VendingMenace

cool, well i thought this article from Chemical and Engineering News was well-timed seeing as there was a raging debate about glass just a fews days ago on this forum. It does not really answer any of the issues that were brought up in the course of the discussion, so i didn't post it in that thread. But it does have some interesting facts about glass, how it is made, it hisotry, ect. I thought it was kinda cool, so i figured i would share it with y'all. Enjoy http://pubs.acs.org/cen/whatstuff/stuff/8147glass.html

Now in response to DeoxyriboNucleicAcid... Yeah, their are many people that have the same belife. That is that the universe was created, but it just evolved to where it is now. Kinda like a watch is wound up and then set into motion. It is an interesting idea. Although i take it one step farther. That is, there is one statement in your post that i take issue with. It is; I personally find this hard to accept. It seems that as far as fertilization goes, the egg and sperm carry all the complex machinery needed for life already. All that is required is for them to unite. Thus, there is no need for them in reinvint the wheel, so to speak, and come up with all the chemicals all on their own, from scratch. Perhaps it is my inability to grasp the probabliities involved properly, but i feel that it is exceedingly imprabable (not impossible) that life just arose from chemicals. It seems that there are way to many things that needed to happen in order for the most basic life form to arise just by change. I am not saying that you are wrong, just that personally, i find it difficult to accept life arising from non-living chemicals. that is all. Now i am not saying that evolution (in the proper sense of the word) does not happen. It most certainly does. But in this sense it requires pre-existing populations of organisms. I find it hard that life could "evolve" from chemicals. As such, i find the idea of a creator quite appealing. Of course with this idea there are problems as well. For instance, where did this creator come from? We can keep asking this question as long as we allow for a natural creator. Becuase of this, eventually we are forced to look for a creator that is not bound by the laws of nature, as we know them, and must find designate one that is outside of nature, or supernatural. This, i think is how one arrise at the conclusion that life either arose ultimately from chemicals or from supernatural causes. WEll then, that was quite a rambling post, wasn't it? For those of you that took the time to read it. Thank you. I look forward to your comments, if any.

Did you not read my above post? I do want a discussion. Most assuradly. if you are not trying to prove a point, then how could you claim that you were trying to have a discussion? How am i supposed to purchase a tape when i don't know what the name of it is??? If you give me the name, perhaps i will listen to it. THere is no need to end the debate. However, if you wish to continue it, it would be nice if you would present us with arguments for your position. Otherwise, there is no debate. I assume that you are in possesion of arguments for you position as in another thread you claimed that you had a long debate on this subject when you were in 11th grade. It would be nice to see some of these arguments. I really would be interested in it.

well, i think the title is somewhat explanitory -- what do you think is the simplest life form possible? Put another way what are the minimal requirements that must be met in order for something to be alive? Some of the best discussions i have had concerned this question and while i have never really reached an adequate answer, i enjoy hearing others thoughts on this. So, i geuss i will start this off with what i am currently thinking... I think any set of components that are able to self-replicate without the use of outside machinery (or mechanisms) is considered alive. Under this defninition a virus would be considered not alive while a virus-host pair would be consdiered alive. Of course the host it self would be considered alive by itself. The problem with this definition of course is that a robot that could replicate itself, along iwth a source of power, would be considered alive. But then again, perhaps such a robot should be considered alive (but i personally don't think so). So something must be missiing from the definition. But what? I dont know :/ Anyways, i look forward to all your thoughts and insights into this question. Good day!

Atlantic, i do not understand why you have responed in such a way to my post. I did not mean to appear argumentative or agressive. I was merely stating what i thought. YOur reply on the other hand seems to add quite little to the discussion. I will however try to respond to what you have written. I can only hope that your next reaponse will be somewhat more informative. There are also branches of creationists that belive that the earth is much older than 6,000 years. Thus, believing that the earth is 4 billion years old does not make one an evolutionist. Though i feel that most people must admit that elvolution does happen,as it does. The evidence for evolution must be accepted, except by the most closed-minded persons. (remembering of course that evolution is merely a change in genotypes within a population over time.) Now going from accepting that evolution occurs to accepting that man evolved from basic chemicals -- that is a different story all together. However, an evolutionis does not need to belive this either. Sure, lets. Then lets try to figure out if any cheese that we know of could sustain the temperatures found in the inside of the sun. Also we fail to see any spectroscopic eveidence for cheese in the sun. Oh yeah, the strength of the gravitational feild of the sun also does not really lend one to conclude that the sun is made of cheese. Of course, there is also the fact that cheese, cosmically speaking, seems to be a fairly rare occurace, requiring the precence of both a mammal and bacteria, of wich we find little evideence for on the sun. What i am trying to say here is, I fail to see your point. I see no connection whatsoever between believing that the earth is 4 billion years old and that the sun is made of cheese on the inside. One one side we have some evidence that the earth is quite old, on the other, we find that there is little evidence that the sun is made of cheese. It seems to me a poor analogy. Frankly, i am quite disspointed by your response. I had merely tried to state the problem as i see it. Wich is science relies heavily on uniformatarianism (old earth's weakness) while at the same time there seems to be little make us belive that uniformatariasm is incorrect (young earth's weakness). It seems to me that perhaps you belive in a young earth? That is fine. However, if you would like to take part in a discussion about old earth, then it would be appreciated if you would acutally supply reasons that we should belive in a young earth (or at least reject an old earth). Please do not take this as an attack (perhaps i too belive in a young earth, i have not stated my position on this) i really do just wish to discuss this. But to have a discussion we must have participation from both sides, not just crazy analogies that really don't make a whole lot of sense and really add nothing. in the sprit of discussion, i will now move on to talk about the only evidence that you seem to have offered against old earth.... WEll then, was this a live penguin? IN which this would certainly offer at least a small problem. Or perhaps it was a penguin that had been dead for 3,000 years? IN wich case there is no conflict. Of course carbon dating is not the only way we arrive at dates of things, so even were we forced to reject carbon dating (which we woundn't be on only one case) there would still be many many things that would allow us to conclude that teh earth must be quite old. WEll, i truly do hope that you will choose to reply to this thread and that your next reply will contain something that contributes to the discussion. Truly, i do not wish this to be a hostile environment. You must have some reason for believing in a young earth and would enjoy hearing it. There is no need to go on the defensive right away, i am just trying to discuss what we both may or may not belive. That is all

no problem agreed. The movement of the electron must be do to outside forces and not from the time-evolution of its state.

Well, in the theory of limits (and really just series exansions) we find that infinite series converge on finite numbers. But perhaps this is a bit abstract... Ok, infinite means never ending...sure. But in the example above, how long did it take the person to count up the infinite steps? Four seconds. So we see that in the case given above we can add up an infinite series in only four seconds. This is becuase the time it takes for each step decreases with each step. It decreases so fast that when we have added everything up it has only taken us 4 sec. I know this seems wierd, but it is true. Thus, even though we may have to take an infinite amount of steps, it will take us only a finite amount of time to accouplish this task. It's true, i promise. And in this way we find that movement is possible. Well, i agree with you here. In fact, it has been proven (by Godel) that if math is sufficienty powerful to be useful it, in fact, must give us contradictory results. So in essense you are correct, however, your choice of examples is not the best. Specifically, movement is not a mathmatic impossibility.

i thought you would be talking about zeno's paradox. I didn't feel like trying to come up with a short answer, so i took one from http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/prime/articles/zeno_tort/index.asp if you don't want to read it, here is the pertenent part is this a satisfactory answer as to why movement is, after all, mathmatically possible? Or are there some other issues that i am missing?

yeah, i wasn't able to post either, which was a bummer, since i was enjoying this discussion lets see if in can remeber what i was going to say... the movement of only one electron becomes problamatic and we must be careful in our definitions. The reason being that current is usually a measure of how much charge desity move past a certain point in a given amount of time. SO what we do is find a point along a circut or whatever and then see how much charge moves by in a given time. With at least 2 particles is not a porblem (even though it may be kinda crazy to do, since n=2 is a poor sample size, but i digress), however, with one electron we are presented with a problem. This problem lies in the fact that an electron is considered a dimensionless particle. Thus, an electron can pass by a point in no time at all. Thus, when we talk about a sigle electron, we find that a finite amount of charge (1 eV) can pass by a point in no time at all. Thus the number given by charge over time is infinity. Thus for only one electron we must find that our current is infinite. This of course makes no sense and that is why it is improper to speak of current when only considering one electron. Current is a property of more than one thing -- as it is really a statistical value. In fact, most often in is spoken of as a bulk property and requires many electrons moving. Of course this may be somewhat nit-picky for this discussion. I am unsure now what we are talking about. Are we saying that voltage nessesitates current or that mesuarement of things require movement of electrons? And we must decide what constitues movement of electrons, i thnk that kedas is on to something with his definition how about we just say, when an electron is displaced from the position (or state) in wich we would expect to find it, given no outside influence? I think that is quite close to what you were saying, kedas. But your definition is fine too. One last thing i want to ask. Are we working soley in the realm of what we can make in this world at this time, or can we use theoretical arguments. I ask only becuase of this; I must admit, this made me smile NOt really a theorist, are you YT? But that is cool. Will you accept as true something that is currently only true in theory? Or must we be able to build it today in order for it to be applicable to this discussion? Just curious, becuase you will not hear me say that we can build an ideal device, just that conceptually one can exist.

cool. can you give us some reasons for 6,000 years?? That would be sweet! or at least interesting

i don't understand you summary, but i would like to point this out... Huh? In a gravitational feild ALL things fall at the same rate. This does not matter if it is air, water, a hammer, a feather, whatevere. They all fall at the same rate. Of course, we must assume that the box itself does not expreience any drag, but i think that is a fair simplifying assumption to make, esp since the box could be falling toward the moon or mars where there is little or no atmosphere, and hence little drag.

well first off...an evolutionist does not need to belive that the earth is 4 billion years old. He only needs to belive that evolution happens -- which it certainly does. Now as far as knowing that the earth is 4 billion years old, people meausred stuff and made informed guesses, there are many many ways to arive at the age of the earth being as old as science says it is. SO many that i will not even really cover them. Of course all of them rely on the assumption of uniformatarinism, wich is the idea that things in teh past pretty much happend as they do today. SO perhaps a more poinant question would be "HOw do we know that things happened in the past as they do today?" The answer is, of course, we do not, but that makes the most sense to assume. But perhaps that is just me

well, when you are hungry your blood sugar is typically low. With a low blood sugar, you body slows down, to concerve energy. As such your thought processes are probably limited too. Also, if you are thinking about being hungry, you are prolly not thinking about math

Ok, i'll bite. How is movement mathmatically impossible?

yeah, well of course, but what else do you call a moving mass of air? Breeze? Anyways, wind is not very quantitative, but i think you get the point. As far as calulation goes, we would need to know what the starting heighth was for the elevator, the mass of the balloon, the pressure of the helium in the balloon, the rpessure of the air in the elevator, how tall the elevator was, the location of the balloon within the elevator, the viscocity of the air, and the resistance of the air. But other than that, it should be pretty straight forward. Espcailly if you make some simplifying assumptions. Perhaps if i am bored this weekend i will do it. But don't count on be being that bored

but in free fall, there will not be (cannot be) a net boyant force. Boyanc force = (volume of substance displaced)*(density of displaced substance)*(net gravitational acceleration) so, in free fall the net gravitational accleration (from the frame of the thing falling) is zero, and so the boyant force must also be zero :/

so you content that measureing any property of an electron must also draw current? (i say any, becuase if an electron has any measurable property, it must also exist. SO measureing any property is the same as finding out that it exists) i think we are treading into a quagmire here. For one, talking about individual electrons and current makes little sense, since current is a bulk property. Second, once we start talking about single elctrons we are now in the relm of QM. Also, electrons are always moving. The uncertainty priciple insures this. Thus, if we are going to talk about current, we need a better definition for this discussion. Anyways, just my thoughts, if we are going to talk about this more, we need some definitions... I would suggest the following...(but give me your thoughts too) 1) Current -- the net movement of a "significant" amount of electrons in a definite direction. (significant being "more than two??) 2) Measurement of an electron -- measurement of any physcially observable property (since we are talking about voltage the relevant ones would seem to be charge and position) Anywyas there is a start. Also, YT could you try to phrase your assertion as unabiguously as possible? Are you trying to say that voltage cannot exist without current? Are you saying that all measurements require movement of electrons? Are you merely saying that we cannot currently contruct in ideal device? I must admit i am having trouble understanding your position as well. Cool

lol at my original post, i had to run real fast to get to my class, and i didnt think through the original post well enough. That being said, here[ is what would happen...(i think) In the begginning, we have a box filled with air with a balloon filled with helium in it. The balloon is held in place. Now the box is released into free fall and at the same instant the balloon is released as well. We all know (thanks to gallileo) that all things fall at the same rate. Thus, the elevator, the air in the elevator and the balloon would all start to fall at the same rate. HOwever, there would still be a concetration gradient in the air, due to the conditions before the elevator's release. Thus, we would expect the balloon to "float up" initially. HOwever, quite quickly the gas would diffuse from the area of greater concetration to the areas of less concetration, untill the air in the elevator was of uniform concetration. This diffusion would be in a net direction ("up"). Thus there would be a slight wind, do to the moving air. This wind would carry the balloon up as well. Once the air's concentration was equilibriated, there would be no boyant force acting on the balloon. Thus there would be nothing pushing it "up". There would be no other net force (from the frame of the box) acting on the balloon either. Becuase of this, the balloon would continue to move up with its velocity gained in the two above paragraphs. However, eventually the balloon would hit the top of hte box and bounce "down". The balloon would continue to move about the box until the air resitance stopped it (this would take a while). At this time, the balloon would be falling at the same rate as the box and hte air in the box, and would not be observed to move. The point being that; 1) Everything falls at the same rate 2) After diffusion of the air in the box, there will be no net boyant force on the balloon. Thus, it will not float "up." 3) Once everything stops moving from its initial perturbance, things will be stationary with respect to eachother, due to point 1. Of course this is only for the case of free fall, wich was the original question. It is one of the cool results of a uniform gravitational feild (wich is basically just something that will ensure everything, all the molecules and everything, will be accelerating at the same speed). Anywyas, that is how i think it would happen. Sorry about that original post, i gotta learn to think things through before i write *sigh*

wow, atlantic, what a fantastic question! Seriously, that is an excellent question. Atlantic said: excellent reasoning, but you forget that the balloon is also a free object, just like the air, and so the elevator would be continually "running into" it, in effect. So the ballon would be found more at the top. At least in the beggining, the ballon would appear to "float up". In the end, it would look just like everything else in free fall. Just my opinion. This is not good reasoning. Things tend to float up due to a density gradient formed by the gravitational field they are in. IN free fall, the air does not really expreience this, so to speak, and as such there is no density gradeint, and the balloon would not float up just becuase it "its natural tendency is to move up". Besides, in free fall in a windowless room, how would you know what was "up"? A similare question would be, if you brought a helium balloon into an orbiting spaceship and let it go, where would the balloon end up or down or what? and why?

voltage = difference in electric potientials (usaully charge) current = flow of electric charge

ah cool, yeah i already knew about the data transmission due to total internal reflection, and i thought this was the only way the fiber optic cables really worked. I cannot think of a way in which flexibility effects theoretical limits to data transmision either. Cool thanks. No worries, just thought i had missed something that is all

agreed, in the real world it is not possible. However this does not mean that votage is somehow dependent on current. THat voltage cannot exist without current. There is absolutely nothing that keeps us from having a perfect battery except our innability to design one. That is to say, there is no reason why voltage could exist without current, we just can't make something that does that right now.

Huh? Either flexibility effects transmition or it doesn't. If it does, how does it? (not trying to be an ass, i really am curious)

perhaps i don't quite understand how fiber optics work then, how does flexibility effect data trasmition?

well, i don't quite see what this has to do with voltage existing? Let's give you the benifit of the doubt for now and assume that you cannot measure voltage without drawing current, ok? So now, we can never measure voltage without drawing current, does this mean that voltage is dependent on current? Does the voltage difference not exist until we measure it? This doesn't seem to make sense. We know that votage is just a difference in charge, esentailly. Thus, if we assume that voltage is dependent on current, we are saying that there can be no charge difference if the charges are not moving? i don't really know what else to say other than the equations for voltage do not tell us that voltage is dependent on charge (i wish i had a physics book with me). Thus, we know that theoretically there can be voltage without current. That is a fact that is given to us by the equations. Of course, like i said earlier, i don't know if this can be practically realized. There is always leakage. Since it cannot really be practically realized, there may not be a way to measure voltage that will ensure that there is no movement of electrons. One way we could test for the absence of current is to take a capacitor and measure the magnetic feild around it. If it was an ideal capacitor (no current between the plates) we would observe to magnetic field, despite the fact we know the plates are charged. WE would be forced to conclude then that there is no current, even though there is voltage. I would like to stress again though, that your requirement for a way to measure voltage without inducing current is not a very strong argument. Basically, it asks for proof of an idea using less than ideal instrmentation. If you want proof of an ideal you must look at the idea (found in the equations) WEll, hope that helps some