Thursday, November 15, 2012
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Twilight in Detroit
This is Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo, with the Electronium... an analog sequencer and algorithmic composer, the life work of Raymond Scott. You may not know who Raymond Scott was, but you've heard his music... he wrote some of the most distinctive tunes used by Warner Brothers in Looney Tunes, including the incomparable Powerhouse theme.
Mark has bought the only surviving model of the machine from Motown, and is going to repair and refurbish it.
I think it looks like something Wile-E Coyote would use, and it sounds like it too: http://oldsite.raymondscott.com/ElecTwil.wav
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Falling through the planet - geek edition.
Marco September 17, 2012 at 12:15 am
Hope they don’t fall into one of those bottomless pit traps!
ToaSoul September 17, 2012 at 5:50 am
those make no sense its pretty much impossible to make
a “bottomless pit” there has to be an end sometime!!
Argent Stonecutter September 17, 2012 at 7:03 am
If your pit’s deep enough there’s no bottom, just another top!
Raska September 17, 2012 at 10:56 am
that would get /weird/. You fall and fall and fall and then are spit out at the edge of the pit. *shudders* portal physics are mindbending
Argent Stonecutter September 17, 2012 at 11:19 am
Well, actually, you’d get cooked by the heat of the molten core of the earth long before you get anywhere near the opposite top.
Argent Stonecutter September 17, 2012 at 11:26 am
Ignoring thermal effects and air resistance, it would take 42 minutes.
http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/poster-earth.cfm
It turns out that *any* trip along any straight line (chord) through the earth under gravity, and ignoring friction, would take 42 minutes. That’s also half the orbital period for a sea-level satellite (though it would have to be a black hole or something to avoid being slowed down by air resistance).
So if you had an evacuated maglev line from San Francisco to New York, it would take 42 minutes. San Francisco to Bombay? 42 minutes. San Francisco to Los Angeles? 42 minutes. The science is easy. Engineering it, now that’s a charming young woman.
Keldor September 17, 2012 at 2:22 pm
Of course, once you add just a tiny bit of friction, you’d fall until you stopped just short of the other side, at which point you’d fall back the other way, stopping just short of where you started. You’d continue falling back and forth for quite some time before eventually settling in the center of the earth, at which point you’d face a climb of nearly 4000 miles to return to the surface…
Argent Stonecutter September 17, 2012 at 4:10 pm
Oh, you want *realistic* calculations?
Let’s see, in a vacuum the maximum velocity would be almost 8 kilometers per second. Terminal velocity for a human at 1 atmosphere is more like 50 meters per second. So under ideal conditions you’d have less than 1% of the speed to get back to the surface on the first pass. Air pressure would get higher as you dropped, and acceleration due to gravity would be reduced, so your actual velocity as you passed through the center would be much less than 50 meters per second.
Also, the walls of the tunnel at that depth would be several thousand degrees, so the terminal velocity of the charred remnants of your body would be even lower.
Keldor September 18, 2012 at 12:22 am
To be fair, if you just let air fill the shaft, the pressure would be such that somewhere around 1/3rd (napkin calculations FTW!) of the way down, the pressure would be such that air would become a solid, so you wouldn’t even make it to the core. Engineering-wise, proper climate control (including a vacuum for you to fall through in your spacesuit) would be the least of your concerns, given that the strongest materials known to science would collapse like a wet sponge under an 18-ton hydraulic press. 50 million PSI is a *lot*.
Keldor September 18, 2012 at 12:34 am
Come to think of it, air would be solid well before that. I was basing my calculations on the theoretical depth in Jupiter where hydrogen becomes solid, and multiplying my 10 to account for the different gravity, but hydrogen is much lighter than air, about 15-fold, so, assuming a similar amount of pressure turns mostly nitrogen into a solid (ideal gas laws state that the number of particles determine the pressure/volume, so the relative density of the gasses is completely determined by their relative atomic weights (and temperature, but we’re assuming that’s the same)), the depth for solid air would only be around perhaps 75 miles, which is well away from the center.
Keldor September 18, 2012 at 12:36 am
Actually, 40 miles.
Marco September 18, 2012 at 2:08 am
Oh I love how you guys incorporate real science within the fantasy realm! I think Tarot would approve greatly if she was there!
Argent Stonecutter September 18, 2012 at 8:11 am
The partial pressure of oxygen would be toxic only 6 km down. I don’t think you can extrapolate so linearly from Jupiter, though, not just because Earth’s gravity is less but also because it falls off much faster with depth.
The walls of the tube would be under significantly higher pressure than that from the molten rock (average density 5 grams/cc, versus 0.0012 g/cc for air). Like I said, the engineering challenges are a real charming young woman.
Raska September 18, 2012 at 10:55 am
:O…
C-Shock September 17, 2012 at 8:38 pm
Argent Stonecutter, your science is now the “About Me” info on my skype. and i’m putting it on facebook, if it’s not a problem…just to increase general knowledge. you is smart!
Argent Stonecutter September 18, 2012 at 9:59 am
Heh, maybe I should preserve this thread in my blog.
Hope they don’t fall into one of those bottomless pit traps!
ToaSoul September 17, 2012 at 5:50 am
those make no sense its pretty much impossible to make
a “bottomless pit” there has to be an end sometime!!
Argent Stonecutter September 17, 2012 at 7:03 am
If your pit’s deep enough there’s no bottom, just another top!
Raska September 17, 2012 at 10:56 am
that would get /weird/. You fall and fall and fall and then are spit out at the edge of the pit. *shudders* portal physics are mindbending
Argent Stonecutter September 17, 2012 at 11:19 am
Well, actually, you’d get cooked by the heat of the molten core of the earth long before you get anywhere near the opposite top.
Argent Stonecutter September 17, 2012 at 11:26 am
Ignoring thermal effects and air resistance, it would take 42 minutes.
http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/poster-earth.cfm
It turns out that *any* trip along any straight line (chord) through the earth under gravity, and ignoring friction, would take 42 minutes. That’s also half the orbital period for a sea-level satellite (though it would have to be a black hole or something to avoid being slowed down by air resistance).
So if you had an evacuated maglev line from San Francisco to New York, it would take 42 minutes. San Francisco to Bombay? 42 minutes. San Francisco to Los Angeles? 42 minutes. The science is easy. Engineering it, now that’s a charming young woman.
Keldor September 17, 2012 at 2:22 pm
Of course, once you add just a tiny bit of friction, you’d fall until you stopped just short of the other side, at which point you’d fall back the other way, stopping just short of where you started. You’d continue falling back and forth for quite some time before eventually settling in the center of the earth, at which point you’d face a climb of nearly 4000 miles to return to the surface…
Argent Stonecutter September 17, 2012 at 4:10 pm
Oh, you want *realistic* calculations?
Let’s see, in a vacuum the maximum velocity would be almost 8 kilometers per second. Terminal velocity for a human at 1 atmosphere is more like 50 meters per second. So under ideal conditions you’d have less than 1% of the speed to get back to the surface on the first pass. Air pressure would get higher as you dropped, and acceleration due to gravity would be reduced, so your actual velocity as you passed through the center would be much less than 50 meters per second.
Also, the walls of the tunnel at that depth would be several thousand degrees, so the terminal velocity of the charred remnants of your body would be even lower.
Keldor September 18, 2012 at 12:22 am
To be fair, if you just let air fill the shaft, the pressure would be such that somewhere around 1/3rd (napkin calculations FTW!) of the way down, the pressure would be such that air would become a solid, so you wouldn’t even make it to the core. Engineering-wise, proper climate control (including a vacuum for you to fall through in your spacesuit) would be the least of your concerns, given that the strongest materials known to science would collapse like a wet sponge under an 18-ton hydraulic press. 50 million PSI is a *lot*.
Keldor September 18, 2012 at 12:34 am
Come to think of it, air would be solid well before that. I was basing my calculations on the theoretical depth in Jupiter where hydrogen becomes solid, and multiplying my 10 to account for the different gravity, but hydrogen is much lighter than air, about 15-fold, so, assuming a similar amount of pressure turns mostly nitrogen into a solid (ideal gas laws state that the number of particles determine the pressure/volume, so the relative density of the gasses is completely determined by their relative atomic weights (and temperature, but we’re assuming that’s the same)), the depth for solid air would only be around perhaps 75 miles, which is well away from the center.
Keldor September 18, 2012 at 12:36 am
Actually, 40 miles.
Marco September 18, 2012 at 2:08 am
Oh I love how you guys incorporate real science within the fantasy realm! I think Tarot would approve greatly if she was there!
Argent Stonecutter September 18, 2012 at 8:11 am
The partial pressure of oxygen would be toxic only 6 km down. I don’t think you can extrapolate so linearly from Jupiter, though, not just because Earth’s gravity is less but also because it falls off much faster with depth.
The walls of the tube would be under significantly higher pressure than that from the molten rock (average density 5 grams/cc, versus 0.0012 g/cc for air). Like I said, the engineering challenges are a real charming young woman.
Raska September 18, 2012 at 10:55 am
:O…
C-Shock September 17, 2012 at 8:38 pm
Argent Stonecutter, your science is now the “About Me” info on my skype. and i’m putting it on facebook, if it’s not a problem…just to increase general knowledge. you is smart!
Argent Stonecutter September 18, 2012 at 9:59 am
Heh, maybe I should preserve this thread in my blog.
Monday, July 9, 2012
Be thankful for weasels!
Weasels kill 60 million mice a year in the state of New York alone! 60 million! That's gotta be enough to fill the Statue of Liberty!
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Alternate History #56.5"
Just got back from the alternate reality where Ben Franklin was the first Hereditary President of the US. In that universe the Civil War was over Metrification and railroad gauges. The summit party had to change trains on the Nashville-Atlanta line and a banjo duel broke out in
the confusion. Sherman’s banjo misfired because he couldn’t get metric
strings in Atlanta. Nothing to do but burn the place down and wage
terrible war!
Game Mechanics in Second Life?
What does Hamlet mean by "Game Mechanics"? Something like this, perhaps?
Congratulations, you've worn an outfit, you have achieved the Wear An Outfit Award™. You have now filled the top shelf of your Second Life Trophy Case™*.
* To display your Second Life Trophy Case™ in Second Life™, upgrade to a Premium account and set your home position (review Setting Your Home Position Award™ here) to your new Linden Home™ and your Second Life Trophy Case™ will be revealed!
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Six Stages of Debugging
Geekier post than usual!
From an old and abandoned blog:
Somebody taped this on their door at work:
Six Stages of Debugging
Today is debugging blog day. I spent the entire day trying to debug a crasher that nobody knows how to reproduce, although there are multiple bug reports with the same stack trace...
- That can't happen.
- That doesn't happen on my machine.
- That shouldn't happen.
- Why does that happen?
- Oh, I see.
- How did that ever work?
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About Me
- Argent Stonecutter
- I'm just this shapeshifting simulation of a critter originally from a little planet in the Slow Zone that you've probably never heard of.