Keep in mind that a signal amplifier amplifies the noise just as much (sometimes more) as the signal you're interested in. You don't really need one if you're not splitting the signal downstream.
That's a little too broad of a statement, and is of course not true in many situations. You also need one if you don't live near the transmitter. I have a good antenna (I forget the brand and model) and a good masthead amplifier. The signal is so weak I get about 2/3 of the channels that I know are out there, even with the amplifier. I have a Samsung DTB-H260F receiver, which is a reasonably good unit. I have all RG6 quad shield cable. It's still not good enough. The picture drops out a lot on some of the channels, and just enough to be annoying on the others. It's the same on the other TV in the bedroom too. It doesn't matter if I connect a single TV directly to the masthead antenna's output, either.
Why? I'm over 50 miles from the transmitters, I have huge tall trees throughout my neighborhood and there's a river valley between me and the transmitters that cuts the signal in half according to the online signal strength maps.
The next thing I'm going to try is putting the antenna up higher on a mast. 1080 on a 108" projected image is worth the effort.
But, my main point was that blanket statements about when you need a decent antenna or an amplifier are often going to be false because these are not one-size-fits-all things. ATSC reception demands a consistent, strong signal but conversely seems to have low tolerance for multipath, which is a problem you can incur with a "too good" antenna or amplifier.
I thought usually people were called by their first and last names, so he should more properly be called "Captain Combined".
Now that's a stupid sounding name.
More places should be like Australia or wherever it is where some kind of naming authority can overrule stupid names like this and also prevent parents from giving their children stupid names that hold them back in life.
And one more thing, is the CSS broken in the preview box? What magic incantation do you have to go through to get a space between paragraphs?
Secondly, to make a decent amount of x-rays, the applied voltage needs to be a fair bit higher than what is normally used in a colour picture tube to generate the image. The O.P. said it was faulty, perhaps it could have generated it. But there are normally multiple protection circuits on the EHT that prevent this (as in, they go "phut" before the voltage gets that high and the monitor shuts off/never works again).
You know, I don't think that's entirely true. I used to repair televisions, and I don't remember anything in the circuits being designed specifically to prevent an overvoltage condition on the CRT 2nd anode.
In fact, I remember most of the older color sets had a warning label in the back about the fact that the CRT would produce X-rays if the voltage was turned up too high.
The really old sets that still used a vacuum tube (aka valve) to rectify the 2nd anode voltage had that tube inside a steel box, since that rectifier tube was more than capable of emitting x-rays if the voltage went high enough. It seems to me that if there had been anything in the circuit to prevent the overvoltage condition, the TV set manufacturer wouldn't have spent the money to build a metal x-ray shielding box. I remember one TV in particular had a prominent warning stamped on the removable access panel on the metal box that held the rectifier tube telling the repairman to reinstall the cover to prevent x-ray leakage.
Isn't one problem with X-rays and similar radiation that the risk is cumulative? So a low dose over a very long time could be the same as a short duration high-rate dose?
I don't think anyone can feel x-rays though. That sounds a little silly.
A constitution class ship has neither an infinitely thin skin, nor is it 100% hollow, nor is it a perfect box. Your air volume calculation needs work.
More or less what I said in my post. So what's your estimate, captain pedant?
I guessed that the skin was 3 cm thick at the hull breach, but on TV it looks like several separate layers. I also remember what one of the "experts" said about the aircraft that hit the World Trade Center; that the aircraft had similar density to an empty soda can. Since aircraft and TV spacecraft seem to be somewhat similar in construction, I made an engineering decision to throw out the volume occupied by the material the ship itself is constructed from and it's contents.
Heck, I made the ship a rectangular box. It doesn't look like one, but I remember from a course I took on designing gating systems for metal castings (fluid systems to feed odd-shaped empty cavities) that simplifying the shape you're trying to feed (to or from, it doesn't matter) makes the calculations a lot simpler. A more accurate volume guess would be a set of cylindrical sections (the saucer is a very short, wide cylinder for example).
But, who has the time.
Even if I did that, people like you'd probably want me to factor in the effect of bedsheets and seat cushions, and liquid water that would flash to steam from the sinks and toilets.
In short, you can't ever make a rabid fan happy, so why even try?
At what point does the atmospheric pressure become dangerous to people inside the ship?
At 5.8 psi you become unconscious, but even at 90% of normal atmospheric pressure (13 psi) most people would be strongly affected by the reduced oxygen saturation.
You can imagine that the internal structure of the ship would slow the flow the further away from the breach you are, so pressure would be lowest in the breached compartment, and higher as you move away from it. Seems like automatic airtight doors are a staple of Star Trek, so chances are only that one compartment or an area of the ship would be affected anyway.
Plenty of time to get to an escape pod, transport out, or put on a space suit, anyway.
Unless you're standing next to the hole and get stuck to it. In which case you'd seal it nicely, saving the air and getting a nasty bruise.
You'd be suprised how little time it takes for the air to escape from a relatively small container such as the Enterprise into a practically infinite vacuum through a hole a few inch in diameter.
What bothers me more is the smoke in the left side of the picture. Anyone here knows how smoke 'should' behave in space?
Let's be generous and say a 10 cm hole - that's just under four inches.
Well, I don't know the math, but I've worked around compressed air systems a little, and I found a little chart for gas flow through pipes of varying diameters and lengths. Air at atmospheric pressure is at 14.5 pounds per square inch - not very high pressure. This is not very high, so it's not like punching a hole in a compressed air tank.
If we guess that the hull is 3 cm thick, and the hole is 10 cm in diameter (the hole is effectively a pipe), according to the ancient looking chart I found, the flow rate is 748 liters per second. (This is assuming I'm interpreting this correctly).
I can't be bothered to do too much googling for this, but a Constitution class starship is 305 meters long. Let's just guess that it's 120 meters wide and an average of 20 meters thick. I know rabid trekkies will correct all this, but it's not important to be all that accurate. 305 x 120 x 20 = 732,000 cubic meters. That's 732 million liters, for those still reading. 732 million liters divided by 748 liters per second is 978,609 seconds to empty the ship to vacuum.
That's 11.3 days to empty the ship through a 10 cm diameter hole. All based on guesses and an old chart from an engineering handbook, but it's better than just saying "little time".
Of course, I could be wrong.
It might take longer; especially when you consider that as the ship empties, the internal pressure drops - when half the air is gone, the atmospheric pressure inside is only 7.25 psi, so the flow rate is also reduced in half - so it might take a month or more to completely equalize the internal and external pressures (external being close to zero).
- and eventually the engine went out of timing because all of that braking force got applied to a tiny woodruff key holding the bottom gear for the timing belt aligned; eventually the woodruff key gave way and the engine timing was completely off.
I hate to break it to you, but braking force does not get applied through the timing mechanism, including the pulley keys. Braking force is applied to the pistons, which resist it by compressing air or air/fuel mixture in the cylinders. The timing mechanism is simply along for the ride.
The timing belt only drives the camshaft(s), perhaps a balance shaft or two, and maybe a water pump (depending on the design of your particular Toyota Civic). None of these present a big enough mechanical load to shear the key unless you don't change your oil and a bearing seized up.
You had a loose fit between the pulley and the shaft it was on, or a too-thin key (sometimes even the replacement parts are wrong), which allowed the pulley to move back and forth against the key and eventually fatigue it through.
The only thing that engine braking contributed was higher average engine speeds which revealed the problem sooner than if you had just had the engine idling. It still would have broken eventually during normal driving, because you had faulty parts in your engine, or your car was poorly maintained at some point in its life.
How, precisely, do you scan in books? Do you have to manually scan each page?
We have a project at work that is doing this with a small library of books (I think we're up around 35,000 pages scanned so far).
You cut the spine off of the book and drop the pages in the scanner's automatic document feeder. There are scanners available that can scan both sides of the page as they feed through - we're using a Kodak scanner that does about 50 pages a minute.
Pages are scanned to TIFF files and then converted to PDF. We are using Acrobat Capture, which is fairly reliable but as we get into older books the error count goes up. The are a number of manual steps too; for example the software has to be told which parts of each page are text or pictures, and then after the conversion to PDF, the resulting PDF has to be retouched to fix OCR errors and standardize the fonts - Acrobat Capture likes to change fonts in mid-sentence for reasons known only to itself. Adobe seems to have abandoned development on Acrobat Capture - it's been at version 3.0 since the Acrobat 5 days, so it's a little antiquated.
I highly recommend against portable "evaporative" air conditioners that claim they don't need drainage. They're lying.
It's more likely that there's something faulty in your installation, or some strange circumstance that's making them not work properly.
We have a very small server room (really a large closet), and only about seven machines plus a couple of 3000VA UPS's in the room. We've been cooling it for four years now with a Haier portable A/C unit (yes, a cheap Chinese unit bought from Walmart.com) which evaporates the condensate and exhausts it via a short duct through the wall into the next room.
There have been zero problems so far, and as a side benefit our lunch room stays nice and warm in winter. I have replaced the unit once, after three years of continuous operation just as a preventative measure (there was nothing wrong with it and it's still working at my in-laws' house). They cost under $300. We have to wash out the air filters about twice a year, otherwise the reduced airflow will make the evaporator freeze up solid, but that's the only maintenance it requires, and that's just a quick rinse of the filters in a sink.
From their (weird) web site:
9vDC 2.5mm 10 watt AC-DC adapter power supply
So the box is not eating 2 watts, but 10, unless you can pump in it 9VDC in a more efficient way.
The 10 Watt rating is the maximum output of the the power supply - that means the computer itself has to draw less than 10W. It was probably cheaper to buy an off-the-shelf 10W power supply than have a custom 2W PSU built. It does not mean that the computer itself draws 10W.
Have you ever had a tire blow out? I have, I was doing 65, the tire went bang (thanks to truck debris spillage slicing my wall), my car just continued normally, no swerve, no panic, just a slight leaning to the front right. When I pulled over I was surprised to see my tire was utterly flat. I had no idea what the noise was until I went around the car looking for damage.
Lucky you. Or, maybe your other tires were flat too. I have had friends injured when their (small) car became uncontrollable when a tire failed.
We could all go on all day comparing anecdotes, but it's just not helpful.
Think about it - if you lose 25% of the car's grip on the road, that can be extremely dangerous if you're going around a curve or changing speed, regardless of the design of the vehicle.
Yoy say an SUV will swerve for the same thing. Yet more evidence SUVs are not safe.
How is that evidence? It's just an anecdote - again, entertaining but not useful. And just who are these Yoy?
Have fun digging that glass out the kids when you roll over.
You just moved from a weak, unsupported argument to being a jerk.
Get this into your head, fast cars are safe. They are designed to stop fast, turn fast and hold the road.
Only with all four tires inflated, and a driver who is conscious enough to realize when one of the tires has failed.
SUVs do none of this. Each SUV has warnings they may roll over above the driver's seat. Doesn't that tell you something?
It tells me that the center of gravity of a taller vehicle is higher and you won't be able to turn as quickly as a lower car. I've driven a lot of trucks and SUVs, and some really nice handling cars, but I've never come close to having any of them roll over because I understand the limits of each type of vehicle. None of them felt unsafe, except for one commercial truck I drove through some side winds - once I slowed down it was just fine though.
The taller trucks and SUVs tended to have their cornering ability limited by center of gravity, but the nice handling cars had their cornering limited by available tire grip. I own a fantastically good handling car - if you make a sharp turn without warning the passenger they can end up banging their head on the window - but turn too fast and it will spin out. Shouldn't there be a warning label for that?
It seems to me that there's got to be a reason that pedestrians have the right of way. "Right of way" is a myth. I've heard from numerous law enforcement officials that there's no such thing.
The exception is where boats are concerned, and in maritime law the smaller craft always has to get out of the way of the larger craft. Perhaps pedestrians should be considered negligent if they don't jump out of the way of cars.
Maybe it's that in exchange for being granted the privilege of driving an automobile on a public road these drivers assume responsibility for remaining in control of their vehicles and are accountable for the consequences of failing to do so. Ok, apparently you missed the part of the post you were replying to about the accident being caused by mechanical failure. Say you buy a brand new car and on the drive home, some tiny defect you weren't aware of causes an accident. Under your reasoning, you should be thrown in jail. Following your reasoning, as a driver you're responsible for knowing the exact location and condition of each atom that makes up your vehicle at all times, right?
You get in a Mazda Miata, drive off the road at 30mph, you run through a mailbox and crash into a light pole. You do the same thing in a Ford Excursion at 30mph, you go through the mailbox, pole,...
Bigger car = more potential for harming others. Perhaps we should extrapolate on your logic. Just think how safe the roads of the future would be if when someone applies for and passes the test for a semi truck license, we simply preemptively arrest them for murder.
I'm all for smaller, safer cars, (realistically almost nobody really needs a Ford Excursion) but let's try to remain sensible.
italian words for Hydrogen and Helium are Idrogeno and Elio. These translitteration comes from latin, where they didn't have an H phonema. The symbols H and He start with H because the name of the atoms are derived from greek where they did have H starting words.
It might come to a surprise to you, but not all words come from english; eventually it's the other way round.
That's all great and interesting and all, and the other posts on etymology are interesting too, but you see, the thing is, the Slashdot article summary is written in English, for a primarily English speaking audience. In English, the word begins with an "H".
I'm all for respecting the languages of others, but the English word is spelled "Helium". Or, do we now get to use the spelling and pronunciation rules of whatever language we choose?
So for commute days stick a 3-4kw biodiesel 3phase generator in your trunk. Done.
You can't drive at anywhere normal road speeds on 4kW. Even a very basic small car will have at least a 70kW engine. I know the car isn't using all 70kW all the time, but it's got to be using probably at least a third of that to maintain 40MPH (power requirement goes up with speed due to aerodynamic drag, etc). 4kW is probably adequate to move a modern car up and down the driveway at a walking speed but not much else.
Plus now I'd have to carry extra weight (the generator) in the car even when I'm not using it, further dragging down the performance of this ersatz-electric-car.
Well, the method of action for most bacteria and viruses is not to 'eat' our DNA. Instead, they take control of the cellular machinery and processes within our cells to reproduce.
No, only viruses do that and they do it out of necessity because they have no cellular machinery of their own. Bacteria and fungi absolutely can 'eat' our DNA along with whatever nutritious compounds we happen to be made of.
Therefore, alien bacteria, fungi and viruses (if such ecological analogues exist) have to be attuned to our DNA.
This is just not true, any more than a mushroom needs to be attuned to the DNA of horse crap in order to consume it.
For alien symbiotes to reproduce within our bodies, they need to be able to utilize our mitochondria, nuclei, and membrane proteins. How can an alien species possibly be expected to make use of a complex set of machinery that they were never exposed to?
How about by just being able to make use of the basic nutrients found in our bodies? I don't think tapeworms are attuned to human DNA, yet there are many people who have tapeworms.
actually, that's the bets place to put it - how many kiddies are going to speed down that straight, lose control at the bottom of the hill and crash and burn. Come on, if you're going to try your hand at fearmongering, at least make it sound plausible. That sounds as silly as this idea: (copied from here.)
Back around 1830, when Stephenson's Rocket was the next big thing, there was a strong body of scientific opinion that human beings would explode at speeds above 50 kilometers per hour - assuming that people didn't suffocate first as the air would be sucked out of their lungs!
Even back in the 1830s there were "speed kills" loonies. What next? a warning that you shouldn't go over 25MPH or your eyeballs will come flying out when you try to stop?
Besides, on a long straight you can see them in plenty of time to slow down. Except they're usually hidden behind a tree.
How is a wireless tire pressure sensor so much better ?
How about the situation where a tire fails while driving? You run over a sharp object and puncture the tire, but don't notice it. I once had a tire deflate completely while driving - the tire was basically loose on the rim, but it really didn't make much difference in how the car drove at low speeds. Had I then driven at high speeds it could have been disastrous. On long trips in particular TPMS could be life-saving.
When I've been out walking in the downtown area I've heard at least two tires hissing in traffic and I don't think the drivers knew it was happening.
I check my tire pressures every week as I get better fuel economy with the tires pumped up to the maximum pressure, and the car handles better (my car has an ESP system - the warning light flashes a lot less with the tires at maximum pressure, indicating that there is less slip).
I have a bicycle, but I'd never considered riding it in traffic to go the 3.1 miles to work because it's not safe in traffic. Around the neighborhood, or on the bike path, sure.
Then you came along and made me think: What if the bike was fast enough that it could get out of the way of traffic? And if it had a really good suspension and seat so the lousy roads didn't beat me up? What would be even better is if I could recharge its power supply at any of thousands of convenient locations.
Then I remembered I already own a motorcycle, and there are many days (about six months in a row) when the road conditions are not conducive to two wheeled vehicles (snow and ice, for example), and sometimes you just want to be comfortable or carry a passenger or two.
It's just not going to work in most parts of the USA. The road system is built for four wheeled vehicles, and that's just the way it is.
I wish I lived somewhere you could ride a bike to work every day though. That would be nice. Unless it rained.
A former employee of my company had a handicapped parking permit, and she was told by the police that because of her handicapped parking permit, in Illinois the parking rules basically did not apply to her. She could pretty much park anywhere and not get a ticket. She'd park all day in the two hour parking spaces on the street, park across the lines, you name it - and there was nothing the police could do - nor did they make any attempt.
Had she been blocking traffic, that might have been another question, but the simple reality of it was that she never got a parking ticket in a town that lives on parking ticket income.
My understanding is that I *do* own whatever is under my property. If there's oil/gas/other valuable stuff under the property that I own, then those resources are my property.
Or not. In many areas, the government sold off the mineral rights (the rights to the underground resources you're talking about) to a mining company decades ago.
A friend of mine (pardon the pun), worked for 30 years in a limestone mine. Most people in the mid-sized city above the mine didn't even know it was there, and didn't know that a huge amount of stuff had been (and continues to be) mined out from under their land.
As an aside, he was full of fun stories about how when they reopened part of the mine that had been closed off for thirty years they found a bunch of 1950s cars buried down there, and how when they needed to get water for the machines they drilled upwards - and the water came out hot.
Remember the Simpson's episode featuring the "Burns Slant-Drilling Company" that sucked out all of the oil from under the school? It's not so far from reality.
Conversely, if there's nasty stuff in the ground under my property (old chemical tanks, etc.), then I'm responsible to remove said stuff or pay the price for environmental damage that they might cause.
Ah, that's where they get you, because you're most likely correct about that.
I don't think that's entirely true. GM screwed it up for everyone else by their half-assed conversions of gasoline engines to diesel around 1979 - broken crankshafts, cracked cylinder heads, etc. resulted from not adequately reengineering the main components of the Oldsmobile 5.7L V8 and 4.3L V6 (used in front wheel drive A-body cars).
The Mercedes diesels have always been reliability legends and sold well in the USA through the 1980s. There are still a lot of W123-chassis diesel models running around. VW diesels seem well regarded in the USA too.
In the US pickup truck marketplace, diesels are seen as ultra-reliable high-torque powerhouses. A full-size pickup with a diesel engine gets significantly better fuel mileage than my gasoline-powered mid-size Dodge Dakota (I have seen mileage as low as 9.9 MPG in city driving in bad winter weather). Problem is, diesels are seen as ultra-reliable high-torque powerhouses and so the diesel pickup engines available are all overbuilt, for the people who apparently tow ocean liners across the country or something. The Cummins 5.9L diesel 6-cylinder engine was a $6000 option by itself, and there is no light-duty diesel engine available for normal people.
I can't think of a single domestic automaker that has a diesel car.
Well I guess it depends on what you consider a "car". Chrysler currently sells the Jeep Liberty with a 2.8L diesel engine which according to reviews gives superior performance and much better fuel economy than the 3.7L gasoline engine, and all three of the big three (GM, Chrysler, Ford) sell pickup trucks with diesel engines (although they are huge trucks).
With the current fuel costs, there is definitely a market in the USA for efficient vehicles, but people aren't willing to give up performance (remember the 48HP VW Rabbit diesel? I'd hate to try to merge into expressway traffic in one of those) or move to much smaller vehicles (utility and the perception of safety).
I think with the modern diesel technology that cuts the noise (although I love the diesel clatter myself) and cleans up the emissions, and fuel economy that rivals or surpasses hybrid gasoline cars (without making the car into an expensive science-fair project on wheels), the time for diesel cars in the USA has arrived.
The difference is, GM won't pull your auction if you're trying to sell a GM product, for example they had no problem when I sold a Chevy Blazer on eBay, but they will pull your auction if you're trying to sell a counterfeit part with their branding on it (this is a big problem for auto parts makers), or if you're trying to sell a T-shirt with the Chevrolet logo on it that wasn't licensed by them.
My company has found people selling copies of our publications on eBay, and for us it was more amusing than anything else as we are not-for-profit, but I could see how GM might not want anyone to be able to buy a fake Delphi airbag controller for a GM car, for example.
I hear a lot of tingling fingers. If this is current, there must be another body part tingling. Where is the current leaving the body???
If there is no seperate tingle, then people are just feeling heat or some other source of vibration, but its not electricity.
You are right about one thing, there must be an entrance and an exit, so to speak, for a complete circuit to be made through your body.
What you may not be considering is that some parts of your body are more sensitive than others (I hope you are aware of that, or you're missing out on some real fun stuff). Also, I've noticed this buzzing sensation only when my hand is lightly touching the electrified object in question - if I press my hand against it strongly, the sensation isn't there. So, I think it's because your feet (or other body parts) are pressed firmly to the floor and aren't experiencing the same sensation, even though a tiny amount of current is flowing.
Slashdot Mirror
Only if you have more than one TV.
Keep in mind that a signal amplifier amplifies the noise just as much (sometimes more) as the signal you're interested in. You don't really need one if you're not splitting the signal downstream.
That's a little too broad of a statement, and is of course not true in many situations. You also need one if you don't live near the transmitter. I have a good antenna (I forget the brand and model) and a good masthead amplifier. The signal is so weak I get about 2/3 of the channels that I know are out there, even with the amplifier. I have a Samsung DTB-H260F receiver, which is a reasonably good unit. I have all RG6 quad shield cable. It's still not good enough. The picture drops out a lot on some of the channels, and just enough to be annoying on the others. It's the same on the other TV in the bedroom too. It doesn't matter if I connect a single TV directly to the masthead antenna's output, either.
Why? I'm over 50 miles from the transmitters, I have huge tall trees throughout my neighborhood and there's a river valley between me and the transmitters that cuts the signal in half according to the online signal strength maps.
The next thing I'm going to try is putting the antenna up higher on a mast. 1080 on a 108" projected image is worth the effort.
But, my main point was that blanket statements about when you need a decent antenna or an amplifier are often going to be false because these are not one-size-fits-all things. ATSC reception demands a consistent, strong signal but conversely seems to have low tolerance for multipath, which is a problem you can incur with a "too good" antenna or amplifier.
I thought usually people were called by their first and last names, so he should more properly be called "Captain Combined".
Now that's a stupid sounding name.
More places should be like Australia or wherever it is where some kind of naming authority can overrule stupid names like this and also prevent parents from giving their children stupid names that hold them back in life.
And one more thing, is the CSS broken in the preview box? What magic incantation do you have to go through to get a space between paragraphs?
Secondly, to make a decent amount of x-rays, the applied voltage needs to be a fair bit higher than what is normally used in a colour picture tube to generate the image. The O.P. said it was faulty, perhaps it could have generated it. But there are normally multiple protection circuits on the EHT that prevent this (as in, they go "phut" before the voltage gets that high and the monitor shuts off/never works again).
You know, I don't think that's entirely true. I used to repair televisions, and I don't remember anything in the circuits being designed specifically to prevent an overvoltage condition on the CRT 2nd anode.
In fact, I remember most of the older color sets had a warning label in the back about the fact that the CRT would produce X-rays if the voltage was turned up too high.
The really old sets that still used a vacuum tube (aka valve) to rectify the 2nd anode voltage had that tube inside a steel box, since that rectifier tube was more than capable of emitting x-rays if the voltage went high enough. It seems to me that if there had been anything in the circuit to prevent the overvoltage condition, the TV set manufacturer wouldn't have spent the money to build a metal x-ray shielding box. I remember one TV in particular had a prominent warning stamped on the removable access panel on the metal box that held the rectifier tube telling the repairman to reinstall the cover to prevent x-ray leakage.
Isn't one problem with X-rays and similar radiation that the risk is cumulative? So a low dose over a very long time could be the same as a short duration high-rate dose?
I don't think anyone can feel x-rays though. That sounds a little silly.
Hulk smash!
Hey, you can bet I'm still pissed about the iMac, with their switch from ADB to USB, making my WACOM tablet obsolete.
(in fact, the fucker's still working JUST FINE on my beige G3 - wish I could connect this $600 monstrosity to my Pro.)
Will it not work with a USB to ADB adapter like this? $39 doesn't seem like a bad price to possibly rescue a $600 device.
A constitution class ship has neither an infinitely thin skin, nor is it 100% hollow, nor is it a perfect box. Your air volume calculation needs work.
More or less what I said in my post. So what's your estimate, captain pedant?
I guessed that the skin was 3 cm thick at the hull breach, but on TV it looks like several separate layers. I also remember what one of the "experts" said about the aircraft that hit the World Trade Center; that the aircraft had similar density to an empty soda can. Since aircraft and TV spacecraft seem to be somewhat similar in construction, I made an engineering decision to throw out the volume occupied by the material the ship itself is constructed from and it's contents.
Heck, I made the ship a rectangular box. It doesn't look like one, but I remember from a course I took on designing gating systems for metal castings (fluid systems to feed odd-shaped empty cavities) that simplifying the shape you're trying to feed (to or from, it doesn't matter) makes the calculations a lot simpler. A more accurate volume guess would be a set of cylindrical sections (the saucer is a very short, wide cylinder for example).
But, who has the time.
Even if I did that, people like you'd probably want me to factor in the effect of bedsheets and seat cushions, and liquid water that would flash to steam from the sinks and toilets.
In short, you can't ever make a rabid fan happy, so why even try?
That was a rhetorical question, by the way.
At what point does the atmospheric pressure become dangerous to people inside the ship?
At 5.8 psi you become unconscious, but even at 90% of normal atmospheric pressure (13 psi) most people would be strongly affected by the reduced oxygen saturation.
You can imagine that the internal structure of the ship would slow the flow the further away from the breach you are, so pressure would be lowest in the breached compartment, and higher as you move away from it. Seems like automatic airtight doors are a staple of Star Trek, so chances are only that one compartment or an area of the ship would be affected anyway.
Plenty of time to get to an escape pod, transport out, or put on a space suit, anyway.
Unless you're standing next to the hole and get stuck to it. In which case you'd seal it nicely, saving the air and getting a nasty bruise.
You'd be suprised how little time it takes for the air to escape from a relatively small container such as the Enterprise into a practically infinite vacuum through a hole a few inch in diameter.
What bothers me more is the smoke in the left side of the picture. Anyone here knows how smoke 'should' behave in space?
Let's be generous and say a 10 cm hole - that's just under four inches.
Well, I don't know the math, but I've worked around compressed air systems a little, and I found a little chart for gas flow through pipes of varying diameters and lengths. Air at atmospheric pressure is at 14.5 pounds per square inch - not very high pressure. This is not very high, so it's not like punching a hole in a compressed air tank.
If we guess that the hull is 3 cm thick, and the hole is 10 cm in diameter (the hole is effectively a pipe), according to the ancient looking chart I found, the flow rate is 748 liters per second. (This is assuming I'm interpreting this correctly).
I can't be bothered to do too much googling for this, but a Constitution class starship is 305 meters long. Let's just guess that it's 120 meters wide and an average of 20 meters thick. I know rabid trekkies will correct all this, but it's not important to be all that accurate. 305 x 120 x 20 = 732,000 cubic meters. That's 732 million liters, for those still reading. 732 million liters divided by 748 liters per second is 978,609 seconds to empty the ship to vacuum.
That's 11.3 days to empty the ship through a 10 cm diameter hole. All based on guesses and an old chart from an engineering handbook, but it's better than just saying "little time".
Of course, I could be wrong.
It might take longer; especially when you consider that as the ship empties, the internal pressure drops - when half the air is gone, the atmospheric pressure inside is only 7.25 psi, so the flow rate is also reduced in half - so it might take a month or more to completely equalize the internal and external pressures (external being close to zero).
- and eventually the engine went out of timing because all of that braking force got applied to a tiny woodruff key holding the bottom gear for the timing belt aligned; eventually the woodruff key gave way and the engine timing was completely off.
I hate to break it to you, but braking force does not get applied through the timing mechanism, including the pulley keys. Braking force is applied to the pistons, which resist it by compressing air or air/fuel mixture in the cylinders. The timing mechanism is simply along for the ride.
The timing belt only drives the camshaft(s), perhaps a balance shaft or two, and maybe a water pump (depending on the design of your particular Toyota Civic). None of these present a big enough mechanical load to shear the key unless you don't change your oil and a bearing seized up.
You had a loose fit between the pulley and the shaft it was on, or a too-thin key (sometimes even the replacement parts are wrong), which allowed the pulley to move back and forth against the key and eventually fatigue it through.
The only thing that engine braking contributed was higher average engine speeds which revealed the problem sooner than if you had just had the engine idling. It still would have broken eventually during normal driving, because you had faulty parts in your engine, or your car was poorly maintained at some point in its life.
How, precisely, do you scan in books? Do you have to manually scan each page?
We have a project at work that is doing this with a small library of books (I think we're up around 35,000 pages scanned so far).
You cut the spine off of the book and drop the pages in the scanner's automatic document feeder. There are scanners available that can scan both sides of the page as they feed through - we're using a Kodak scanner that does about 50 pages a minute.
Pages are scanned to TIFF files and then converted to PDF. We are using Acrobat Capture, which is fairly reliable but as we get into older books the error count goes up. The are a number of manual steps too; for example the software has to be told which parts of each page are text or pictures, and then after the conversion to PDF, the resulting PDF has to be retouched to fix OCR errors and standardize the fonts - Acrobat Capture likes to change fonts in mid-sentence for reasons known only to itself. Adobe seems to have abandoned development on Acrobat Capture - it's been at version 3.0 since the Acrobat 5 days, so it's a little antiquated.
And you think that's good mileage?
For that size and weight of vehicle it's pretty fantastic. Consider that a gasoline-fueled equivalent would be lucky to hit the mid teens.
I used to consider myself lucky to be getting 21 MPG at 70 MPH in a smaller, lighter gas powered pickup truck.
I highly recommend against portable "evaporative" air conditioners that claim they don't need drainage. They're lying.
It's more likely that there's something faulty in your installation, or some strange circumstance that's making them not work properly.
We have a very small server room (really a large closet), and only about seven machines plus a couple of 3000VA UPS's in the room. We've been cooling it for four years now with a Haier portable A/C unit (yes, a cheap Chinese unit bought from Walmart.com) which evaporates the condensate and exhausts it via a short duct through the wall into the next room.
There have been zero problems so far, and as a side benefit our lunch room stays nice and warm in winter. I have replaced the unit once, after three years of continuous operation just as a preventative measure (there was nothing wrong with it and it's still working at my in-laws' house). They cost under $300. We have to wash out the air filters about twice a year, otherwise the reduced airflow will make the evaporator freeze up solid, but that's the only maintenance it requires, and that's just a quick rinse of the filters in a sink.
From their (weird) web site: 9vDC 2.5mm 10 watt AC-DC adapter power supply So the box is not eating 2 watts, but 10, unless you can pump in it 9VDC in a more efficient way.
The 10 Watt rating is the maximum output of the the power supply - that means the computer itself has to draw less than 10W. It was probably cheaper to buy an off-the-shelf 10W power supply than have a custom 2W PSU built. It does not mean that the computer itself draws 10W.
Lucky you. Or, maybe your other tires were flat too. I have had friends injured when their (small) car became uncontrollable when a tire failed.
We could all go on all day comparing anecdotes, but it's just not helpful.
Think about it - if you lose 25% of the car's grip on the road, that can be extremely dangerous if you're going around a curve or changing speed, regardless of the design of the vehicle.
Yoy say an SUV will swerve for the same thing. Yet more evidence SUVs are not safe.
How is that evidence? It's just an anecdote - again, entertaining but not useful. And just who are these Yoy?
Have fun digging that glass out the kids when you roll over.You just moved from a weak, unsupported argument to being a jerk.
Get this into your head, fast cars are safe. They are designed to stop fast, turn fast and hold the road.Only with all four tires inflated, and a driver who is conscious enough to realize when one of the tires has failed.
SUVs do none of this. Each SUV has warnings they may roll over above the driver's seat. Doesn't that tell you something?It tells me that the center of gravity of a taller vehicle is higher and you won't be able to turn as quickly as a lower car. I've driven a lot of trucks and SUVs, and some really nice handling cars, but I've never come close to having any of them roll over because I understand the limits of each type of vehicle. None of them felt unsafe, except for one commercial truck I drove through some side winds - once I slowed down it was just fine though.
The taller trucks and SUVs tended to have their cornering ability limited by center of gravity, but the nice handling cars had their cornering limited by available tire grip. I own a fantastically good handling car - if you make a sharp turn without warning the passenger they can end up banging their head on the window - but turn too fast and it will spin out. Shouldn't there be a warning label for that?
The exception is where boats are concerned, and in maritime law the smaller craft always has to get out of the way of the larger craft. Perhaps pedestrians should be considered negligent if they don't jump out of the way of cars.
Maybe it's that in exchange for being granted the privilege of driving an automobile on a public road these drivers assume responsibility for remaining in control of their vehicles and are accountable for the consequences of failing to do so. Ok, apparently you missed the part of the post you were replying to about the accident being caused by mechanical failure. Say you buy a brand new car and on the drive home, some tiny defect you weren't aware of causes an accident. Under your reasoning, you should be thrown in jail. Following your reasoning, as a driver you're responsible for knowing the exact location and condition of each atom that makes up your vehicle at all times, right? You get in a Mazda Miata, drive off the road at 30mph, you run through a mailbox and crash into a light pole. You do the same thing in a Ford Excursion at 30mph, you go through the mailbox, pole,I'm all for smaller, safer cars, (realistically almost nobody really needs a Ford Excursion) but let's try to remain sensible.
It might come to a surprise to you, but not all words come from english; eventually it's the other way round.
That's all great and interesting and all, and the other posts on etymology are interesting too, but you see, the thing is, the Slashdot article summary is written in English, for a primarily English speaking audience. In English, the word begins with an "H".
I'm all for respecting the languages of others, but the English word is spelled "Helium". Or, do we now get to use the spelling and pronunciation rules of whatever language we choose?
You can't drive at anywhere normal road speeds on 4kW. Even a very basic small car will have at least a 70kW engine. I know the car isn't using all 70kW all the time, but it's got to be using probably at least a third of that to maintain 40MPH (power requirement goes up with speed due to aerodynamic drag, etc). 4kW is probably adequate to move a modern car up and down the driveway at a walking speed but not much else.
Plus now I'd have to carry extra weight (the generator) in the car even when I'm not using it, further dragging down the performance of this ersatz-electric-car.
Well, the method of action for most bacteria and viruses is not to 'eat' our DNA. Instead, they take control of the cellular machinery and processes within our cells to reproduce.
No, only viruses do that and they do it out of necessity because they have no cellular machinery of their own. Bacteria and fungi absolutely can 'eat' our DNA along with whatever nutritious compounds we happen to be made of.
Therefore, alien bacteria, fungi and viruses (if such ecological analogues exist) have to be attuned to our DNA.
This is just not true, any more than a mushroom needs to be attuned to the DNA of horse crap in order to consume it.
For alien symbiotes to reproduce within our bodies, they need to be able to utilize our mitochondria, nuclei, and membrane proteins. How can an alien species possibly be expected to make use of a complex set of machinery that they were never exposed to?
How about by just being able to make use of the basic nutrients found in our bodies? I don't think tapeworms are attuned to human DNA, yet there are many people who have tapeworms.Back around 1830, when Stephenson's Rocket was the next big thing, there was a strong body of scientific opinion that human beings would explode at speeds above 50 kilometers per hour - assuming that people didn't suffocate first as the air would be sucked out of their lungs!
Even back in the 1830s there were "speed kills" loonies. What next? a warning that you shouldn't go over 25MPH or your eyeballs will come flying out when you try to stop?
Besides, on a long straight you can see them in plenty of time to slow down. Except they're usually hidden behind a tree.How is a wireless tire pressure sensor so much better ?
How about the situation where a tire fails while driving? You run over a sharp object and puncture the tire, but don't notice it. I once had a tire deflate completely while driving - the tire was basically loose on the rim, but it really didn't make much difference in how the car drove at low speeds. Had I then driven at high speeds it could have been disastrous. On long trips in particular TPMS could be life-saving.
When I've been out walking in the downtown area I've heard at least two tires hissing in traffic and I don't think the drivers knew it was happening.
I check my tire pressures every week as I get better fuel economy with the tires pumped up to the maximum pressure, and the car handles better (my car has an ESP system - the warning light flashes a lot less with the tires at maximum pressure, indicating that there is less slip).
Simple: You get a bicyle with electric assist
Ooh, you almost had me there.
I have a bicycle, but I'd never considered riding it in traffic to go the 3.1 miles to work because it's not safe in traffic. Around the neighborhood, or on the bike path, sure.
Then you came along and made me think: What if the bike was fast enough that it could get out of the way of traffic? And if it had a really good suspension and seat so the lousy roads didn't beat me up? What would be even better is if I could recharge its power supply at any of thousands of convenient locations.
Then I remembered I already own a motorcycle, and there are many days (about six months in a row) when the road conditions are not conducive to two wheeled vehicles (snow and ice, for example), and sometimes you just want to be comfortable or carry a passenger or two.
It's just not going to work in most parts of the USA. The road system is built for four wheeled vehicles, and that's just the way it is.
I wish I lived somewhere you could ride a bike to work every day though. That would be nice. Unless it rained.
A former employee of my company had a handicapped parking permit, and she was told by the police that because of her handicapped parking permit, in Illinois the parking rules basically did not apply to her. She could pretty much park anywhere and not get a ticket. She'd park all day in the two hour parking spaces on the street, park across the lines, you name it - and there was nothing the police could do - nor did they make any attempt.
Had she been blocking traffic, that might have been another question, but the simple reality of it was that she never got a parking ticket in a town that lives on parking ticket income.
My understanding is that I *do* own whatever is under my property. If there's oil/gas/other valuable stuff under the property that I own, then those resources are my property.
Or not. In many areas, the government sold off the mineral rights (the rights to the underground resources you're talking about) to a mining company decades ago.
A friend of mine (pardon the pun), worked for 30 years in a limestone mine. Most people in the mid-sized city above the mine didn't even know it was there, and didn't know that a huge amount of stuff had been (and continues to be) mined out from under their land.
As an aside, he was full of fun stories about how when they reopened part of the mine that had been closed off for thirty years they found a bunch of 1950s cars buried down there, and how when they needed to get water for the machines they drilled upwards - and the water came out hot.
Remember the Simpson's episode featuring the "Burns Slant-Drilling Company" that sucked out all of the oil from under the school? It's not so far from reality.
Conversely, if there's nasty stuff in the ground under my property (old chemical tanks, etc.), then I'm responsible to remove said stuff or pay the price for environmental damage that they might cause.
Ah, that's where they get you, because you're most likely correct about that.
The United States has long hated diesel cars.
I don't think that's entirely true. GM screwed it up for everyone else by their half-assed conversions of gasoline engines to diesel around 1979 - broken crankshafts, cracked cylinder heads, etc. resulted from not adequately reengineering the main components of the Oldsmobile 5.7L V8 and 4.3L V6 (used in front wheel drive A-body cars).
The Mercedes diesels have always been reliability legends and sold well in the USA through the 1980s. There are still a lot of W123-chassis diesel models running around. VW diesels seem well regarded in the USA too.
In the US pickup truck marketplace, diesels are seen as ultra-reliable high-torque powerhouses. A full-size pickup with a diesel engine gets significantly better fuel mileage than my gasoline-powered mid-size Dodge Dakota (I have seen mileage as low as 9.9 MPG in city driving in bad winter weather). Problem is, diesels are seen as ultra-reliable high-torque powerhouses and so the diesel pickup engines available are all overbuilt, for the people who apparently tow ocean liners across the country or something. The Cummins 5.9L diesel 6-cylinder engine was a $6000 option by itself, and there is no light-duty diesel engine available for normal people.
I can't think of a single domestic automaker that has a diesel car.
Well I guess it depends on what you consider a "car". Chrysler currently sells the Jeep Liberty with a 2.8L diesel engine which according to reviews gives superior performance and much better fuel economy than the 3.7L gasoline engine, and all three of the big three (GM, Chrysler, Ford) sell pickup trucks with diesel engines (although they are huge trucks).
With the current fuel costs, there is definitely a market in the USA for efficient vehicles, but people aren't willing to give up performance (remember the 48HP VW Rabbit diesel? I'd hate to try to merge into expressway traffic in one of those) or move to much smaller vehicles (utility and the perception of safety).
I think with the modern diesel technology that cuts the noise (although I love the diesel clatter myself) and cleans up the emissions, and fuel economy that rivals or surpasses hybrid gasoline cars (without making the car into an expensive science-fair project on wheels), the time for diesel cars in the USA has arrived.
The difference is, GM won't pull your auction if you're trying to sell a GM product, for example they had no problem when I sold a Chevy Blazer on eBay, but they will pull your auction if you're trying to sell a counterfeit part with their branding on it (this is a big problem for auto parts makers), or if you're trying to sell a T-shirt with the Chevrolet logo on it that wasn't licensed by them.
My company has found people selling copies of our publications on eBay, and for us it was more amusing than anything else as we are not-for-profit, but I could see how GM might not want anyone to be able to buy a fake Delphi airbag controller for a GM car, for example.
I hear a lot of tingling fingers. If this is current, there must be another body part tingling. Where is the current leaving the body???
If there is no seperate tingle, then people are just feeling heat or some other source of vibration, but its not electricity.
You are right about one thing, there must be an entrance and an exit, so to speak, for a complete circuit to be made through your body.
What you may not be considering is that some parts of your body are more sensitive than others (I hope you are aware of that, or you're missing out on some real fun stuff). Also, I've noticed this buzzing sensation only when my hand is lightly touching the electrified object in question - if I press my hand against it strongly, the sensation isn't there. So, I think it's because your feet (or other body parts) are pressed firmly to the floor and aren't experiencing the same sensation, even though a tiny amount of current is flowing.