big314mp

We always celebrated june 22, as well as october 27. Didn't know about the 6:02AM - 6:02PM bit though.

My chem teacher always gave us an extra credit activity about moles, but that was the extent of celebration.

Personally, I like the producing of a mole of water from H2 and O2.

You got it. It doesn't need to be a one time use device, but it doesn't have to be reusable either. Keep in mind that your shock absorber will increase your terminal velocity instead of decrease it like a parachute, so you'll be going well over 200 mph.

I'm thinking that since gold is so soft, it will be extremely difficult to design and build a gold parachute. The one thing that stuck in my head is, where and how do you tie yourself to the parachute? It seems that if the parachute is thick enough to support your weight, it is too heavy to help, and vice versa.

However, gold is a soft, easily deformed metal. So some sort of system that would absorb the energy by deforming lots of relatively thin gold rods seemed like a better solution. Something like a birds nest.

And if designed correctly, the increase in weight could be counteracted by the increase in surface area.

i think it would be possible but you'd be looking at a multi-tonne(probably multi-kilotonne) device that will be rigid and far from practical and still very fragile and likely a use-once and then its trashed deal.

 

stick with slapping some gold paint on a traditional parachute. much better.

I thought the point of this exercise was to design a one time use device, that is made of gold, that we would jump out of a plane in. And then presumably keep the gold should we land safely .

The mythbusters lead balloon experiment comes to mind.

Could you instead design a gold shock absorber?

Would a plastic conical flask work? It might make it safer should it break. Doing it in a closed fume hood would also help.

Metals will reflect microwaves, hence why you don't heat food in a microwave with metal on it (aside from the sparking issue).

Not everyone has that kind of choice though. If you get offered a job and reject it in the UK you get a serious wack on your benifits the same goes if they suggest you apply for jobs and refuse... or if you quit your job...

I somehow convinced myself that this thread was about the US, even though it didn't start there .

In any case, ParanoiA already made the point I would've made.

I'll play devil's advocate here for a little:

What happens if the business owner originally operates the premises as a non-smoking establishment, and then switches to become a smoking establishment?

I have no opposition to the proper use of nuclear technology. It operates like any other tech, except more powerful. This can (and should) be put to good use.

My points are simple:

Space flight has a notoriously poor safety record. Testing needs to be done to ensure proper safety. This testing needs to ensure that the safety of such a rocket is on the order of a nuclear power plant.

Should a nuclear rocket be built, and then release significant amounts of radionuclides, public support for both the nuclear rocket and for terrestrial nuclear power use will evaporate. Quickly.

If public support for nuclear power evaporates, it may take a generation or more to rebuild that support. This hampers

The evidence:

Look at the Chernobyl disaster. Regardless of any science present, it trashed public support for nuclear power. Same for Three Mile Island. It doesn't matter that the safety features were turned off, current reactors are safer, current operators are better trained, etc. None of that matters to the public.

My conclusion:

You had better make damn sure that this nuclear rocket doesn't blow up and dump a bunch of radionuclides into the air. The public uproar will kill any and all nuclear projects for 30 years afterwards. So I think what I am advocating is reasonable: that such a rocket be held to a much higher standard than current space vehicles.

It is ridiculous to assume that we can plan for all problems with something as risky as space flight. Do you honestly believe that NASA engineers were too lazy to think of as many problems as possible, and engineer solutions to those problems? In spite of their best efforts, 2 shuttles still crashed. That is an unacceptable failure rate for something like a nuclear reactor.

And I'm beginning to suspect that you are greatly exaggerating the effect of coal power plants based on this paper:

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/01604120/1996/00000022/90000001/art00112

Well it is up to the workers to decide whether they want to work there or not.

It is. Conservation of angular momentum.

Ok, this makes sense.

Dak, I don't know what to tell you buddy. People will always rationalize putting their nose in your business. Even here in the supposed freedom loving states we are unable to have differing moral codes, free from government endorsement - from day one.

 

People seem to think all of their personal opinions should be law. So and so doesn't want to kill unborn babies in their belly, so no one else should either. So and so doesn't like trans-fats, so no one else should either. Make it law! The hubris required to trump everyone else's free opinion is atrocious.

 

It's as if they don't believe that slavery was morally justified by those engaged in it, and further justified by the law of the land. If they understood otherwise, then surely they would see that legislating morality is wrong - that you can't be sure your moral code is finalized and righteous in every way. And to prevent that atrocity again, we must force ourselves to live by an objective rule of law that only recognizes direct harm, so society can respond efficiently, immediately to the changing dynamics of morality as opposed to the slow, lumbering, beaurocratic mud of government.

 

Mankind is invested in government and seems to want more and more of it, which would seem to undermine the evolutionary goal I would think humans would agree on - self governance. Government is an unfortunate necessity that only seems to find its purpose in holding humans accountable for their agreements with "the group". Otherwise, government would be unnecessary. So rather than aim for voluntary cooperation with persuasion, we invest in forced compliance, which I don't believe will ever lead to voluntary compliance, and will sanitize individuality. We are doomed to be controlled indefinitely.

 

So, I would expect more and more invasion of your vices - judgements cast by the majority on what you should and shouldn't be doing with your body, rationalizing it with "the greater good" arguments. The same rationale used to justify dismissing health damage by auto exhaust and industrial pollution. We can't admit we're wrong so we don't repeat mistakes, we must justify our ignorance and repeat them over and over again because we don't like being hypocrites.

 

Never underestimate the ability of the human mind to fool itself. We are hypocrites for telling you not to smoke in the same room with us just after driving in rush hour traffic forcing all of the pedestrians to inhale our exhaust. It doesn't make it ok for you to poison the room, but we still can't admit our hypocrisy. Oh well, I'm fairly used to it actually.

...that was the most depressing thing I've read in a long while. Way to crap all over my day

you can see the effect for yourself at lower speeds. Throw a football with and without spin and see which throw is more accurate and farther.

Well, this shows that it does happen. But why? Is it really only the prevention of tumbling that kevinalm suggested?

The "coal power plants release radiation" is a roundabout appeal to emotion. It won't convince people here, as it is off topic.

Look at a nuclear power plant sometime. That is how much overbuilding is needed for people to trust nuclear power, even though that is an application that doesn't go anywhere. Without lots and lots of testing to conclusively prove that it is as safe as a nuclear power plant, the public will not trust it.

Also, consider asteroids. Solid balls of rock that are completely obliterated when they hit the ground. That should give you some idea of the level of overbuilding needed.

IMO, as of today, no. They are not resilient enough nor do the existing roof panels available (like for the Prius) generate enough power to make much of a difference.

 

With that said, however, that's just "as of today." I see no reason that efficiency and manufacturing improvements down the line won't make this approach a much more feasible piece in the overall puzzle.

The only one I had heard of (from a PopSci article) was a sunroof that had an integrated solar panel that powered a small fan to cool the inside of the car on hot days.

That's not really true, at all. The general consensus is that they need to be placed anywhere there is a need for power and where the sun shines. While solar may not provide the ONLY source, it is not simply being disregarded as useless for that reason.

 

I've never heard of such a thing. The sun shines in Alaska. Do you have any more information so I can research the phenomenon you're trying to represent here?

 

Oh... and this thread is nothing like the solar panels on wind mills thread. That thread was kinda stupid, despite the OPs heart being in the right place.

Well, the solar panel costs a certain amount of energy to build. If the solar panel does not produce at least that much energy over its life (which may be quite short as was pointed out) then it isn't worth it.

The sun does shine in alaska, just not too brightly. At least that was the logic I used to justify my point. Although I seem to be mistaken on this one:

http://www.absak.com/library/solar-photovoltaic-power

Damned logic fails again

Exactly how would this rocket, with out any warning what so ever, go from 6000 MS to zero in less than one second? Crashing? If was going to crash the safety protocols would remove the radio-nucleotides from the reactor in one of the three ways proposed before the crash. No space craft dies with out any warning what so ever, even the space shuttle had enough time for some of the protocols for the nuclear rocket to have kicked in and removed the radio-nucleotides from the reactor into storage that would have held them and prevented any spread. No one seems to mind a near by coal fired power plant releasing tons of radio-nucleotides on nearby cities, why would a small amount protected from any possible dispersal be a problem?

The article mentioned 3 scram modes. In all of the scram modes, the radionuclides are still on the spacecraft. If the entire space craft runs itself into the ground, then what? Unless the craft is so obscenely overbuilt that it couldn't get off of the ground, you will have a radionuclide release. And I can virtually guarantee you that a mess like that would kill all public support for both nuclear powered space travel, as well as terrestrial use of nuclear power. Is that really what you want?

And, just to pass on some advice, appeals to emotion won't convince anyone here.

Seems a bit unfair... you have the gold and the rainbows and I have...?

Nifty colors, and you may be charming?

There's something called compromise. It would be nice to just make it illegal to smoke, but we know that people are addicted, so they can't just quit, even if they want to. It would be nice to snap our fingers and make all autos emissions free, but that's pretty difficult. Doing nothing because we can't do it all makes no sense.

 

I guess those big tips pay for the lung cancer? There are risks to everything, this is true. We should expect reasonable approaches to reducing/avoiding risk. Firemen and Police are trying to save lives, they have extensive training and gear to reduce risks. Secretaries have ergonomic work stations, etc. They need to type to do their job. Waitresses do not need to inhale smoke to perform their duties, it isn't saving lives and customers do not need to smoke. Asking people not to smoke in certain areas sounds reasonable to me.

Asking people not to smoke in certain areas is fair enough. The question then becomes, which areas? I am very uncomfortable with the notion that government should legislate what happens on private property.

The examples I listed were just a few of many different positions that entail certain risks. Factories could spend millions of dollars to install robots to prevent workers from being exposed to the risks in the manufacturing of cars.

Or we could just outlaw cars, as they are too risky to everyone.

If someone can avoid a risk on their own, why does this risk need to be outlawed by the government? That strikes me as a nanny state.

I suppose this will all finally boil down to the public safety vs public freedom debate, at which point we will have a stalemate .

Either you didn't read the article or you didn't pay attention to to what the article said. I'm betting you just skimmed it and made your own conclusions.

Assuming something like that is a rather dangerous thing to do on a science forum . You couldn't be more mistaken.

Going to space is a risky endeavor. Even with technology that we supposedly have mastered, the safety record of space flight is pretty awful.

For example: According to wikipedia, the space shuttle has had 128 flights. 2 out of these 128 flights resulted in destruction of the orbiter. Thus, this implies a 1.6% chance of the space shuttle blowing up .

This is not a promising record for putting nuclear materials into flight. I'd like to see you sell that one to the public.

Be mean and dump a bit of KOH in it, so that it has a nice burn to it.

This was a very cool article.

I think the technology will need decades of ground testing before it will be accepted however. An accident/explosion on the way up (or down) would be absolutely unacceptable.

The problem with private business in the public square is that you do have a responsibility to the employees and customers. You can't expect employees to be exposed to smoke all the time as part of their employment, IMO.

 

Air quality in the Smokey Mountains during high pollen seasons may be worse, but are we going to wait until we get that fixed before we do anything about smoking?

Yet we expect firefighters to run into burning buildings to save lives. Yet we expect police to put themselves in danger to stop criminals. The military. Drug test subjects. Chemists exposed to carcinogens and mutagens (this actually happened to a woman who lives down the street from me, and it caused birth defects in her son). The designer of the new Toyota Hybrid Camry allegedly died from overwork and exhaustion. Test pilots of experimental planes. Heck, even secretaries getting carpal tunnel syndrome from typing too much.

But god forbid we allow wait staff to be exposed to some tobacco smoke.

People in many different sectors of business and industry are paid to take risks and do a job. I don't see why this is any different.

As to the other bit, I don't think I typed out my point quite clearly. The point that I was trying to make, is that people accept crap air quality for some reasons but not others. The question is, why is tobacco smoke separated from all of the other reasons that air ends up polluted?

Yes, and bigfoot survived and crawled out of the crater.

actually it was the yeti with high voices that someone mentioned before

See, my objection is less about the issue of pollution, and more of an objection to legislating what people do on their private property. I see the work place as the private property of the employer. Some people work in hazardous positions, and perhaps wait staff in smoking areas should be paid more, according to the additional risk to the additional risk that they shoulder.

I am also reluctant to suggest a law about indoor pollution because I can see that enforcing such a law would involve some serious trampling of individual rights. ParanoiA brought up a very valid point about children in smoking households will be unfairly exposed to relatively high levels of indoor pollutants. Perhaps some indoor pollution law may be necessary, but at the moment, I can't think of any way to implement it properly. Perhaps if you could suggest one, I may take your side on this

I think a valid question that needs to be answered is "How far does a smoker need to distance him/herself from another person such that the effect of the smoker on the second person's air is negligible?" In my experience, I can smell cigarette smoke (outdoors) from maybe 15-20 ft away, but I can hardly believe that it is impacting my health. That's why I think that outdoors people should be allowed to smoke. In my experience, it seems to be a politeness issue more than a health one.

Well, depending on how much physics you have already had, you may be able to sit in on some physics lectures at the local university. Even if you don't understand everything, the exposure is good.