominations within them, actually regard the natural world, cf. @Markus Hanke's contribution regarding Buddhism, and what I have had to say about mainstream Christianity. (I could have added the European Lutherans and Calvinists to my list as well.) From what I can gather, biblical literalism is largely a c.19th invention, a byproduct of the Protestant sola scriptura principle, taken to excess by certain groups.

Yes of course, thanks, that makes sense. So it's a cubic relation. That would make the energy harvesting potential extremely strongly dependent on the wind strength that the device experiences in practice. So one would need to read the claims of power output very carefully with that in mind.

Thats interesting. Is it the cube? I had assumed (without thinking much about it) a square relation, based on the ke in the wind. How does a cubic relation arise?

Well that is true of course: methodological naturalism is key. But surely, leaving God out of scientific studies of the natural world only requires pretence if you are someone who thinks that God is constantly tinkering with nature? If you think that, then I quite agree you have no business doing science, but it is not what mainstream Christians (or Jews?) think - at any rate those that have given the issue any thought in relation to science (most people do not think about science much, one way or the other). I'm less sure about other religions - though I imagine Buddhism would not have a problem.

I don't really follow this. Palin wasn't exactly a scientist, so perhaps we can put her to one side. I can't see that any "pretence" is involved unless you are some sort of benighted fundamentalist that believes that all of your ancient scripture has to be taken literally, word for word. I don't know much about religions other than Christianity, but I do know that mainstream Christian belief (and, I rather think, many strands of Jewish belief too) regard a fair number of the Old Testament stories as allegories, or otherwise not strictly historical. This has been the case among at least some Christian theologians since Origen in about 200AD and has been a mainstream view for centuries. If you talk to any thoughtful cleric from the Catholic, Anglican/Episcopalian, Methodist or Presbyterian traditions, you will find they don't find science and Christian belief incompatible.

Yes, pretending to oneself does imply intellectual dishonesty, I think. . But what I am really after is why you claim that any pretence would have to be involved. You have not explained that so far. Whereas I have explained why there need not be any pretence. Where is my explanation at fault, in your view?

But where is the "pretence"? There is nothing in most religious beliefs that demands a God that continually intervenes in natural processes. Considering natural processes as unfolding according to laws that we can discover is something that can be done without any intellectual dishonesty on the part of the believer, surely?

Must admit I don't see how that is an answer. It seems to be a very ambiguous remark, raising immediately the questions of what evidence, and evidence of what, you are alluding to. The way I see it, for much of the history of science the uncovering of order in the physical world was seen as suggestive of the intricate work of a creator - and was celebrated as such, cf. Haydn's c.18th work Die Shöpfung (The Creation). Latterly, though, we have reached the point at which all this intricacy of nature is seen to stem from the operation of a relatively few, fundamental, orderly features of physics (what we sometimes call the "laws" of physics). So as far as the natural world is concerned, one is left with the idea that it is just these orderly features of physics that are responsible for the rest of "creation". Einstein and Spinoza seem to have identified this basic order in nature with what is commonly called God. But religion is not principally concerned with the creation of the physical world anyway. It is much more about providing a guide for individuals to live their lives by. This is much more to do with the subjective experiences of individuals and their interactions: the world of human feelings, harmony with nature, spirituality and so forth. The physicalist can dismiss all that as just the operation of the machinery of the body, and a resulting edifice of fantasy, but that does seem to write off a lot of what people find important.

This is rather an odd remark. Plenty of famous scientists in the past have been religious believers, and plenty are today too, without needing to "pretend" about anything.

I can't help, though at least I now know what a potometer is, thanks to your enquiry. So thanks for that. From reading about them briefly, it seems to me that anyone providing you with tips for their use will first of all need to know what type you are using.

Well "Tina", comment removed by mod. I bet you can't provide a link to a reference showing Beall's "apology". Furthermore I note you do not deny the Wiki statement about the mass resignation of the editorial board in 2014.

20mph is quite a strong breeze, for a city house. 10mph would be a more realistic average, I should have thought, judging by the daily wind speeds in London weather forecasts at least. Which presumably reduces the power by a factor of 4.

My understanding is that in general they are all different combinations. For instance camembert requires both bacteria and a particular penicillium mould (a fungus) to develop its characteristic flavour, rind and texture.

Re ( d) I do not believe you can calculate ΔH for the decomposition from the information you have been given. I assume you have to look up some enthalpy values. It is not clear to me what is meant by the 3 different values you quote. Your ( e ) is a reaction scheme for the formation of N2O4 from oxygen and nitrogen, but it is not a reaction mechanism for the decomposition of N2O4, which I think is what you are being asked for. I think you need a step to activate the molecule and then a step by which it dissociates.

Yes. That is what we used to do on the lubricating oil plant, when changing a blending vessel from one product family to another that was not chemically compatible.

Get psychiatric help or take your meds.

In French they do speak of un jaune d'oeuf (et un blanc, bien sûr). I don't know about other languages.