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To Boldly Go Where No Mento Has Gone Before
rjwoodhead writes "This past weekend, my entire family learned what it's like to float in freefall aboard G-Force One (recently featured on the Mythbusters' Moon Hoax show). Being science-lovers, we wanted to do some kind of original experiment. So we decided to test whether the Diet Coke & Mentos reaction was affected by the lack of bubble convection in microgravity. At the link you can find the story of how the experiment evolved and how we talked Space Adventures into letting us fool around with sticky and corrosive cola and candy inside their nice clean airplane, as well as high-speed video of the results."
He says 4 grand in the blog - and over at the zero g site it says 5200 when taxes are included, so it looks like prices have been bumped up. I'm still going to start saving up for it though.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I'm pretty sure the singular of Mentos is still Mentos.
I really, really should know this but...what's the music in the video?
In the comments of TFA it links to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Carnival_of_the_Animals
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
As in, the Harry Potter movies ripped it off from Camille Saint-Saens.
More specifically it's the 7th movement (Aquarium) of The Carnival of the Animals.
Ask and ye shall receive. http://www.fugly.com/videos/1424/poontos.html
Funny, but NSFW. Please mark that, as it can get people who work Saturdays in trouble (not me, but others)
and thought liquid binary explosives were possible to deploy on a plane because they'd seen in the movies that the baddies had these scary devices that mixed different colored liquids...
As John Carmack points out, it is not only possible to have explosives like this, it's not very difficult.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Yet I'm still curious why didn't they just use a glass filled with coke?
Or a tiny scrap of plastic wrapped around the coke, which they could unwind and then add the mentos using their stick.
Your point may be technically accurate, but it's misleading. The only difference between a parabolic flight and an elliptical orbit is that one intersects the Earth, and one does not. Of course, that whole hitting the Earth part kinda sucks, so that's why the airplane pulls out of its dive.
In orbit, the acceleration due to gravity is still substantial. The only difference is, the velocity tangent to that vector is sufficient that you're always falling towards Earth, but you always miss hitting it. You're falling over the horizon.
"(Note that "in orbit" is still inside the event horizon of Earth's gravitational well.) "
Event horizon has a specific meaning, and none whatsoever when not talking about black holes. There is no "event horizon" of Earth's gravitational well. It simply gets arbitrarily small with increasing distance.
"Where experiments would become fascinating is in a satellite in an orbit above Earth that matches the angle and period of the moon's, at a distance that would cause an equal gravitational pull from both Earth and the Moon, and see what happens with two equal but opposite gravity sources effecting the experiment!"
That's not really an orbit, that's a Lagrange point. The effects will be indistinguishable from orbit. Inertial frames of reference are indistinguishable.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
The problem is not whether such an explosive can exist. The problem is whether such an explosive could be mixed in an airplane bathroom without anyone noticing and remain unexploded long enough for Our Villain to get it out of the bathroom and up next to the skin where it might do some serious damage.
Everything I've heard about such binary explosives indicates that the outcome is an explosion while mixing the stuff in the bathroom, one badly injured terrorist, and one trashed airplane lavatory.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
As a nice, bright and shiny illustration of just how safe you are with these people being given free reign is illustrated by the story of how the TSA grounded 9 planes. My favorite quote: "TSA agents are now doing things to our aircraft that may put our lives, and the lives of our passengers at risk".
I am yet to be convinced there is a measurable return on investment for the money wasted on TSA, investment in HUMINT would have been a better use of the budget. and THAT annoys me most when those morons do their usual.
I guess the use of room temperature IQs is essential to stop anyone from thinking about what they're doing, but the result is that they give the impression of being people rejected for writing parking tickets because they were too stupid.
It is a price for security.
That's a funny use of the word "price". Normally when you pay the price for something, you get that something in return. I see no evidence that the price we pay constantly to the TSA results in getting security in return.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
The TSA people are tested each and every day. You give them flack over what they do in order to keep people safe...
No, we don't give them flak over what they do in order to keep people safe. We give them flak over what they do in order to trick some people into thinking they're safe. It's all theater, and the laws of nature don't care about appearance.
It should be noted that with high concentrations of various chemicals, just because the % concentration is 1500 times higher does not mean the "strength" is 1500 times higher. 85% phosphoric acid is incredibly dangerous, vastly moreso than accidentally spilling 1500 times the volume of coke on your skin (1mL versus 1.5L.) Though 1mL of 85% phosphoric acid wouldn't kill you, it'll do a lot more damage than 1.5L of coke.