The h Bar

7:00 PM

@EmilioPisanty That was rude. Please maintain your patience while explaining physics concepts to newbies. Such behavior makes them go into a shell and they start to avoid asking question to people assuming that everyone else understands it and they don't. This is a request.

AccidentalFourierTransform

I wonder how long it will take him to delete that answer once the bounty period is over

@anonymous no. just no.

anonymous

@AccidentalFourierTransform What?

Emilio Pisanty

@anonymous cool. you're up. I'm (genuinely) sorry, but my patience ran out.

skullpetrol

Come on guys he's trying.

Emilio Pisanty

@skullpetrol so step up and explain.

anonymous

7:03 PM

I know. I might have done the same if I were in Emilio's place. But I have suffered a lot from the same problem when teachers just say : "You can't even understand this easy thing? Forget becoming a physicist"

Emilio Pisanty

@anonymous so stop criticizing, step up, and start explaining.

skullpetrol

He needs to rewatch the khan videos.

anonymous

@EmilioPisanty I am not criticizing you or anyone.

And I do help people when they ask. Have a look at the transcript. And sorry, I'm out of time now.

skullpetrol

Cya

ACuriousMind

@anonymous What's up here today? You were criticizing him, so own up to it. Saying "I didn't mean to criticize you" when the other party clearly feels criticized accomplishes nothing.

Criticism is fine, but saying "that wasn't criticism" is pointless.

anonymous

7:08 PM

@ACuriousMind I was requesting him. There is a difference. Don't you see "I might have done the same if I were in Emilio's place" ?

ACuriousMind

I see no difference between criticizing someone and requesting they do something different from what they did. When you request someone change their behaviour, you are implying their actual behaviour was wrong. How is this not obvious?

anonymous

@ACuriousMind His behavior wasn't wrong. It just could have been better.

If you want to make a debate out of this then go ahead. I'm out.

Emilio Pisanty

@anonymous y'all still talking about this?

AccidentalFourierTransform

@ACuriousMind Now I feel criticised. Please apologise to me.

skullpetrol

I'm sorry @AccidentalFourierTransform

:P

AccidentalFourierTransform

7:11 PM

ok for now

DanielSank

Hi, everybody,

AccidentalFourierTransform

ACM: so you won't apologise then

OK: SEE YOU IN COURT!

skullpetrol

Hi.

Case closed.

DanielSank

@ACuriousMind I find voting very confusing.

I especially don't understand down-votes.

ACuriousMind

@AccidentalFourierTransform Please direct all further correspondence to my lawyers.

skullpetrol

7:14 PM

You have lawyers?

AccidentalFourierTransform

@skullpetrol you dont?

skullpetrol

Nope.

ACuriousMind

@DanielSank Upvote = "dis good stuff"; downvote = "dis bad stuff". Seems pretty straightforward to me.

DanielSank

@ACuriousMind Maybe.

I barely understand when "dis bad stuff" applies but "dis should be closed" does not.

skullpetrol

Define: dis

:D

DanielSank

7:16 PM

dis: "This", American slang.

David Z

@DanielSank extremely low effort, I would say.

Emilio Pisanty

@DanielSank how aware are you of the cheeky Nando's thing?

David Z

(I could go on, but later)

DanielSank

@EmilioPisanty Not at all.

@DavidZ k

Skyler

hey guyus

AccidentalFourierTransform

7:18 PM

ohai

ACuriousMind

@DanielSank The two sometimes coincide, but stuff can be bad without being close-worthy. For one, questions whose answer can be found with a simple google search are not generally agreed upon to be closeworthy, but I think they're bad questions setting bad precedent and should be downvoted.

skullpetrol

yo

Emilio Pisanty

@DanielSank buzzfeed.com/alanwhite/…

Skyler

I've got a problem based entirely on a picture that I think physics folks are really the only people who could answer it

Emilio Pisanty

's what you get for assuming everyone knows your cryptic American slang

=P

Skyler

7:19 PM

but itll be tough even for us to get it just right

DanielSank

@EmilioPisanty heh

@Skyler Just ask the question.

Emilio Pisanty

pretty sure it's come up here before

skullpetrol

Ask away @Skyler

Skyler

How high an elevation would you need to be at for a picture with a view like this to be possible? Ignore fog/smog/light scattering

2

Its obviously a photoshop

Emilio Pisanty

@Skyler assuming no funky optics distortion on the Europsy bit, you're looking at ISS-ish altitudes

Skyler

7:23 PM

@EmilioPisanty How would you be able to figure it out exactly though

Emilio Pisanty

somewhat higher, maybe

Skyler

Or within a small error

Emilio Pisanty

@Skyler what, you want a 1% uncertainty on measurements of a fictional image?

AccidentalFourierTransform

@Skyler like, at least, three tall

Skyler

I've always been interested in resolving FOV/distances, and when you can start observing curvature of the earth thats where my intuition drops out

skullpetrol

7:25 PM

Where did you get this question?

ACuriousMind

@EmilioPisanty I have no idea what I just read

Emilio Pisanty

@ACuriousMind hehehehehehehe

Skyler

@skullpetrol I saw it and started trying to ask myself how high up you would need to get to actually see something sort of in the realm of this

skullpetrol

So you want to see the curvature of the earth?

Skyler

@skullpetrol Also correlate curvature observed with altitude

We dont really learn how to confirm what we should be expecting from the math we see

skullpetrol

7:34 PM

What are ISS-ish altitudes? @EmilioPisanty

Emilio Pisanty

@skullpetrol ~400km

skullpetrol

There^ is your answer @Skyler

Emilio Pisanty

look up pictures of the Earth from the ISS for comparison

your pic looks like it fits more of the continent, but you might need to be a bit higher and with higher zoom

it can be pretty hard to distinguish close-crops from far away vs wide angles from closer in

0celo7

8:21 PM

@dmckee Is it normal for full profs in Civil Engineering to not have PhD's?

dmckee

@0celo7 That really depends on the school and the policy. Most places expect professors to have "a terminal degree". For the arts a MFA qualifies as does a MLS for the library, but most places don't consider a MS as terminal.

That said, there are some odd degrees out there. I've worked with a doctor of chemical education, and my father has an engineer's degree which is sort of a masters++ (he went back for a Ph.D. thirty years later).

I would not be surprised to find a engineering school treating an engineer's degree as terminal and therefore sufficient for a professorship.

0celo7

@dmckee I see. I was standing around in the CE building and one of the rooms is named after a prof who worked here for 30 years

He only had a masters'

All the engineering profs I had have PhDs

dmckee

Well, engineering schools have always had a more immediately practical focus than some other disciplines. A masters and the right industry experience may be highly values because they are training students mostly for industry.

But these days there is such a glut of advanced degrees on the market that schools can afford to insist on one.

Mostafa

8:38 PM

@dmckee are such things real? or it's just that we like to think the world is going to hell?

I mean, is everything really getting worse? very limited funding, lots of PhDs available on the market, huge grade inflation, very few faculty openings,... why NOW?!

dmckee

In the US at least the number of faculty slots by raw numbers is up. It's just that the number of qualified people seeking those jobs is up even more.

And many of those jobs are not particularly attractive. Things like small state school with a high teaching load and little time for research.

rob

9:24 PM

@0celo7 Employed for thirty years + room named in his honor = hired sometime before 1985, tenured sometime before 1990. The past is another country; they do things differently there.

DanielSank

9:41 PM

@Mostafa No, things are not getting worse.

If things were getting worse the way people have been saying for the last thousand years, the universe would have imploded by now.

Everyone over the age of 50 thinks the world is getting worse, when in fact the world is more educated and safer than ever. The only thing arguably getting worse, IMHO, is the natural environment, which, oddly, is not something the older crowd complains about.

@ACuriousMind That is a very interesting statement.

It makes me uncomfortable.

rob

10:28 PM

Hey all, not to interrupt and I hope that I can do this in a non-censorious sort of a way, but I'd like to move this discussion about what is and isn't on-topic for the chat and who should or shouldn't have been banned to the other chat room. I'll start moving the messages in a minute, so don't be surprised.

3

I'm not trying to squash the discussion at all ... just to put it in a different place.

ACuriousMind

@rob Yeah, go ahead.

AccidentalFourierTransform

@rob please and thanks

rob

Okay, I think that's it. Thanks, all!

0celo7

My god. What happened?

rob

@0celo7 See the pinned post.

0celo7

10:35 PM

On mobile

rob

@0celo7 Oh, okay. There was a conversation about on-topic-ness and suspendable-worthiness that I moved to the physics meta chat room.

→ 11 messages moved to Trash

rob

11:03 PM

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat, where you cannot see the eyes of the participants. — rob ♦ 7 mins ago

ACuriousMind

@rob lol

loltospoon

11:43 PM

Hello all!

Question - am I correct in thinking of the excited states of an electron of an atom as having an upper limit? The more and more excited the electron gets, the more energy it has and therefore the more likely it is to separate from the nucleus. Is this correct? If not, could someone please explain how to think about the energy levels of an electron on an atom?

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