The Factory Floor

12:12 AM

Am I being overly critical here?

12:35 AM

My rationale is what was given in earlier comments: If the photon has mass - and the mass given is far from negligible - then the electromagnetic force will only have any importance over really, really, really short distances. That disproves Doomsday Idea 1.

It does confirm Doomsday Idea 2, but for different reasons. Doomsday Idea 3 starts to not make sense because the same amount of energy will not be produced by the Sun; interactions will be different and the journeys of photons to the surface - if they happen at all - will be much, much different.

Doomsday Idea 4 sort of agrees with it, but was added in much more recently.

The big issue here is that ACuriousMind and dmckee are valuable contributors to Physics Stack Exchange - because this is the stuff they study. The best way to improve the quality of posts on Worldbuilding is to have experts answer them - and these are some of the guys we need to do so! But if they have this kind of experience, what motivation will they have to answer questions (yes, I've talked with them in chat)?

This is part of the platform I ran on during the election: inter-site relationships. It's what we need to work on, and it's why I appear to have just written quite a lot about what happened.

Monica Cellio

4:33 AM

Congratulations to @CortAmmon on reaching 30k rep!

15

Q: What types of musical instruments would develop underwater?

Water is different from air, and sound waves propagate through water in a different way than they do in air (caused in part by interactions with the bottom of the body of water). For a society living underwater, this could lead to some interesting innovations in music, and musical instruments. Fo...

bilbo_pingouin

6:24 AM

Sea organ

The Sea organ (Croatian: Morske orgulje) is an architectural object located in Zadar, Croatia and an experimental musical instrument, which plays music by way of sea waves and tubes located underneath a set of large marble steps. == History == Chaotic reconstruction work was undertaken in an attempt to repair the devastation Zadar suffered in the Second World War. The frantic reconstruction turned much of the sea front into an unbroken, monotonous concrete wall. The device was made by the architect Nikola Bašić as part of the project to redesign the new city coast (Nova riva), and the site was...

@DaaaahWhoosh and @MonicaCellio ^^^

bilbo_pingouin

7:19 AM

@HDE226868, I fully agree that 1) the question shows a lack of ground understanding of forces and that 2) Lacklub's answer is better.

However due to the misunderstanding of the OP, some of those scenario are fun to read... they are even correct due to handwaving away each effect intependently.

David Z

@HDE226868 I don't post much here, but my thought is that it's not necessary or desirable to have answers follow every bit of established physics. It wouldn't be science fiction if it did, after all. (I know this isn't Science Fiction & Fantasy but the subject matter is similar, right?) Depending on what level of scientific rigor the asker wants, I think an answer like that could be perfectly acceptable.

bilbo_pingouin

I think the answer would gain some quality, by stating the whole force and distance thing first. Then accept the handwaving of it, and shows the rest

David Z

I actually thought that ACuriousMind's initial comment seemed kind of out of place on this site. It'd be perfectly appropriate on Physics, but here I was kind of surprised to see it.

bilbo_pingouin

note that the tag is science-base and not hard-science. We've had such discussions before.

I'll go ahead and write an introduction sentence...

@HDE226868 how about with my introduction sentence?

bowlturner

1:51 PM

Woot! We now have 40 bronze tag badges available to earn and I have 25 of them!

bilbo_pingouin

how many do we need?

bowlturner

? @bilbo_pingouin what do you mean?

I need all of them! ;)

bilbo_pingouin

no, I always forget what generalist is...

shouldn't you have one already?

bowlturner

Oh, the generalist needs 40 tags with at least 200 questions each before it can be awarded. But once we have enough you only need a score of 15 for 20 of the top 40 tags

I'm just trying to get 40 bronze tag badges before the Generalist can be awarded.

bilbo_pingouin

I see...

the at least 200 questions in each is of course, kind of a limitation factor... ;)

bowlturner

2:03 PM

yep. We just reached 40 tags with 100 questions yesterday

bilbo_pingouin

we need to work on culture, weapon, aliens, environment, hard-science and politics

they are the closest to form the 20...

we have 14 tags with 200+ questions... with those, that's make 20...

bowlturner

but we need 40 tags with 200

bilbo_pingouin

ok, maybe we're a bit ahead of course, SEDE is a bit out of date

bowlturner

you only need 20 of the top 40 though after that

bilbo_pingouin

ah ok, it's not enough that the 20 you have have at least 200 questions... you also need that the 40th also gets 200 questions...

well that's going to take a little while

bowlturner

2:07 PM

yes it is.

bilbo_pingouin

it might give me a chance to get 15+ in at least 20 of them before then ;-)

bowlturner

I've been updating a post on Meta as the 40 get closer

1

A: Another badge question. Tag badges

Just an update on our badges. For the generalist badge progress the top 40 tags have at least 20 questions asked each. We have 15 tags with at least 50 questions (resulting in 9 Taxonomist badges) We have 6 tags > 100 (technology is at 99!) (allowing for 22 Bronze tag badges to have been awa...

bowlturner

2:36 PM

Tried my hand at answering the raiding of an ant mound.

Green

I love how wonderfully absurd questions can be on WB.

bowlturner

They certainly do show a bit of imaginaton

Green

Like, how we can apply science-based reasoning to mythical-creatures.

bowlturner

Yep. Lots of fun, and needs a little cognitive dissonance :)

Green

@bowlturner Well, I've got a question along those lines that I'm about to post. I don't think it's a duplicate and I think it's got a really good chance of being on HNQ.

James

2:45 PM

Morning all

Green

@James Hey James.

bowlturner

@Green then I'll try to answer it well and right away in order to get a free ride!

bilbo_pingouin

Hey :)

bowlturner

morning James

James

Whats happening today

Green

2:47 PM

@James I've got a potential HNQ question that I'm going to post in about two minutes.

bowlturner

@James I need to put up my new clamp rack and take a picture, my latest blacksmithing adventure.

James

Looking forward to it Green. Your questions are usually pretty fun to answer

bowl, nice

I got 20 feet of 1 1/4" by 1/4" 1080 spring steel last week.

time to practice knife making

Green

It's up.

@James, @bowlturner, do you know where I would be able to get good information about forming sheet aluminum? I know steel is more your thing but I thought I'd ask.

James

@Green When you say forming what do you mean?

Green

@James I'm trying to design and build my own ACES II ejection seat as an office chair. All of the plans I've found are for wood, which is okay but I want a metal seat. Some of the shapes involve rounded folds.

Or just general information about working with sheet aluminum would be fine too.

James

2:55 PM

@Green Hrm...that sounds awesome...and yeah Ive got nothing, never worked with aluminum before.

bowlturner

3:10 PM

nope, never worked with aluminum, other than crushing pop cans

I tried answering you question @Green, I suspect 1 or 2 will come along and make my answer amateurish, but I at least tried to include some humor! :)

James

3:28 PM

yeah I had to drop an answer on that one too @Green

bowlturner

3:45 PM

The person with the most interesting questions is back.

again

Green

3:56 PM

@bowlturner Thank you, thank you. It's good to be back.

bowlturner

@Green I suppose that is one way to read my comment...

Green

For some reason mermaid sea shell bikini tops popped into my head this morning and I wondered if those things actually made any sense.....hence the question.

@bowlturner Hey man :) I'll interpret ambiguous comments to my own emotional delight whenever I like.

bowlturner

Of course they make sense! You need to cover up the female form or it's just indecent! Even if there is nothing there to cover up

More power to you my man.

Green

On the subject of aluminum sheetwork, I found a really nice instructional video on YouTube about riveting made in the 40s or 50s. It was about 10 minutes long and I was riveted to the screen the whole time. :)

bowlturner

didn't that hurt?

Green

4:02 PM

@bowlturner Nah. I managed to tear myself away before the rivet gun finished its work.

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