Ask a physicist anything. (6)

[razeontherock]

I need to ask - when was the last time the "experts" here benched 450?

Look, when medical science gives you up for dead and you come back stronger than ever, anecdote has become evidence.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Do I hear the sound of a logical fallacy coming on?

Indeed I do!

 

[mzungu]

Is candy a type of chocolate? I always thought it was hard sweets that were 'candy'

The yanks have desecrated the English language!

 

[Wiccan_Child]

The yanks have desecrated the English language!

That they have! I knew 'candy' was a word primarily used in North America, but I thought it referred to hard, boiled sweets, not soft things like chocolate .

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Due to lack of interest, Wales moved here to Wisconsin. About 5 miles down the road from here. Lovely place ...

I once talked to a Georgian who was baffled and confused about why Russia was invading the USA...

I need to ask - when was the last time the "experts" here benched 450?

Look, when medical science gives you up for dead and you come back stronger than ever, anecdote has become evidence.

Not really, anecdote is never trustworthy evidence. It may well be a true anecdote, but by definition it has no corroborating evidence to convince other people.

 

[Chalnoth]

That they have! I knew 'candy' was a word primarily used in North America, but I thought it referred to hard, boiled sweets, not soft things like chocolate .

Haha, nope! Candy is basically anything that you eat as a snack in the US (not as dessert) purely for its sugar content. So, ice cream isn't candy, because it's a traditional dessert food. Chocolate bars are candy (often called candy bars, actually).

But in the end it's more of a traditional category than a taxonomic one, so I'm sure that if you thought hard you could find some counter-examples.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Haha, nope! Candy is basically anything that you eat as a snack in the US (not as dessert) purely for its sugar content. So, ice cream isn't candy, because it's a traditional dessert food. Chocolate bars are candy (often called candy bars, actually).

But in the end it's more of a traditional category than a taxonomic one, so I'm sure that if you thought hard you could find some counter-examples.

Unacceptable, everything must be pigeon-holed! For science!

 

[mzungu]

Unacceptable, everything must be pigeon-holed! For science!

The USA is the "alternate universe" of the UK akin to "matter versus antimatter".

 

[mzungu]

WOW this "Birdminator" has a better stabiliser than the gyroscopic gun stabiliser of the M1 Abrams MBT:

Brown Owl remarkable head stability - YouTube

 

[Wiccan_Child]

WOW this "Birdminator" has a better stabiliser than the gyroscopic gun stabiliser of the M1 Abrams MBT:

Brown Owl remarkable head stability - YouTube

Cool! Cruel, but cool!

 

[Cactus Jack]

This thread was split automatically after 1000 replies and this thread has been automatically created.
The old thread automatically closed is here: "Ask a physicist anything. (5)"

Define for me what gravity is, and how is it we can expect to have artificial gravity on such a small scale.

 

[Chalnoth]

Define for me what gravity is, and how is it we can expect to have artificial gravity on such a small scale.

In Newtonian physics, gravity is a force of attraction between any two masses.

In General Relativity, gravity is a description of how matter curves space-time, and how the curvature of space-time influences the motion of matter.

I don't think we can ever expect to have artificial gravity.

 

[mzungu]

Define for me what gravity is, and how is it we can expect to have artificial gravity on such a small scale.

We can simulate gravity by using the effects of centrifugal force! As for artificial gravity? Forget it for now as technology is waiting for Physics to solve the problem of artificially manipulating gravity.

 

[Lillen]

My notion is that if we seek for manipulating gravaty, we will need another perception of it! With the current thoughts around gravity all we ever see is aeroplanes!

 

[Lillen]

I got one more question: What is inbetween the electrons and the nucleus (Misconception???)? Space, Vaccum?

My theory is that we need another perception of nuclear science before we can simulate fusion... We need to adress particles with a masculine and a feminin attributes...

 

[razeontherock]

Not really, anecdote is never trustworthy evidence. It may well be a true anecdote, but by definition it has no corroborating evidence to convince other people.

FALSE. When it's repeated, and consistently produces the same results, it counts. In context here, something as simple as a 90 year old frail woman having different nutritional requirements from a 250 pound active male athlete, is basically true. Regardless of the fact the USRDA fails to recognize this, and is therefore pretty worthless.

 

[Lillen]

I got another question. If we read the bible we see that God sets forth a law that says that nothing that was made crocket can become streight again!

Can this law be falisified? Or is it true?

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

FALSE. When it's repeated, and consistently produces the same results, it counts. In context here, something as simple as a 90 year old frail woman having different nutritional requirements from a 250 pound active male athlete, is basically true. Regardless of the fact the USRDA fails to recognize this, and is therefore pretty worthless.

If you ask, there are literally hundreds of millions of people willing to attest to the existence of Santa Claus. A huge exercise in the reliability of anecdotal evidence. But this does not really have anything, at all, to do with whether Santa Claus actually exists.

Going back to your example, in case you didn't figure it out, the main logical fallacy was a straw man. As I said, the US recommended dietary guidelines are not meant to be perfect for every single person on the planet; like BMI, they are meant to be a population average. To say that the FDA (or whoever makes the guidelines) recommends a training professional athlete eat the same as a 90-year old woman, is a huge straw man. Because as I also said, if you need to pay attention to the guidelines to that extent, the best thing for you to do is to seek the advice of a nutritionist.

There is also another logical fallacy; a red herring. Because a person's athletic ability has nothing to do with that person's ability to give advice to other people. Or does that mean that unless I get cancer myself, I have no authority to treat people with cancer?

I got another question. If we read the bible we see that God sets forth a law that says that nothing that was made crocket can become streight again!

Can this law be falisified? Or is it true?

'crocket'?

 

[Chalnoth]

I got one more question: What is inbetween the electrons and the nucleus (Misconception???)? Space, Vaccum?

Nothing. The innermost electrons of an atom are routinely within the nucleus. Not that often, because the nucleus is very, very small. But it happens.

My theory is that we need another perception of nuclear science before we can simulate fusion... We need to adress particles with a masculine and a feminin attributes...

Uh, what? Particles have no masculine or feminine attributes. And the difficulty isn't so much doing nuclear fusion. It's been done, it's old hat. The difficulty is extracting more energy from fusion than is used in getting it started. And doing that is an exceedingly difficult engineering problem.

 

[Chalnoth]

I got another question. If we read the bible we see that God sets forth a law that says that nothing that was made crocket can become streight again!

Can this law be falisified? Or is it true?

Sure. Take a metal paperclip. Melt it down. Put it in a straight mold, and let it cool. Bam, something crooked made straight.

That said, it is difficult to make something straight that was once crooked. And that is largely down to entropy: making something straight is a reduction in entropy, which requires a large input of heat.