Comments by "Stephen Villano" (@spvillano) on "Angela Collier " channel.

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  10.  @qsquared8833  I get a fair number of system crashes here, every time there's a geomagnetic storm. To hazard a guess, there's a good current path under the river that's literally right outside that induces spikes that puts all of my systems into a tizzy. The only reason I'm aware of the most probable cause is that I'm on the space weather mailing list and have been for years, as I used to track space weather for military operational reasons. Now, it's just basically a warning that I'll likely need to reboot several computers... Arthur Clarke was quite the aficionado of space elevators, yet never quite cottoned to several issues that were show stoppers. He realized quickly that, well, it's a hell of a long trip and in his writing took that into account when writing of trips on a space elevator and some authors also took notes, rather than ignore the fact that geostationary orbit is a wee few steps away. He entirely missed, as most authors do, my magical space elevator speeding along, well, those wheels would be spinning a helling. We're talking about rotational speeds that'd be hypersonic! Think of the rotational speeds involved for the drive wheels and idlers of rollers on a cable system, where the elevator car is moving at a nice leisurely Mach 1. And we thought the cable had to be strong! I'm surprised that Clarke missed that, he was otherwise a fine engineer. Maybe we should pen a few physics jokes about relativistic wheel bearings and oh, a mythical paper on frame dragging in relativistic wheel bearings and the effects upon rotational systems... And do a Star Trek transwarp wheel bearing system. Or how the friction generates so much heat energy it collapses into a Kugelblitz... Headline in the fictional news, "Planet disrupted by Kugelblitz generated by overheating space elevator bearing, foggy film at 11!".
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  24. If he were alive and I asked Schrodinger to solve the Schrodinger equation for a relativistic electron orbital, well, we'd both call it time to hit the bar and hope Lorentz doesn't show up there as well. There, Dirac would be waiting for us... ;) Doubles all around, 'cause now it'll get dense. Cap off that night by casually mentioning that, in 2024, we're really close to achieving commercial level fusion power, only between 5 and 40 years away, then get the bar towel to clean up the spit drinks... I'll start the food fight though. Engineering is, like chemistry, simply applied physics. And anyone wanting to say that quantum physics isn't useful, turn your computer off, since you don't respect or acknowledge its technology and come talk to my tunneling diode and tell it how it doesn't work. Don't make me dust off the laser... Erm, nitpick, optical vs UV? Both are optical, Balmer is visual light (although there still is that whole IR thingie), Lyman is UV, which still is light. Both use the same basic optics, just different tuning and materials (same again with IR). It's only when the wavelength gets really long or much shorter than mere UV that things turn into a pain in the gonads to focus and reflect reasonably efficiently. UV absorbs and converts to heat, but visual light doesn't? Uh, no, six of one, half dozen of the other, just more energy downconverting to heat with UV and don't get me started on hard gamma (gonad pain, remember?). Perhaps, a bit too Goobered down? As for quantum mechanics vs classical, a fission reactor is a fine example. I can kludge together a basic, ugly fission reactor without quantum mechanics. If I want an efficient one, I'm going to need quantum mechanics. Lasers, well, I need quantum mechanics, they're not magic, just the darkest of the dark arts, mathematics. ;) I'll disagree about cannot agree to disagree. After all, there is Schrodinger's Mouse, who had the grave misfortune of trying to ascertain the wave function of that damned cat... I'll just get my hat and coat...
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  25. Flouride, isn't that what bread is made from? Fluoride, depends upon the fluoride, not that these brain trusts would be capable of comprehending the difference between stannous fluoride and chlorine trifluoride. Frequently enough, these same fu - erm, folks also call white phosphorus a chemical weapon, no it's an allotrope of an element, in a military context, incendiary and primarily used to generate tons of steamy smoke. Not a nerve agent, blood agent, choking agent, blister agent, CNS agent, etc. It's akin to calling a water balloon a chemical weapon. Traces of fluoride compounds will help reduce tooth decay, excesses can cause tooth discoloration, weakened teeth and bones and major health problems in extreme dosage cases - which happens naturally in a number of places around the world where the ground water is high in fluorides. Guess humans shouldn't have gotten off of that battlestar... Chlorine trifluoride, I'll happily play with that any day - if it's on a different continent than I am on. It's a much better oxidizer than mere oxygen (seriously). Great oxidizer for any rocket, it'll oxidize the fuel and the occupant instantly. Great for cleaning the containment vessel of a nuclear reactor though, the uranium will go into solution as uranium hexafluoride, which is where one wants it for processing. Which means, you'll not find me anywhere near a reactor containment vessel that's being cleaned of uranium traces... It's nasty enough to burn sand, glass, water (yes, water), ashes, chemists who violate safety protocols and as one researcher documented, in the event of a metallofluorine fire with the stuff, a good pair of running shoes is strongly recommended. As for "fluoride is a toxic element", erm, that'd be fluorine. So is chlorine, are we gonna ban all salt in the world now? Iodine is toxic, you'll be just as dead without it as you'll be without chlorine in salt.* Now, excuse me while I refill my bottle of hydroxic acid, aka hydrogen hydroxide, aka, dihydrogen monoxide, aka frigging water. Paracelsus said it best, "The dose makes the poison". * I have Grave's disease, a form of hyperthyroidism. One older endocrinologist warned me to avoid iodine containing foods, even while taking my methimazole (which blocks forming the iodine containing thyroid hormones that I form in excess). I asked if he was concerned with the Wolff-Chaikoff effect and he said no, more out of concern of a thyroid storm. A hint, I didn't see that quack again and found a competent endocrinologist. The Wolff-Chaikoff effect is iodine overload, which so busies the thyroid gland (OK, massively Goobering things down by a lot) that it completely shuts down hormone production in favor of taking up that excess iodine. When I was hospitalized in moderately poor condition due to a thyroid storm, the competent endocrinologist suggested that as an option to wrangle my thyroid under control until the methimazole began to take effect. Fortunately, rather than bounce between extremes, my thyroid was good enough to cooperate with more conservative treatment with the drug alone.
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