Strange

There is a fundamental principle called conservation of energy. If you think you are getting more energy out than you put in then you have made an error. It is as simple as that. You just need to understand where your error is.

Who says we are talking about public land? And how is a room where you can't hurl abuse at people any different from a library where you have to keep quiet or a theatre where you can't yell fire? Or, to put it the other way round, if people don't want to work in a noisy library, they should just go home. And if they don't want their evening's entertainment constantly disrupted by fire alarms and riots, they can just stay home.

And that is what you described in your opening post. Now you are just changing the argument for no obvious reason. If you don't take into account all the energy (what did the fish eat, where did the water come from) and start with the equivalent of a charged battery (as in swansont's earlier example) then you won't have zero net energy expenditure. This has gone beyond pointless. Your initial result was obviously wrong. You seem to now understand why it was wrong. What is the point of carrying on? p.s. Where did you file that patent?

Unlike most Americans, most of the people in Europe have grown up with terrorism (certainly those over 40 or so). For most of my life, I felt I had to be hyper-aware when in London's West End, especially at times like Christmas. Luckily those days are long past and it is now much safer and I never worry about it. (I still remember the amazing sense of relief the first year I could walk down Oxford Street without a niggling fear at the back of my mind.) And, yes, they were mainly Christians. In the UK, at least. In Germany or Italy they tended to be far left groups.

None of those things would take you any closer to what it "really" is. They would just tell you more about how it behaves. Which is what science does already. And all it can do: describe observed behaviour. Reality (whatever it is, and whether it exists or not) is not directly measurable or detectable and so is outside the scope of science. It is in the scope of religion and philosophy. Or guesswork.

How did the fish get from the top to the bottom in the first place? So you agree that there is no net energy change when your ball starts at the top is taken to the bottom and then returns to the top. Good. But you have expended 20J to achieve zero energy change. A net loss of energy.

I think people could protest, but they shouldn't be able to stop the speaker. People who want to hear (whether they agree or disagree) can go along and debate the issue. However, if there was an area that was designated a "safe space" then that speaker should not be able to force their way into that room and give their speech there. Any more than they could insist on doing it in the library (a "quiet space") while people were trying to study. I can't see the problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus What do you mean by the "age of the limb"?

I don't understand that. If one member of a group decides to go home (their "safe space", as someone suggested earlier) does that mean the rest of the group cannot continue their discussion? (Only if the purpose of the "discussion" was to attack the departed member, perhaps.) So how is that any different from them going to a specific room on campus? There used to be no-smoking sections on planes and trains. That didn't stop people smoking elsewhere. When I lived in Asia, it would be quite common to hear some white males complaining about the fact they were stared at, talked about, avoided, etc. by (some members of) the local population. They found this quite outrageous. Other groups (women, people with dark skin, gays) didn't seem to complain as much, because they were used to it at home. It was normal for them. Personally, I found it an eye-opening experience to be exposed to the same behaviour that black and female friends had often mentioned as part of their daily lives.

I don't think lizards can regenerate limbs. Some can regrow an incomplete tail. Salamanders are better at regrowing full limbs, I think. How are you defining "age" the new limb? Surely whatever definition you use is the answer to your question.

Not sure what you mean by the wave function, but we can consider a photon in the CMB, for example. That has a wavelength that is about 1100 times longer than when it was emitted. And therefore 1100 times less energy. Where did the energy go? Well, it turns out that energy, and particularly conservation of energy, is not so well defined (or fundamental) in general relativity. http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/energy_gr.html http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/02/22/energy-is-not-conserved/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/02/22/energy-is-not-conserved/

And the fact that all of that stuff is there and completely unchanging (on the timescale we are concerned with) is exactly why the force is constant and uniform, and therefore you get the behaviour you observe. Who knows. All we can do is describe what it does, more or less accurately. We cannot know what it "really" is. That is a meaningless question. There is a branch of philosophy that deals with such things but it is all just guesswork and opinion. I can't imagine you would find that satisfying.

Just like a pendulum. The gravity is not manifesting in any oscillatory way. It is (on this scale) a constant force - constant in time and across the plate. In a case like this, you can just think of it as a constant force (Newton). Exactly the same force that holds you in your seat. Is that weird? I'm not sure. Not really relevant in this case. Just a much more complicated way of coming to the same result. I don't believe so. I think that would require a specific sort of asymmetry. (And they would be immeasurably small, anyway)

They seem consistent to me: 1. It is noteworthy that, while the spatial distance of two events can not be canceled, it reaches a minimum precisely for reference systems in which the two events are simultaneous. In other words: the spatial distance of two events is a minimum frames which the two events are simultaneous. 2. The spatial distance of two events that are simultaneous for a certain group of observers, is shorter for them than for all other observers in arbitrary motion relative to them. In other words: the spatial distance of two events, in the frame where they are simultaneous, is shorter than any other (i.e. it is the minimum) Does that help? Sorry. Ignore that. I misread the question. (Ironic!) Will have another go... OK. It is quite subtle. I don't know if I can explain it ... The distance between two events (remember an event is a point in space-time, not just space) is not the same as the length of a ruler, where the end points are only defined as (relative) spatial coordinates; in other words, they are not events. Also, the space-time distance between the events is invariant: the same for all observers. Perhaps one way to visualise this is the fact the the ruler is, as you say, shorter when perceived from the moving frame of reference. So if that shorter ruler is used to measure the spatial distance between the two events, then that distance will be measured as greater (because you are using a shorter ruler). Hopefully someone else can do a better job....

As this can be described by classical mechanics (it is basically the same as a pendulum) there is no reason to evoke any additional forces. That is because the system is relatively lossless (because of the rigidity of the plates and the surface). That you look into the mechanics of this and find the equation that describes this (you must have done "simple harmonic motion" in your time).

You have been shown, repeatedly, where the error is and how to do the calculation correctly. Perhaps you need to take one of those examples and say exactly which bit you don't understand.

I can only judge by what you post here. That is generally pretty damning.

There is (implausible as it seems) the sport of chessboxing. Given the grossly divergent opinions of our political leaders, this might be more appropriate. More entertaining, anyway.

I don't see why not. You made a statement about the relative frequency with which a group says one thing versus another. That seems perfectly amenable to quantitative analysis. This sort of work is frequently done by linguists. I have no idea if anyone has done the relevant research or what the results are. But then I am not making any claims about the relative numbers. You are. And, this being a science forum, it would be nice if you could provide some support. But of course, you don't have to. I just find them the worst possible way (with the possible exception of interpretative dance) to communicate information. Especially as they require me to go out of my way to make an extra effort to watch them. Drives me mad when people provide videos instead of instruction manuals.

Because it won't rise to 10m.

Because you are unable to see where your error is. (And it is you that must be wrong, not anyone else. For obvious reasons.) No. For one thing, this is a made up thought experiment that does not appear to be physically realistic. What makes the ball rise to 10m? Magic?

So people who routinely get verbal or physical abuse on the streets should just stay at home? The rest of that paragraph is so irrational, I'm not sure how to respond. How is it unconstitutional? You have already agreed that the constitution only stops the government restricting what you can say (and that there are limits to that). So if I say that "in this room, you are not allowed to abuse anyone else" then that is not unconstitutional. And if an organisation does it then it isn't unconstitutional. And, as we are debating the issue here, how does it "end debate"? In the thread created for this topic, when you were asked for evidence of this, you posted an example of something completely different. So either you have trouble understanding what you read or you were deliberately misrepresenting it. And other people have the right to disagree with you, to tell you to shut up, to throw you out. It would be good if you could provide some statistical evidence of this sort of double standard. I am not aware of it happening, so your perception that it happens may just be an indication of your own prejudices. Or the fact I am not ware of it may be because I am a "regressive liberal". Which is why we need data.

But you are not gaining any energy. It is like you have taken a ball to the top of a hill and then you say to people: "look if I give it a small push it rolls down the hill and we can use that to generate more energy than the push I gave it." While ignoring the energy taken to carry the ball up the hill in the first place. Does that mean you now see where your error is?

The same as it was when you started. In other words, you have expended 20 J to get no change in energy. -100J + 20J = a net loss of 20J -100J + 20J = a net loss of 20J

As you accused me of being a "regressive liberal", I will just point out that the one and only time I have taken part in any sort of political action was when my university tried to ban a speaker from a fascist party from speaking. We managed to get that ban overturned (and the cretin came and was ridiculed by his audience). So it sounds like you don't agree with the video which you posted to support your view. And the people who ban opposition political parties or criticism of the self-proclaimed President-for-Life think that there are legitimate reasons for criminalizing those things. So by you logic, it is OK for that freedom to be curtailed? Obviously not, but it does seem to indicate that you have a rather simplistic view and haven't really thought through all the implications. For example, you might agree that libelling/slandering someone is wrong and there should be laws against it. But then if someone is a witness in court case, should they be worried that they might be sued for giving evidence against the accused, if they are later found not guilty?