Joatmon

Here is the fun machine!

You could put a little turbine in the water supply to your home to put some charge into a battery every time you used water. If you were dishonest and not on a water meter you could leave a tap running! Of course you are not getting energy from the water, but from the supply driving the pumps at the water company.

I tend to agree with this idea. As far as I can remember I could get no clue from the person in front of me such as height, build or voice. I suppose I'm fortunate that the person revealed wasn't some sort of Ogre with a chainsaw!

I guess it sort of explains if I can accept that my dreaming is basically a small window on my total brain function. I still find it surprising that my overall brain function could even consider playing a practical joke on me. I'm not really worried about this - just surprised.

If you have a telescope or binoculars you can see the transit of Venus. The attachment is one I saw in 2004 using my telescope. The black dot is Venus against the sun. The distortion is because my projection is onto a vertical wall. If interested just follow the link. Please, please don't try to see it with your naked eye! 3 You may project a magnified view of the sun through a reflector telescope or binoculars onto a white surface, http://www.transitof...ransit-of-venus

I have to agree that the ease of communication with people you have never met and for whom you don't sense responsibility has been, for me, a novelty and something of a cultural shock. On a forum such as this which is largely asking questions and seeking answers then probably it is too easy to be dogmatic and arrogant. I have, quite rightly, been "hauled over the coals" for this very thing. It made me think!

I think the quadrilateral you are trying to describe is bounded by part of AB part of BC and the two bisecting lines. This is, in fact a rectangle because all angles are 90 degrees. It can be proved that this rectangle has half the area of the right triangle ABC. (you can use "mirror image" congruent triangles using the mid point of AC). Since angle ABC is 90 degrees you are correct in saying the area of ABC is 1/2(a*b) Therefore you are correct in saying the area of the rectangle is 1/4(a*b) Out of interest if you made a complete circle that goes through A B and C you could complete a rectangle using A B C and the other semicircle. If you extend your bisecting lines to the other sides of this rectangle you will see that your "quadrilateral" is a quarter of this new rectangle. This new rectangle has an area ab, so once again you get 1/4ab as the answer you want! Be wary - all this concerns right triangles.

Yes it will. In fact they will fall on the mid point of AC. If you call the mid point of AC "O" then lines OA OB and OC are radii of a circle. You can work from there to prove your statement.

Although I never experienced it, when I worked with computers there were many tales of short sighted women with ample breasts reporting extra spaces appearing for no reason at all. These spaces resulting from the space bar being nudged accidentally. Here is another similar tale I found:- "We had a complaint from a user about blancs suddenly appearing in her typing. She told us that whenever she types and looks at her monitor nothing happens. But when she looks away over her right shoulder,blancs suddenly appear on the screen. It took us quite a while to find out what the problem was. Then we realized that her heavy breasts hit the space bar." http://www.ucs.cam.a...isc/techsupport

I would like the "View new content" page to be automatically refreshed after each post. Sometimes when I'm spending time on my computer (For example playing poker) I keep the forum page active and have a quick look now and again to see what is happening and of interest. I rather suspect that some people at work do much the same with a minimised page! It's not a big deal - but it would add a little convenience.

I had a dream last night which, for me at least, has implications that I can't explain. I was in a house, not my own, when the door bell rang. I was aware of being alone. I went to the door and found it slightly open. I opened the door fully and a female figure stood outside wearing a long navy blue cape. The cape had a collar that was raised enough to hide her lower face and a hood pulled over the top of her face so that I could really only see her eyes. She told me she was a nurse from Social Services who had come to visit. (I never have dealings with Social Services). I said that she had better come in, which she did. She then lifted the hood and lowered the collar.Then I could see that it was my own daughter who was laughing because she had played a practical joke on me. So what's my problem? Well, my brain must have set up this situation and so my brain must have known the identity of the hidden female figure all through the dream. How could my brain know and yet I, myself, me, if you like my real self not know? Your mental existence surely lies within, not outside of your brain. I don't understand how my brain could play a practical joke on me!

Work related - not lab related but I once stood looking at the back of a mainframe computer watching a great deal of sparking and arcing taking place causing balls of molten metal to run down to the floor where they were singeing the carpet. My boss just said to me "Show me a man who never made a mistake and I'll show you a man who never did anything!"

(Ref #17) - Sorry hypervalent_iodine. I thought oobleck was an entirely fictional substance . I didn't realise that a mixture of starch and water with non-newtonian characteristics could be a serious and interesting experimental medium!

Wouldn't even have to take them off - except to dry them afterwards

There is a serious problem if we consider declining birth rates at a time when medical science is extending the lives of the elderly. It is accepted in our society that elderly people have a right to spend their last years out of the "rat race". Although people may do what they can to provide for this retirement, extension of life inevitably results eventually in the elderly needing support in one form or another from the young. Sometimes how the young are forced to do this is not immediately apparent. In my own case I paid into pension schemes which have provided me with a decent standard of living for the last twenty years. However in the process I have had more out of the pension schemes than I put in. The shortfall is being made up from the pension contributions made by today's young workers (who's own pension schemes are in debt). In theory, I suppose, everyone should retire at a greater age - but today's workers see that what we ,the elderly, have been given is what they also deserve. Who can blame them? I have no answer - just stating one of the problems associated with a declining birth rate at a time when life expectancy is increasing.

I've had to have a colonoscopy in the past. They let me look at the monitor whilst they did it. Rather like going through the Mersey Tunnel. Quite interesting and not really painful. However I'm really glad that I didn't need a colostomy!

I think another way at looking at irrationality, which I think in essence is similar to Michel's idea of relative ratios is this:- Take a ruler divided in to 12 equal sections and number the sections 1 to 12. e.g. a normal 12 inch ruler. Now ask someone to mark where the square root of two is and it is impossible. Whatever mark they make will represent either more or less than the square root of two. Take the same ruler but this time number the sections 1*root 2 to 12*root 2. Now ask someone to mark where 1 is and that is impossible. Whatever mark they make will represent either more or less than 1. If I've misunderstood Michel's point then apologies in advance!

Another similar triangle could be considered with the two sides each being the square root of two. The hypotenuse would then be the rational number two. (IMO) Any triangle that is similar to the one described by the OP will have at least one side that is irrational. Sometimes two sides and sometimes all three sides will be irrational.

You may find the following use of abbreviations amusing. many years ago I worked in the UK for an American computer company (Sperry Univac). Like many of the others I was ex-British Forces with a reasonable experience of modern technology. Very often when we had to return a faulty item we would, as in the Forces, label it as unserviceable. The way we did it was to clearly mark it "U/S" or "U.S.". For some (strange?) reason our American masters didn't like us returning faulty items marked like this and asked us to mark them differently. So we scratched our heads for an alternative and from then on decided to mark the faulty items "Duff"! We had no more complaints!

The 12 inch triangle has a hypotenuse of approx 16.97 which is twelve times the square root of two which is irrational.

"The present lineage of dogs was domesticated from gray wolves about 15,000 years ago" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog As far as I know (which isn't much admittedly) grey wolves haven't changed much over the milleniums.

If you just consider animals recognised as dogs in the wild (i.e. those not influenced genetically by man) then (IMO) you won't find that much variation,

Here is another body (no pun intended - well perhaps it is) who may be pleased to accept your body after death. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_farm

You could use it in the production of gun powder - sadly, you would probably have little difficulty in selling it, http://www.wisegeek.com/can-you-really-make-gunpowder-from-urine.htm