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Solomon Slow

 Discussion on question by Flamethrowe…

Imported from a comment discussion on electronics.stackexchang...
Solomon Slow
Jul 18 22:45
Re, "...when I connected them both..." You apparently are not listening to the advice that people give you here. DON'T CONNECT THE BATTERIES TO EACH OTHER. Do what Hearth said in an earlier comment: Connect each battery to its own, separate, appropriately-sized battery charger. If you can find two chargers that both accept the same supply voltage, then it's probably OK to connect both charger inputs to the same power inlet jack. (That assumes, of course, that you do not exceed the specs of the power inlet jack and you don't exceed the specs of whatever power brick you plug in to the jack.)
Solomon Slow
Jul 18 22:45
@Flamethrower, That is not a battery charger. That is a constant-voltage power supply. I don't know everything that a Li-Ion battery charger should do, but the most important parts are, (a) it should supply a limited current to the battery for the "bulk" phase of charging, and (b) it should monitor the rising battery voltage to know when to terminate the bulk phase. What happens after that is the bit that I don't really understand. A direct connection between a battery and a constant-voltage supply potentially could harm either the battery or the power supply or both.
Solomon Slow
Jul 18 22:45
Not an answer but,...Your pictures show a single line connecting each battery pack to the same barrel jack. It smells as if you have connected both battery packs in parallel with each other through their connections to the jack. Unless both of those battery packs contain some kind of "smart" charging circuitry, those wires in your picture will be capable of carrying power in either direction (e.g., they could carry power from the 18650 pack, through the charging port, to the other pack, to the motors, or they could carry power the opposite way.) That may not be what you intended.
 

 Discussion on answer by controlgroup:…

Imported from a comment discussion on physics.stackexchange.co...
Solomon Slow
Jun 28 12:28
..."I have no more charge to send in your direction" (because the rising voltage wants to pull it back.) In the other direction, the message says, "I cannot accept any more charge from your direction" (because the rising voltage wants to push it away.)
Solomon Slow
Jun 28 12:28
@controlgroup, "Current" means "flow of charge," right? So, if the switch is just 1cm "downstream" from the bulb, and if the full current continues to flow through the bulb for an entire minute after the switch has been opened, where is all of that charge going? Where does it accumulate? Personally, I have a different idea about what happens: Before the switch opens, the voltage between its two terminals is zero. After it opens, the voltage starts to rise. That sends a message, at approximately light speed, outward from the switch in both directions. In one direction, the message says,...
Solomon Slow
Jun 28 12:28
"...with the time being dependent on the distance between the switch and the bulb in the direction of current." Um,... Are you sure that the direction of current flow matters? Are you saying that, in the OP's "one light minute" circuit, if the switch is just "upstream" of the bulb, the light will go out almost instantly, but if the switch is just "downstream," it will take almost a full minute before the light goes out?
 

 Discussion on answer by Dale: Why is …

Imported from a comment discussion on physics.stackexchange.co...
Solomon Slow
Jun 19 00:11
@TopMath, Talking about physics (or, about anything else) is pointless if people cannot agree on what the words mean.
Solomon Slow
Jun 19 00:11
P.S., Wikipedia articles on the subject seem circumspect about saying permittivity/permeability of a medium when the volume is occupied by matter, and saying, ... of free space when it is not occupied by matter. Just as if, for some reason, they thought that "free space" was not a kind of "medium."
Solomon Slow
Jun 19 00:11
@TopMath, I am not a physicist, but as far as I understand them, permeability and permittivity are just ratios of quantities that can be measured within some volume of space. Those ratios are different when the volume is occupied by different kinds of matter, but I don't see anything in their definitions that require the volume to be occupied by "something rather than nothing."
Solomon Slow
Jun 19 00:11
@TopMath, I thought you might say something like that, but that's a very informal use of the word, "medium." I think the word has a more specific meaning when you're talking about a medium for wave phenomena. In that case, the word refers specifically to the stuff that is waving. Physicists concluded that there is no such stuff for light waves (no medium) when they shot down the luminiferous aether theory. [P.S., A copper cable is a physical object. How is it possible for a physical object to not "have its own velocity" in any given frame of reference at any given moment in time?]
Solomon Slow
Jun 19 00:11
@TopMath, I think you might be confused about what the word, "medium" means. You said (in a comment on the main question) that "space must act as a medium in order to deliver...information." And here, you say that "[the] medium [for light waves] does not need a velocity." When people say that air is a medium for sound waves, they mean that what is waving is aggregate behavior of the molecules of the mass of air. Can you spend a few words to explain what space does for light waves that makes it worthy of the name, "medium?"
 

 Discussion on question by user12262: …

Imported from a comment discussion on physics.stackexchange.co...
Solomon Slow
May 24 10:25
@user12262, Sorry, my original comment (now deleted) was out-of-line. Not only was it unnecessarily blunt, but it also was just unnecessary. And, in my follow-up comment (also, now deleted) I did not realize that you (i.e., the person who responded to my first comment) were, in fact, the same person who posted the original question. Please accept my apology.
 

 Discussion on question by theflyingme…

Imported from a comment discussion on worldbuilding.stackexcha...
Solomon Slow
Apr 26 17:22
...Which, by the way, is exactly what the U.S. Department of Defence was hoping for when it created the ARPANet in the first place. They wanted to accelerate the progress of computer science and technology.
Solomon Slow
Apr 26 17:21
P.S., I was there. Circa 1980, I had an ARPANet e-mail address. I was a member of a team of software developers that spanned three different universities in different cities. We used ARPANet to communicate with each other about our project, and we used it to keep aware of new developments in computer science and computer technology.
Solomon Slow
Apr 26 17:12
Your comments seem focused on whether or not computers could exist without the internet, but computers weren't just miraculously created from nothing. Computers, as we know them today, were created by people—people who shared ideas and inventions with each other through the medium of the internet.
Solomon Slow
Apr 26 17:12
@Pelinore I've already explained why I think that the existence of the Internet had enormous potential to shape the development of modern computers. Perhaps you could explain why you think "it is painfully obvious that is just silly."
Solomon Slow
Apr 22 02:58
@user1937198, "impossible" just like lots of other "worldbuilding" questions.
Solomon Slow
Apr 22 02:58
@user1937198, Right, so, maybe the question is about what the computers of 2025 would look like if the telephone network of 2025 still was based on human operators and plug boards and it had not yet ever occurred to anybody to send a digital signal any further than from one corner of the computer room to the other. IDK though, it's theflyingmetronome's question, it isn't my question.
Solomon Slow
Apr 22 02:58
@user1937198, Sounds like you're talking about the inevitability of and/or the development of the Internet, but the question is about how the development of computers was shaped by the Internet. The capabilities of computers today and the ways in which we use computers today are somewhat different from the state of things in the early 1970s, and what I'm saying is, a lot of what makes today's experience different from the 1970s experience was invented by people who had ARPANet e-mail and FTP access, and then later, Internet web site and social media access.
Solomon Slow
Apr 22 02:58
@Pelinore, Re, "Computers do not need the internet" The question is not whether computers need the internet. The question is about the development of computer tech. How would it have gone differently if nobody had ever thought of the internet? Here in the real world, starting from around 1970, most of the important developments in computer architecture and computer science happened in university labs and corporate labs that were connected at first to the ARPANet, and later to the Internet. I'd guess that progress would have been slower, and probably more balkanized without the net.
 

 Discussion on question by Miss Unders…

Imported from a comment discussion on retrocomputing.stackexch...
Solomon Slow
Mar 26 10:58
Troll? You? or Me?
Solomon Slow
Mar 26 10:58
...I think that the questions all come from actual users of the AI. I think that Miss Understands is spot-checking to see how the answers given by the AI compare to answers given by real people who know the subject.
Solomon Slow
Mar 26 10:58
@Justme, I have a theory. Miss Understands asks a large volume of low-quality questions, on a broad variety of topics, on about thirty different stackexchange sites. My initial thought was that Miss Understands was a troll, but that doesn't quite fit. Trolls typically make inflammatory comments, trying to stoke the debate after their initial posting. Miss Understands does not do that. Miss Understands also leaves comments sometimes that make me think that they are a competent, software developer. My theory is that Miss Understands is responsible for a commercial, generative-text "AI," and...
 

 Discussion on question by Flamethrowe…

Imported from a comment discussion on physics.stackexchange.co...
Solomon Slow
Mar 19 11:29
If you were writing sci-fi, and you said, for example, that the iron was teleported, then I bet your audience would accept that the act of teleportation caused gravity waves.
 

 Discussion on question by joseph: do …

Imported from a comment discussion on physics.stackexchange.co...
Solomon Slow
Feb 18 14:13
P.S., If you want a little light reading on the topic, try typing "history of atomic theory" into Google, and have a look at some of the top hits.
Solomon Slow
Feb 18 13:35
I don't care whether or not you agree with what I said, but if you can't even acknowlege that I said it, then there isn't any point in my continuing to participate in the conversation.
Solomon Slow
Feb 18 13:35
You did ask some real questions in the comments. On thing that puzzles me though... You asked why being made of atoms does not imply that simply rubbing two pieces of metal together would be sufficient to weld them together. I answered that, but then you simply asked the same exact question again without responding to anything that I said in my answer.
Solomon Slow
Feb 18 12:58
Your original "question" looks like a simple declaration of your opinion. It says that you don't believe that matter is made of atoms. A question would solicit help in understanding something. E.g., "Why do people say that matter is made of atoms?" You could flesh that out with some examnples of why you believe otherwise, but the solicitation for help is the key.
Solomon Slow
Feb 17 22:08
You cant join [metal parts] together by rubbing each other. You need to melt them to join them together. Atoms from the air will almost instantly bond to most fresh-cut metal surfaces. Even if you rub two metal parts together, air gets into the gap between them, and the resulting oxide or nitride surface layer limits the ability of the metal surfaces to bond with each other. The same thing does not happen in vacuum. It's a real problem for spacecraft with moving metal parts and, for moving parts inside any high-vacuum system on Earth: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_welding
Solomon Slow
Feb 17 22:08
...to think that "matter" means something different from "atoms?"
Solomon Slow
Feb 17 22:08
Your edit only is a small improvement. It probably is not enough to get your "question" re-opened. Problem #1: It is not really a question. You're just telling us what you believe. You're not asking for help to understand anything. Problem #2: You stated your belief, but there is no substance to your belief. You believe that "objects" are made of "matter" instead of or in addition to "atoms," but so what? You haven't explained why you believe it. Physics is all about searching for a deeper understanding of the phenomena that we see around us. What phenomena have you observed that lead you...
 

 Discussion on answer by DJClayworth: …

Imported from a comment discussion on skeptics.stackexchange.c...
Solomon Slow
Jan 17 11:25
According to my dictionary, "reputable" means "having a good reputation." Just as it takes time to earn a good reputation, it also takes time for a highly reputed news organization to lose its good reputation. A reputable source absolutely can tell lies, and it can tell them for the most self-serving reasons, but they won't continue to be called "reputable" forever if they do it too flagrantly or too often.
 

 Discussion on question by Vexorr: Lon…

Imported from a comment discussion on worldbuilding.stackexcha...
Solomon Slow
Dec 20, 2024 15:59
P.S., Also, It will help if you can make it as rugged, and as easy to repair in the field as an AK-47.
Solomon Slow
Dec 20, 2024 15:59
It's not just about how much energy the weapon delivers to the target. When the target is a human body, it matters how deeply the energy is delivered. A 5.56mm round from an assault rifle doesn't just poke a neat 5.56mm hole through flesh, it creates a wound channel that's about equivalent to having a sharpened baseball bat hammered through your flesh. And, a soldier can fire off a full magazine of those rounds in just a few seconds. You won't see infantry grunts routinely armed with lasers until lasers can deliver energy deeply enough and quickly enough to match.
 

 Discussion on question by Ashish Shuk…

Imported from a comment discussion on philosophy.stackexchange...
Solomon Slow
Dec 4, 2024 21:57
@Tvde1, Atoms are not real. They are just a bunch of quarks and leptons in the correct formation. But wait! Quarks and leptons are not real. They are just excitations of a field. Are the fields real?... <answer TBD>.
 

 Discussion on answer by controlgroup:…

Imported from a comment discussion on physics.stackexchange.co...
Solomon Slow
Oct 15, 2024 23:08
@elilu, Re, "...light enough that it can be attracted by a huge thing..." What are you really trying to say? Every massive "thing" is gravitationally attracted to every other massive thing. The super massive black hole at the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius A*, is "light enough" to be attracted to a grain of rice in your trash bin even though the strength of that attraction is many orders of magnitude too small to be measured against the background "noise" of all of the other moving masses that lie between them.
 

 Discussion on question by jamesfaircl…

Imported from a comment discussion on physics.stackexchange.co...
Solomon Slow
Sep 8, 2024 16:06
...of their argument, and show them where they went off the rails.
Solomon Slow
Sep 8, 2024 16:05
...if it's just the same thing warmed over, then the same people probably will close it all the more quickly, and for the same reasons. You said, "I was hoping to...have meaningful discussions...[but]...unqualified, armchair..." I don't need a PhD to see that you clearly were not interested in "meaningful discussion." It's not a meaningful discussion if all you do is keep telling the other guy, "I'm right! You're wrong." It's not meaningful if you can't demonstrate an understanding...
Solomon Slow
Sep 8, 2024 15:56
@ jamesfairclear, Your other question has been closed, and deleted, and even the chat associated with it has been "frozen" by a moderator. So I'm answering you here. When you edit a question that is "closed," there's a good chance that somebody will see the edit in a "work queue," and if they like your change, they might start the process of re-opening it. Once your question has been deleted though, there's not much chance of it ever coming back. You can post a new question, but...
 

 Discussion on question by jamesfaircl…

Imported from a comment discussion on physics.stackexchange.co...
Solomon Slow
Sep 6, 2024 14:18
How do you define "location" if not in terms of some material points of reference? If you can't talk about definite quantities, then you aren't talking about physics. Not physics = off-topic.
Solomon Slow
Sep 6, 2024 14:18
...between them. The world line of the accelerated clock must connect a different sequence of events from the world line of an unaccelerated clock. If you want definite numbers that can be compared, you need a "first" and a "last" event on both world lines. Then we could talk about what relates those events, and we could talk about the math that explains how many "ticks" are recorded by each clock in-between first and last. But without those details, we've got nothing of substance to talk about. We're all just talking past each other, trying to imagine what the other person means.
Solomon Slow
Sep 6, 2024 14:18
Why I voted to delete: IMO, your question cannot be answered. It's incomplete. You keep talking about a clock that "records fewer events." (1) It makes no sense to compare numbers that you have not defined. To define the number of events in a sequence recorded by a clock, you must at least define a "first" and a "last" event so that you know which events are to be counted. You never say how anybody knows which events to count. (2) Fewer events? Fewer than what? Presumably, you want to compare an "accelerated" clock to an "unaccelerated" clock, but you never define any relationship...
 

 Discussion on answer by Qiaochu Yuan:…

Imported from a comment discussion on math.stackexchange.com/q...
Solomon Slow
Jul 13, 2024 18:29
@Didier, My mistake, I thought that when you said, "...even though not randomly," that it somehow had something to do with randomness.
Solomon Slow
Jul 13, 2024 18:29
@Didier, Did you mean to say that you can't pick an element randomly, or did you mean to say that you can't pick an element randomly with uniform probability over the whole set? Picking an element randomly is easy: First, employ some simple, well-defined procedure to choose two of the elements. Then, toss a coin.
Solomon Slow
Jul 13, 2024 18:29
Re, "the situation changes if there are uncountably infinitely many people." How can that make sense? There are uncountably many real numbers, and that's intimately related to the fact that there is no "successor" to any real number, there are no gaps between them. Real numbers are a continuum. What would it mean for "people" to be a continuum? Last time I tried counting people, they seemed to be very countable.
 

 Discussion on question by Hudjefa: Is…

Imported from a comment discussion on philosophy.stackexchange...
Solomon Slow
Jul 10, 2024 04:52
Re, "...simplifies the problem...to dividing by infinity to get 0." By the formal rules of real analysis, if there is some real number called "infinity" (∞), and if 17÷∞=0, then ∞×0 must equal 17. Always. Not any other number ever. Don't be tempted to fix that by relaxing those formal rules! Mathematics utterly collapses without its rules. The science of mathematics is nothing but an exploration of the consequences of formal rules. There are math formalisms that have numbers called "infinities," but the real number system is not one of them.
 

 Discussion on answer by jay613: Can I…

Imported from a comment discussion on diy.stackexchange.com/qu...
Solomon Slow
Jun 28, 2024 21:11
@keshlam, Power Delivery is not what prevents the toothbrush from being overwhelmed by more power than it is designed to handle. The toothbrush itself is responsible for that. The amount of power that a USB-powered device takes from the wall wart is always determined by the device. Power Delivery (and older protocols) allow the wall wart to advertise how much power it is able to supply, and (for PD and QC 3.0 and above), allow the device and the wall wart to negotiate the voltage at which the power will be delivered.
 

 Discussion on question by Nightwing: …

Imported from a comment discussion on physics.stackexchange.co...
Solomon Slow
Jun 8, 2024 19:33
P.S., Vector pull is a technique that I actually have used to get a boat un-pinned on a lively little whitewater creek. We don't carry electric winches, nor the batteries to run them in whitewater kayaks. And, getting a tow truck to the scene (deep in a narrow ravine, surrounded by dense woods, more than a mile from the nearest road) would have been absolutely impossible. We do carry long ropes though for just such occasions, and the vector pull (if you keep pulling, and then re-setting it, pulling again, and re-setting it again, etc. until the boat comes free) can save the day.
Solomon Slow
Jun 8, 2024 19:33
@my2cts, This is only just a guess on my part, but I don't think that the OP actually is trying to get a car unstuck. But, I could be wrong. In which case, your idea is a good one. They should just call for a tow truck. Really though, I think that the actual reason for their question is that they are trying to understand the meaning of the infinity that appears in their mathematical model of a vector pull.
Solomon Slow
Jun 8, 2024 19:33
Re, "why wouldn't the tree collapse?" TLDR: When you pull sideways on the midpoint of the rope, the rope will stretch. (I guarantee it!) And, if you pull hard enough, something will move. Either one of those things will allow the rope to bend where you pull on it, and that will limit the tension to some finite value. Also, if the tree is rooted in the Earth more strongly than the car is stuck in the mud, then if and when something moves, the thing that moves will be the car.