Slashdot Mirror
It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Quickies
It's been a long time coming, so lets start off the quickies with some acts
of senseless damage. Old Wolf
sent us a link to a bunch of pictures of someone Defrosting a Freezer in the best way ever, and an
anonymous reader sent in a site that shows what happens if you put a
CD in Microwave.
Don't use AOL CDs., send them to this lady who collects them
(from gr8fulnded). On to the sex! An anonymous reader submitted a story
about the Robot
Pet Vibrator which is I guess AIBO gone wrong.
elkm discovered
Computerized Contraception. And with
all this digital doin' it going on, its good know that
MITs Erotic Computation Group is here
to research it (thanks
Chris Moon)
The world is full of strangeness, but little of it is as scary as
MissNachos's link to the
Hello Kitty laptop, srini's
link to the Single Pixel Webcam, and aneanti's link to a collection of the
strangest canned foods you'll ever see.
Finally, since it is the holidays, check out mrv's link to LED Christmas Lights which sure beats the hell out of finding the broken bulb.
I've had some since around 1992... but that's innovation for you.
Contrary to that method, the traditional action involves putting a boiling kettle into the empty freezer. This removes the ice quite nicely. If you ever try to de-ice an upright freezer by any method, MAKE SURE you put some sort of vessel in the bottom to catch the water dripping, otherwise you'll turn around and see water flooding out of the freezer and ruining the floor. Yes, this is from experience ;-)
May I suggest to you, and all you AOL CD haters, to save up your CD's and ship them to nomoreaolcds.com? They have over 7,000 already, but need alot more to reach their goal of one million!
The new URL is http://www.exonome.com/fj/phkl/.
Please use the new URL. The owner of the site of the old URL would probably rather not be slashdotted.
Incidentally I know the guy who did this, he's utterly cool. You should check out some of his other stuff at http://www.exonome.com/fj/ such as ToriAntiTori and Virginity At Last. (ObDisclaimer: I had a hand in the latter.)
Slashdotted... so web.archive.org to the rescue!
e cg.media.mit.edu/
http://web.archive.org/web/20011201213554/http://
-- Yoz
remember what the d in led stands for. diode. an led running off 60hz ac will only be on half the time, i think it would noticable.
-- free as in swatantryam - not soujanyam.
Take a bunch of mini-marshmallows and spread them out evenly on a plastic tray, covering the whole tray with a single layer. Put this inside a microwave, making sure that the tray doesn't rotate. Turn the microwave on for ~30 seconds on low.
Now, take the tray out of the microwave. You'll see a repeating pattern in the marshmallows, going from puffy to flat and back to puffy again in an array. What you're seeing is the standing wave of the microwaves reflecting off of the sides of the microwave.
Now, measure the average distance between peaks in the standing wave. This is the wavelength of the microwaves. Now, here's the cheating part. Look on the back of the microwave for the frequency of the microwaves. It's usually around 2540 MHz. Calculate the speed of light from
c = frequency x wavelength
Heh. Now that I've written that all out, I've found a link. Here's another, very similar method on : bowle's physics.
Brant
There is absolutely no danger as long as the casing remains intact. Microwaves don't cause the object subjected to them to become radioactive. If they did, you would see a hell of a lot of people walking around glowing in the dark (cellphone users, people living by microwave towers).
Having said that, it is IMPERATIVE that you NEVER operate a microwave oven with the door open or even suspect that the casing may be damaged in any way. Otherwise, these little tricks are safe.
---
I didn't want to leave this space blank.
Another neat MW trick is building a sustained plasma ball
it is done w/ a pencil led and a microwave-safe glass ball... very cool, must try.
see here also.
This?
The approximate quote went something like "I actually really like the quickies too, but they take a lot of work. You need at least a half dozen links, and people just don't send in many interesting, small things for me to use. So send in more quickies, and I'll post them more often." I think it was in a Geeks in Space episode (which are highly entertaining, I listened to most of them while playing Half-life).
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/03/technology/03ERO S.html?searchpv=nytToday
E RO S.html?searchpv=nytToday
or copy/paste:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/03/technology/03
I can't get it to work, though I did ruin a pretty good plate. I think it sparked but no explosive flames, I'll just have to go try it again...
Twitter.com/TrentonHyatt
Microwave oven seems to do quite a lot of tricks on
a rr os/sam.html
anything conductive. Here I found a plasuible explanation. Not sure if it makes scientific sense....
http://members.tripod.com/~hochwald/microwave/b
There's one in every crowd, so here goes...
5.5 oz times 28.4 grams per oz is 156 grams. Pure fat, the highest calorie food available, has 9 calories per gram, so 156 grams times 9 calories per gram is 1406 calories maximum.
According to the USDA Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, Release 14 Braised Pork brains have 138 calories per 100 grams or 215 calories in our 5.5 oz can.
Yeah, I know, the satirical art by Mom and Pop artist Mandy Warhole makes a better story, but someone has to standup for the pork producers.
Amazingly just last Saturday, I was discussing hog butchering with some of the old-timers and they said that they used to serve Pork Brains and Scrambled Eggs for lunch on Butchering Day. I'm not making this up...
That's true, but according to stochastic nature of sub-particle processes, some electrons will still be able to leave the surface of the metal, even if very few. This is, btw, a good example of demonstrating how, some electrons, even if they have lower energy than a certain energy barrier, will be able to cross that barrier. It's just the likelyhood that's very small, hence the small number of electrons that will make it through.
Sigged!
But mainly, using Venik's Aviation page as a source disqualifies the story. Venik is well-known in Usenet aviation groups as a conspiracy theorist who likes to give events his own spin. Current claim (called a "theory"): AA587, the Airbus that crashed in NYC, may have been shot down by a surface-to-air missile.
-- H. Wilker