But not for power. They're able to slip in a few grams of plutonium because no one's going to notice (or really care). But when you're talking 2.5 pounds of plutonium per 75 Watts, people start envisioning rockets raining death. It's a sad state of affairs really. Had the rovers used RTGs for power, their power sources would have outlived the other components by a half-century or better.
BTW, the heating units are not RTGs. They don't generate any electricity. Instead, they're just radioisotopes with shielding. Those few grams wouldn't do much to warm you here on earth, but out on Mars they can spell the difference between a working rover and a frozen rover.
Thanks for the link. I'll try to keep that handy.:-)
Finally! I've been waiting for my first victim... err... student, I mean.
Yes, just what we need: two out of three Mars landers crashing, only this time with lots of highly radioactive materials on board.
Okay, time for a thought experiment. Let's assume worst case scenario of two chemical rockets crashing versus two nuclear rockets crashing.
When the two chemical rockets crash, passengers will most likely die, and the (already uninhabitable area) will be polluted with the materials and fuel that make up the lander.
When the two nuclear rockets crash, passengers will most likely die, and the (already uninhabitable area) will be polluted with the materials and fuel that make up the lander. Except in this case, the fuel is radioactive. Which means...
err...
What? Hmm... Seems to mean, nothing. It's not going to produce a nuclear blast (which no one would care about), it's not going to kill a bunch of inhabitants, it's not even going to increase the background radiation by much. (Mars already gets quite a dose.)
Spare us your sarcasm. By your reasoning, smoking isn't dangerous either; I mean, we see people smoke every day and you don't see them fall over dead, do you? And people drive in cars all the time without problems, so obviously--by your reasoning--driving cars must be risk free. Give me a break.
Nothing is without risk. However, plutonium is a relatively safe substance. It gives off alpha rays which can be shielded with a piece of paper. You can hold it in your hand and find it warm to the touch. You can even digest it (yes, this has happened) and it will usually pass through your system without harm. The only time it's dangerous is when it's inhaled. And the only time that's a serious danger is when you're machining the stuff. It's so heavy, that it won't stay in the air very long. In fact, NASA burnt up an RTG in the atmosphere without any ill effects to anyone.
When they realized that the public was a little upset at the idea, they later started packing the RTGs in cases that could survive orbital reentry. To date, NASA has dropped two of them out of the sky. Both were intact, and one was even reused! So in reality, that little RTG is safer than driving a car, smoking, or probably even throwing a battery into a fire.
Thankfully, people like you don't run our space program.
You're so sure about that. Then why was NERVA created? Why is GCNR being developed? Why is JIMO going to Jupiter with a fully loaded Nuclear Reactor? NASA's only problem is the FUD surrounding nuclear power. I'm just doing my part to clear that out of the way.
If we can't get probeds and rovers there reliable, we have no business sending people.
And how many nuclear craft are currently flying? The correct answer is ZERO. Not because it isn't a good idea, but because of FUD surrounding nuclear technology. NASA can't even send up a few pounds of plutonium as a passive power source without everyone claiming we're all going to die.
I would like to see 8-12 sattalites whose goals are, in order: 1)relay communication 2)track objects on the planet 3)Pictures.
Agreed. RTGs can keep satellites running for a long time (50 plus years). Ion engines can give them longer station keeping abilities. Nuclear engines can boost them there in a short time. We just need to develop these technologies instead of shelving them.
Don't be daft! Even if we HAD enough fuel it's not possible yet.
It'd take three YEARS for a MANNED probe to reach Mars, the longest a human has even been in space is 400 odd days!
Dude, say it with me: N U C L E A R
Isp of 1000-5000 (NERVA is 1000, GCNR is 3000-5000) so fuel is very well conserved. (Craft like Orion have an even higher Isp.) Since we can get more thrust on less fuel, we can get there in months instead of years.
There are severe issues in space, the 0g causes muscles to break down, and calcium to be reabsorbed, weaking strength and bones. When they arrived on Mars, they would not be able to stand up without help, and there is no one there to rehabilitate them.
N U C L E A R
You can propel a craft large enough to spin, or alternatively build a ship that uses acceleration to produce light gravity.
Not to mention the raised radiation in space. If there is a solar flare on the way to Mars (three years, VERY likely) then the radiation strike will destroy the immune system of all crew and provide a lethal dose! Though contained T-cell supplements can help them recover from this, the strain it would cause would cause many of the crew to die anyway.
N U C L E A R
6-8 months. Not 3 years.
If we sent 20 people, 10 might make it, and when they got there, they would have no way back, and be unable to sustain themselves. It's stupid.
N U C L E A R
GCNR and NERVA can "breath" a variety of gases. That includes hyrdrogen and oxygen. Both can be cracked from water. The later from CO2. All you need is a power source. Something like (say it with me now):
N U C L E A R
Before criticising others because they explore before risking lives, actually read about it. All of this information is FREELY available and easy to find.
And so is everything I'm saying. This is far from the first time I've said this. Yet I've still only managed to reach a small percentage of people. I'm working on it tho.:-)
finding out how to send people on a 6 month trip in 0 G
Nuclear rockets can power a large enough craft to spin. Or alternatively, some engines could produce light gravity via constant acceleration.
finding a rocket ship with enough lift capacity
Found it. GCNR technology is mostly developed. NERVA technology already is developed.
bringing enough food/supplies for multilple weeks/months,
That's actually the least of our problems. We've had a lot of experience with long missions thanks to submarines and carriers.
creating a suitable living environment etc
Probes can't solve this. Engineers can. Mars has *some* atomosphere to where we can build shelters. Something like a strong tarp to make a livable "balloon" would be an example solution.
Are we? I could have sworn that we figured out nuclear engines back in the 60s. In fact, I do believe we even fired a 75,000 pounds of thrust engine with 1000 Isp.
Having somebody there would be useful if they had a spare part to install. It only makes sense for a manned mission to go to Mars after there's a reasonable amount of supplies already there. A long-lasting power source is one piece of that, but there are plenty of others.
They're called RTGs, and they weren't used on Spirit or Opportuniry because of backlash from environmentalists. After all, how dare NASA send up a few pounds of plutonium on space craft. Why, that Cassini thing nearly killed everyone!
Right.
Also, before we can just "use nuclear power", someone will have to design a power plant that will reliably survive EDL and produce a significant amount of power afterwards.]
It's called a Gas Core Nuclear Rocket (GCNR), which is a advanced NERVA style engine. NERVA was completed in the '60s, but cold war fears of nuclear power killed the project. Over the past decade, NASA has had the GCNR under quiet development for use in space propulsion. What most people don't realize (an intentional oversight by NASA) is that GCNRs can produce more thrust than a chemical rocket, but at a much higher Isp. Even the completed NERVA technology had 4 times the lifting power of today's Space Shuttle.
The really beautiful part about GCNR, is that it could potentially breath gases like O2 and CO2 as fuel. That means that we could easily create space planes that work on Earth *and* Mars. Wouldn't it be nice to fly into Mars' atmosphere instead of falling? (Do a search for "Project Pluto". It wasn't the cleanest plane ever, but it did work.)
Playing around with rovers is giving NASA (and humanity) the experience necessary to supply a crew and get the crew there safely.
Bull. These rovers don't even have a tenth the amount of power, resources, propulsion, and ability that can be accomplished with today's technology.
We have the technology already. We just need to stop putzing around and *use* nuclear power.
Let's use nuclear power so we can go there. If the thermostat incorrectly activates, someone will turn it off. No more of this multi-million dollar robot BS. I love the robots to death, but we don't need to send them in our stead.
What does that have to do with Ant? Or Swing for that matter? Ant is a command line build tool like Make. There's no reason they need GUI components to get it working.
Dell, IBM Apple, Toshiba, ACER, Compaq, HP - Seen em all. I have NEVER seen a non standard 2.5" hdd. Period.
As I said, the drive is the same. However, I've seen the bits of plastic used for mounting differ. Dells are the perfect example, as they have that little flap that unscrews from the case and slides. Of course, maybe other laptop manufacturers have gotten smart and stopped using custom mountings. I will admit that it's been awhile since I was managing a large number of laptops.
That's different than my Dells. They've all had a little plastic flap in the front with a screw through it. You unscrewed the screw, then slid the flap down. You can then use the flap to pull on the drive and remove it. The last IBM laptop I worked on was different yet. The whole thing was mounted into a 5" tray, with cardboard stuck over top so it was difficult to remove the drive. IIRC, there was also some sort of ribbon attached to it, but I don't remember what it was for. (Or maybe I never figured it out.)
Just tell her that you'll make the popups go away, and make the IE shortcuts point to FireBird. She'll notice a few things different, but she'll probably like it better than IE. (Especially if she uses a free mail service.)
...is anyone still using IE? Hasn't all of Slashdot moved to something else yet? If you haven't, WHY NOT? If everyone has, then this ceases to be news for nerds.
Hell, if I can get my Mother to favor Mozilla Firebird over IE, I'm sure that you can all switch.
So you are saying you can't take an industry standard laptop drive from a Dell laptop and drop it into the industry standard laptop slot of an IBM thinkpad?
Yes. In case you haven't tried removing the drives on these laptops, they use different styles of mounting braces. One won't fit the other. You might be able to break off various pieces and force it to fit, but that wouldn't be a very good long term solution.
BTW, the Apple laptops use the same "Industry Standard" laptop drives. The problem is still the same.
Although an iBook my be a bit more delicate than a Dell (which 90% ABS plastic).
You must have bought the nicer model. Every Dell I've been given by my employer(s) has been flimsy as they get. (e.g. The cover bent easily, the keyboard would fail, etc.) My 14" iBook OTOH, is solid, impact resistant plastic that can't be bent. I have been concerned about what could happen if I dropped it on one of the rounded corners, but so far that hasn't happened. The few times I have dropped it, the iBook has been undamaged.
His main point is that if this happened to you on a PC, you could easily go to another vendor and run the same software on different hardware. Your Dell died and you think it's not going to recover? Drop the drive (or dd, or rsync, or whatever) into an IBM and you're basically good to go.
Not with a laptop you can't. Dell and IBM use different form factors for their drives (even though the disk itself is the same). Now if you're talking about a desktop, they're just IDE drives. You can swap Apple drives in and out of Apple machines with ease. In theory, you could even swap them into PCs, but reading the filesystem might be a problem. (Same reason no one puts a Sun drive in a PC.)
What's that? You were trolling? Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be a PITA. Wait. Yes I did.
The partition I wanted to read was ext2. All the FreeBSD stuff I was setting up was UFS2, but I needed to get my stuff from my Linux partitions (actually ext3, but it's backwards compatible).
Backwards compatible != forward compatible
i.e. Code that reads/writes ext3 can read/write ext2. But code that reads/writes ext2 cannot read/write ext3.
I'm glad to hear that you weren't trying to use that as your primary FS, tho. That would have been bad.
This is not so. You can only heat water and keep it a liquid up to the critical point. After that it is a vapour even if you have it under enough pressure to keep it as dense as liquid water. Critical point of water is around 600K IIRC.
You're being overly picky. You know as well as I do that I meant it from the perspective of the structural limits being the most common limitation of superheating water. Containing water that hot would require a container far beyond anything like a coffee machine. Besides, had you read one of my other replies, you would have noted that I stated that the water is actually in a vaporous state, it just doesn't have the space to vaporize.
Sorry, bub. YHBT. I just felt like poking at the original poster for knocking on Fahrenheit. When it comes down to it, it's just what you're used to. Unlike most Americans, I understand the Celsius system at an everyday use level. My wife is from Russia, so she prefers to use Celsius. As a result, I can think in both systems. My personal preference is still fahrenheit, but that doesn't change the fact that Celsius is just as viable a system. Similarly, your preference may be Celsius, but that doesn't mean that Fahrenheit isn't viable. It's not something that my wife and I argue about, and it shouldn't be something that anyone else argues about.
Nah, I was thinking about burying the lead and particle accelerator. Over time, it would "grow" into gold! I'll just need to keep quiet about that little radioactive problem...
I understand that. But you still wiggle when you pour hot coffee on yourself. Even if you sit still, the stuff will cool *fast*. If it didn't, no one would bother with expensive styrofoam cups.
The lady got it in a plastic cup, superheating was not an issue I presume.....
1. It's styrofoam, not simple plastic. A plastic cup would melt.
2. When sitting, some water may remain superheated from the pressure of the water above. i.e. "Pockets" of superheating can develop.
Even in the case of superheating one could argue that since the boiling point itself rises it is still under it, just above the standard defined boiling point (which really is nonsense).
Actually, the water is already is a vaporous state, it just doesn't have the space to vaporize. Thus is remains in a pseudo-liquid form.
The reason I added that point was that one of the previous times this thread came up someone actually said it was sold above boiling......
Most certainly not. Coffee cools far to quickly for it to make it from the coffee machine to the customer without cooling to about 190-200 degrees. Most of your heat is lost in the dripping process (if you can call the constant flow of coffee, "dripping"). More heat is lost while in the pot, then even more during pouring.
One more point on the Fahrenheit (sorry for the spellin on the prev. post, we use Celsius): The guy must have had a big ego using his own ass in defining the scale:)
No idea what you're talking about. However, the added precision of the Fahrenheit scale does allow us yanks to be better in tune with the actual temperature outside. We can do things like say "it's in the 60s" instead of worrying about the difference between 20 and 24.
Slashdot Mirror
The Rovers do use RTGs; for heat:
:-)
But not for power. They're able to slip in a few grams of plutonium because no one's going to notice (or really care). But when you're talking 2.5 pounds of plutonium per 75 Watts, people start envisioning rockets raining death. It's a sad state of affairs really. Had the rovers used RTGs for power, their power sources would have outlived the other components by a half-century or better.
BTW, the heating units are not RTGs. They don't generate any electricity. Instead, they're just radioisotopes with shielding. Those few grams wouldn't do much to warm you here on earth, but out on Mars they can spell the difference between a working rover and a frozen rover.
Thanks for the link. I'll try to keep that handy.
Finally! I've been waiting for my first victim... err... student, I mean.
Yes, just what we need: two out of three Mars landers crashing, only this time with lots of highly radioactive materials on board.
Okay, time for a thought experiment. Let's assume worst case scenario of two chemical rockets crashing versus two nuclear rockets crashing.
When the two chemical rockets crash, passengers will most likely die, and the (already uninhabitable area) will be polluted with the materials and fuel that make up the lander.
When the two nuclear rockets crash, passengers will most likely die, and the (already uninhabitable area) will be polluted with the materials and fuel that make up the lander. Except in this case, the fuel is radioactive. Which means...
err...
What? Hmm... Seems to mean, nothing. It's not going to produce a nuclear blast (which no one would care about), it's not going to kill a bunch of inhabitants, it's not even going to increase the background radiation by much. (Mars already gets quite a dose.)
Spare us your sarcasm. By your reasoning, smoking isn't dangerous either; I mean, we see people smoke every day and you don't see them fall over dead, do you? And people drive in cars all the time without problems, so obviously--by your reasoning--driving cars must be risk free. Give me a break.
Nothing is without risk. However, plutonium is a relatively safe substance. It gives off alpha rays which can be shielded with a piece of paper. You can hold it in your hand and find it warm to the touch. You can even digest it (yes, this has happened) and it will usually pass through your system without harm. The only time it's dangerous is when it's inhaled. And the only time that's a serious danger is when you're machining the stuff. It's so heavy, that it won't stay in the air very long. In fact, NASA burnt up an RTG in the atmosphere without any ill effects to anyone.
When they realized that the public was a little upset at the idea, they later started packing the RTGs in cases that could survive orbital reentry. To date, NASA has dropped two of them out of the sky. Both were intact, and one was even reused! So in reality, that little RTG is safer than driving a car, smoking, or probably even throwing a battery into a fire.
Thankfully, people like you don't run our space program.
You're so sure about that. Then why was NERVA created? Why is GCNR being developed? Why is JIMO going to Jupiter with a fully loaded Nuclear Reactor? NASA's only problem is the FUD surrounding nuclear power. I'm just doing my part to clear that out of the way.
If we can't get probeds and rovers there reliable, we have no business sending people.
And how many nuclear craft are currently flying? The correct answer is ZERO. Not because it isn't a good idea, but because of FUD surrounding nuclear technology. NASA can't even send up a few pounds of plutonium as a passive power source without everyone claiming we're all going to die.
I would like to see 8-12 sattalites whose goals are, in order:
1)relay communication
2)track objects on the planet
3)Pictures.
Agreed. RTGs can keep satellites running for a long time (50 plus years). Ion engines can give them longer station keeping abilities. Nuclear engines can boost them there in a short time. We just need to develop these technologies instead of shelving them.
Don't be daft! Even if we HAD enough fuel it's not possible yet.
:-)
It'd take three YEARS for a MANNED probe to reach Mars, the longest a human has even been in space is 400 odd days!
Dude, say it with me: N U C L E A R
Isp of 1000-5000 (NERVA is 1000, GCNR is 3000-5000) so fuel is very well conserved. (Craft like Orion have an even higher Isp.) Since we can get more thrust on less fuel, we can get there in months instead of years.
There are severe issues in space, the 0g causes muscles to break down, and calcium to be reabsorbed, weaking strength and bones. When they arrived on Mars, they would not be able to stand up without help, and there is no one there to rehabilitate them.
N U C L E A R
You can propel a craft large enough to spin, or alternatively build a ship that uses acceleration to produce light gravity.
Not to mention the raised radiation in space. If there is a solar flare on the way to Mars (three years, VERY likely) then the radiation strike will destroy the immune system of all crew and provide a lethal dose! Though contained T-cell supplements can help them recover from this, the strain it would cause would cause many of the crew to die anyway.
N U C L E A R
6-8 months. Not 3 years.
If we sent 20 people, 10 might make it, and when they got there, they would have no way back, and be unable to sustain themselves. It's stupid.
N U C L E A R
GCNR and NERVA can "breath" a variety of gases. That includes hyrdrogen and oxygen. Both can be cracked from water. The later from CO2. All you need is a power source. Something like (say it with me now):
N U C L E A R
Before criticising others because they explore before risking lives, actually read about it. All of this information is FREELY available and easy to find.
And so is everything I'm saying. This is far from the first time I've said this. Yet I've still only managed to reach a small percentage of people. I'm working on it tho.
We should be ready to colonize. As a result, the first experiment I want to see on Mars is growing corn. If we can grow corn, we can live there.
finding out how to send people on a 6 month trip in 0 G
Nuclear rockets can power a large enough craft to spin. Or alternatively, some engines could produce light gravity via constant acceleration.
finding a rocket ship with enough lift capacity
Found it. GCNR technology is mostly developed. NERVA technology already is developed.
bringing enough food/supplies for multilple weeks/months,
That's actually the least of our problems. We've had a lot of experience with long missions thanks to submarines and carriers.
creating a suitable living environment etc
Probes can't solve this. Engineers can. Mars has *some* atomosphere to where we can build shelters. Something like a strong tarp to make a livable "balloon" would be an example solution.
Are we? I could have sworn that we figured out nuclear engines back in the 60s. In fact, I do believe we even fired a 75,000 pounds of thrust engine with 1000 Isp.
Having somebody there would be useful if they had a spare part to install. It only makes sense for a manned mission to go to Mars after there's a reasonable amount of supplies already there. A long-lasting power source is one piece of that, but there are plenty of others.
They're called RTGs, and they weren't used on Spirit or Opportuniry because of backlash from environmentalists. After all, how dare NASA send up a few pounds of plutonium on space craft. Why, that Cassini thing nearly killed everyone!
Right.
Also, before we can just "use nuclear power", someone will have to design a power plant that will reliably survive EDL and produce a significant amount of power afterwards.]
It's called a Gas Core Nuclear Rocket (GCNR), which is a advanced NERVA style engine. NERVA was completed in the '60s, but cold war fears of nuclear power killed the project. Over the past decade, NASA has had the GCNR under quiet development for use in space propulsion. What most people don't realize (an intentional oversight by NASA) is that GCNRs can produce more thrust than a chemical rocket, but at a much higher Isp. Even the completed NERVA technology had 4 times the lifting power of today's Space Shuttle.
The really beautiful part about GCNR, is that it could potentially breath gases like O2 and CO2 as fuel. That means that we could easily create space planes that work on Earth *and* Mars. Wouldn't it be nice to fly into Mars' atmosphere instead of falling? (Do a search for "Project Pluto". It wasn't the cleanest plane ever, but it did work.)
Playing around with rovers is giving NASA (and humanity) the experience necessary to supply a crew and get the crew there safely.
Bull. These rovers don't even have a tenth the amount of power, resources, propulsion, and ability that can be accomplished with today's technology.
We have the technology already. We just need to stop putzing around and *use* nuclear power.
Let's use nuclear power so we can go there. If the thermostat incorrectly activates, someone will turn it off. No more of this multi-million dollar robot BS. I love the robots to death, but we don't need to send them in our stead.
What does that have to do with Ant? Or Swing for that matter? Ant is a command line build tool like Make. There's no reason they need GUI components to get it working.
Dell, IBM Apple, Toshiba, ACER, Compaq, HP - Seen em all. I have NEVER seen a non standard 2.5" hdd. Period.
As I said, the drive is the same. However, I've seen the bits of plastic used for mounting differ. Dells are the perfect example, as they have that little flap that unscrews from the case and slides. Of course, maybe other laptop manufacturers have gotten smart and stopped using custom mountings. I will admit that it's been awhile since I was managing a large number of laptops.
That's different than my Dells. They've all had a little plastic flap in the front with a screw through it. You unscrewed the screw, then slid the flap down. You can then use the flap to pull on the drive and remove it. The last IBM laptop I worked on was different yet. The whole thing was mounted into a 5" tray, with cardboard stuck over top so it was difficult to remove the drive. IIRC, there was also some sort of ribbon attached to it, but I don't remember what it was for. (Or maybe I never figured it out.)
Just tell her that you'll make the popups go away, and make the IE shortcuts point to FireBird. She'll notice a few things different, but she'll probably like it better than IE. (Especially if she uses a free mail service.)
That's why there's this nifty new invention called screws .
Is that what you call that funky plastic flap on my Dell hard drive? Wow. (rolls eyes)
...is anyone still using IE? Hasn't all of Slashdot moved to something else yet? If you haven't, WHY NOT? If everyone has, then this ceases to be news for nerds.
Hell, if I can get my Mother to favor Mozilla Firebird over IE, I'm sure that you can all switch.
So you are saying you can't take an industry standard laptop drive from a Dell laptop and drop it into the industry standard laptop slot of an IBM thinkpad?
Yes. In case you haven't tried removing the drives on these laptops, they use different styles of mounting braces. One won't fit the other. You might be able to break off various pieces and force it to fit, but that wouldn't be a very good long term solution.
BTW, the Apple laptops use the same "Industry Standard" laptop drives. The problem is still the same.
Although an iBook my be a bit more delicate than a Dell (which 90% ABS plastic).
You must have bought the nicer model. Every Dell I've been given by my employer(s) has been flimsy as they get. (e.g. The cover bent easily, the keyboard would fail, etc.) My 14" iBook OTOH, is solid, impact resistant plastic that can't be bent. I have been concerned about what could happen if I dropped it on one of the rounded corners, but so far that hasn't happened. The few times I have dropped it, the iBook has been undamaged.
His main point is that if this happened to you on a PC, you could easily go to another vendor and run the same software on different hardware. Your Dell died and you think it's not going to recover? Drop the drive (or dd, or rsync, or whatever) into an IBM and you're basically good to go.
Not with a laptop you can't. Dell and IBM use different form factors for their drives (even though the disk itself is the same). Now if you're talking about a desktop, they're just IDE drives. You can swap Apple drives in and out of Apple machines with ease. In theory, you could even swap them into PCs, but reading the filesystem might be a problem. (Same reason no one puts a Sun drive in a PC.)
What's that? You were trolling? Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be a PITA. Wait. Yes I did.
The partition I wanted to read was ext2. All the FreeBSD stuff I was setting up was UFS2, but I needed to get my stuff from my Linux partitions (actually ext3, but it's backwards compatible).
Backwards compatible != forward compatible
i.e. Code that reads/writes ext3 can read/write ext2. But code that reads/writes ext2 cannot read/write ext3.
I'm glad to hear that you weren't trying to use that as your primary FS, tho. That would have been bad.
Actually, most of the heat is lost in the steam. (i.e. water cooling)
This is not so. You can only heat water and keep it a liquid up to the critical point. After that it is a vapour even if you have it under enough pressure to keep it as dense as liquid water.
Critical point of water is around 600K IIRC.
You're being overly picky. You know as well as I do that I meant it from the perspective of the structural limits being the most common limitation of superheating water. Containing water that hot would require a container far beyond anything like a coffee machine. Besides, had you read one of my other replies, you would have noted that I stated that the water is actually in a vaporous state, it just doesn't have the space to vaporize.
Sorry, bub. YHBT. I just felt like poking at the original poster for knocking on Fahrenheit. When it comes down to it, it's just what you're used to. Unlike most Americans, I understand the Celsius system at an everyday use level. My wife is from Russia, so she prefers to use Celsius. As a result, I can think in both systems. My personal preference is still fahrenheit, but that doesn't change the fact that Celsius is just as viable a system. Similarly, your preference may be Celsius, but that doesn't mean that Fahrenheit isn't viable. It's not something that my wife and I argue about, and it shouldn't be something that anyone else argues about.
Nah, I was thinking about burying the lead and particle accelerator. Over time, it would "grow" into gold! I'll just need to keep quiet about that little radioactive problem...
She was seated in her car at the time.
I understand that. But you still wiggle when you pour hot coffee on yourself. Even if you sit still, the stuff will cool *fast*. If it didn't, no one would bother with expensive styrofoam cups.
The lady got it in a plastic cup, superheating was not an issue I presume.....
:)
1. It's styrofoam, not simple plastic. A plastic cup would melt.
2. When sitting, some water may remain superheated from the pressure of the water above. i.e. "Pockets" of superheating can develop.
Even in the case of superheating one could argue that since the boiling point itself rises it is still under it, just above the standard defined boiling point (which really is nonsense).
Actually, the water is already is a vaporous state, it just doesn't have the space to vaporize. Thus is remains in a pseudo-liquid form.
The reason I added that point was that one of the previous times this thread came up someone actually said it was sold above boiling......
Most certainly not. Coffee cools far to quickly for it to make it from the coffee machine to the customer without cooling to about 190-200 degrees. Most of your heat is lost in the dripping process (if you can call the constant flow of coffee, "dripping"). More heat is lost while in the pot, then even more during pouring.
One more point on the Fahrenheit (sorry for the spellin on the prev. post, we use Celsius):
The guy must have had a big ego using his own ass in defining the scale
No idea what you're talking about. However, the added precision of the Fahrenheit scale does allow us yanks to be better in tune with the actual temperature outside. We can do things like say "it's in the 60s" instead of worrying about the difference between 20 and 24.