126 replies to this topic

[Bonam]

The theory of electricity harnessed it's energy for us and made many things predictable. It gave us practical application but the original theory of electrons moving along a wire wasn't what was happening on a molecular level at all.

The "theory of electricity" is encapsuled in Maxwell's equations. They describe in terms of electromagnetic fields. Like GR, it has been hugely predictive.

GR has to ignore certain phenomena to remain intact. It states that energy can neither be created or destroyed but merely changes form one form to another. So gasoline gets burned and creates heat and a vehicle will move down the road. But there are obvious energy sources that do not get drained, there is a constant force and no seeming depletion of that force.

Except of course this is entirely false. There are no sources of limitless energy.

[ToadBrother]

Except of course this is entirely false. There are no sources of limitless energy.

Though there does seem to be an infinite supply of con-men trying to claim there is

[kimmy]

But there are obvious energy sources that do not get drained, there is a constant force and no seeming depletion of that force.

Energy and force are not synonyms, Isaac Newton Jr.

-k

[GostHacked]

The theory of electricity harnessed it's energy for us and made many things predictable. It gave us practical application but the original theory of electrons moving along a wire wasn't what was happening on a molecular level at all.

GR has to ignore certain phenomena to remain intact. It states that energy can neither be created or destroyed but merely changes form one form to another. So gasoline gets burned and creates heat and a vehicle will move down the road. But there are obvious energy sources that do not get drained, there is a constant force and no seeming depletion of that force.

You don't seem to have a grasp on all this at all. Energy is constant, and cannot be created or destroyed, it can be converted from energy to matter and back. How would you create more energy out of nothing? Simple, you cannot. In a car, your fuel burns to create energy to move, however, some of that energy is converted into heat energy because we cannot put it all into motion, and then some energy is lost due to the creation of sound energy.

[Pliny]

Do yourself a favor and put down that Mark McCutcheon book for a while. Read about redshift.

Redshift is in the book. In the common physics understanding it's believed to be the Doppler Effect for light. But according to special relativity light travel is constant relative to the observer. It's one of those anomalies of relativity.

I'm just curious as to why you're so non-specific about them. If these "anomalies" are the basis of your objection to relativity, you must be able to articulate them.

Redshift is one. "Spooky" entanglement another.

Copernicus and Kepler and Tycho didn't lie to the rubes on the street. They just didn't publish them in wildly popular books. The rubes on the street didn't really have access to the correspondence between the leading scientists of the day. They couldn't just go down to the magazine shop and buy an Astronomy Society Journal.

True. How many could even read? But the way I see it is there were scientific advisers to the court and the incarceration of Galileo was not done out of an absence of advice and perhaps even refutation from them. After all, they had propagated the Ptolemic theory for most of their scientific lives. Perhaps they were lenient on Galileo and only sentenced him to house arrest for the rest of his life instead of having him drink the hemlock because they knew he was right. The fact is the Ptolemmic theory stood longer than it should have precisely because of...well...politics and the established hierarchy.

I don't plan on climbing Mt Everest because it would be a highly inefficient use of my limited time and resources. What about you? As a liberated spirit-being with unlimited potential, you must be planning to climb Mt Everest any day now, right?

Not on my agenda, either. At least not in this life. Some risk their lives in space, some on Mt. Everest but to claim there are not those that feel our money and efforts are best spent on starving kids in Africa than a trip to the moon and that we need to stop drilling for oil or driving our vehicles is rather disingenuous an argument. It is when someone else is concerned about and granted the responsibility to look after your welfare that you must become concerned. Your choices will become limited and you will be advised against climbing your mountain, whatever it may be for the good of all.

What a bizarre rant. The notion that disbelief in an afterlife inevitably argues for for some sort of restricted code of behavior state interventionism is inane and disjointed.

It is quite bizarre a thought but the simplicity is that attention fixes on problems. Once the problem of an afterlife has been done away with we can knock down the church spires and erect health spas in their place. Care of the spirit is no longer a concern thanks to people like yourself. Not only that but we can know concentrate our resources where they should be - studying the brain. Perhaps the right chemical balance is necessary. I know you will support that.

Bizarre? What do you think will occur in a society dedicated to the welfare of the body? And what bodies should our resources be expended upon? Are they all equally valuable or are there some that are more equal than others. After all we are only concerned about some electro/chemical reactions.

It should be pointed out, however, that every formalized belief in an afterlife (that I'm aware of, at least) imposes restrictions on your behavior in this current life; if you don't follow the rules in this life you don't get the big present after you die (or, as you put it, "you've got to earn it.")

Yours is not a formalized belief in anything, of course, it is fact. Many scientists agree. Now when things go bump in the night there is no reason to fear. It's a relief. There is no magic hand divining our future and everything has a scientific explanation. Only other men and only a balance of electro/chemicals in them is necessary to ensure such bizarre ideas as an afterlife are entirely forgotten.

A formalized belief is not what we are looking for. I prefer you maintain your integrity, not to any formalized belief or claim to truth, but to your own understanding. That way we can escape the imposition of restrictions on behavior that a formalized belief places upon us. There is no doubt they have been utilized as control methods. The problem is that some feel others need a formalized belief.
Like you need to be a vegetarian. If you are there is no problem. If you aren't, there is a problem.
You can't deny the move by some to argue the use of ranchlands is a waste. Is that a formalized belief or is it valid or perhaps it is an evolutionary step?

Your education empowers you but you must ask empowers you to do what - perhaps further a formalized belief? What is the purpose of education today? To prepare you to make your contribution to society?
Or, better worded, is it to allow you to reach your potential in society? Or is it to foster independent thought that benefits society but then you are in control of yourself - who knows what you will do to society then.

Due to certain experiences in my life, experiences not yet explained, however, theorized about from the scientific view but inadequately in my view, I have made different decsions than you.

[Pliny]

The "theory of electricity" is encapsuled in Maxwell's equations. They describe in terms of electromagnetic fields. Like GR, it has been hugely predictive.

Yes, they have.

Except of course this is entirely false. There are no sources of limitless energy.

When is my magnet going to fall off my fridge?

[Pliny]

Energy and force are not synonyms, Isaac Newton Jr.

-k

Good. Force is a phenomenon of energy. Like heat.

[Pliny]

You don't seem to have a grasp on all this at all. Energy is constant, and cannot be created or destroyed, it can be converted from energy to matter and back. How would you create more energy out of nothing? Simple, you cannot. In a car, your fuel burns to create energy to move, however, some of that energy is converted into heat energy because we cannot put it all into motion, and then some energy is lost due to the creation of sound energy.

I'll ask you the same question - when is my magnet going to fall off my fridge?

[ToadBrother]

I'll ask you the same question - when is my magnet going to fall off my fridge?

Magnetism is the alignment of the atomic structure of a substance, in the case of fridge magnets, it's ferromagnetism. It is permanent, or close enough to it, but in and of itself is not a force, it is the effect it has on other materials that produces the energy, and that energy still has to come from somewhere. Force must be applied for the magnetic field to actually do work. In other words, you're still using energy.

[Bonam]

Yes, they have.

When is my magnet going to fall off my fridge?

Really? That's what mystifies you? Hint: as long as the magnet isn't moving, no energy is being used.

[ToadBrother]

Really? That's what mystifies you? Hint: as long as the magnet isn't moving, no energy is being used.

I think what's happening here is a misunderstanding of what magnetism is, and it's this misunderstanding which is the source of claims of magnetic-type perpetual motion machines. But a magnet isn't doing work in and of itself, any more than an electron in and of itself is doing work. A magnetic field is intrinsic, it is due to the arrangement of matter.

In the case of a fridge magnet, it expends no energy sticking to the surface of a fridge, and apart from the fact that eventually such a magnet will demagnetize due to temperature fluctuations and mechanical alteration (ie. being dropped and moved), the "force", if you will, of the magnet either attracting or repulsion, comes about by moving the magnet. It's that movement is the input energy, and without that input energy, the magnet isn't actually doing anything.

Sorry to say perpetual motion machines are impossible. Thermodynamics is still supreme, and fridge magnets don't disprove it, but rather are a long and now mundane explanation for it.

Edited by ToadBrother, 25 October 2011 - 12:21 PM.

[GostHacked]

Redshift is in the book. In the common physics understanding it's believed to be the Doppler Effect for light. But according to special relativity light travel is constant relative to the observer. It's one of those anomalies of relativity.

You still do not understand the Doppler effect here.

If an object in space is emitting light and moving towards you, it looks blue. As it is moving away, red. Simply because anything moving towards you and emitting light, will show blue, because it is kind of compressed. Meaning the light particles are closer together when emitted from the object because it is moving towards you. The opposite happens if the object is moving away from you, resulting in a red spectrum. The constant of light does not change with the doppler effect, the doppler effect explains how close together the particles are from each other when emitted. It's the same thing when a train with the horn blaring creeps up in tone when approaching you, and then fades in tone when moving away. The speed of sound from the object is the same, the speed at which the sound reaches you is the same. However since the object moving away from you will sound different because as it is moving away, and sound is emitted, it takes longer and longer for that sound to hit your ears.

This is how we are able to determine directions of storms, using the doppler effect. When you send out a radar signal (a constant) to a storm, and it bounces back in increasing intervals, the storm is moving away from you. When the intervals are decreased (but the speed of the signal is the same) the object is moving towards you.

If there was no constant speed of light, we simply would not be able to measure things as we do now.

[Wild Bill]

You still do not understand the Doppler effect here.

This is how we are able to determine directions of storms, using the doppler effect. When you send out a radar signal (a constant) to a storm, and it bounces back in increasing intervals, the storm is moving away from you. When the intervals are decreased (but the speed of the signal is the same) the object is moving towards you.

Ah, NO!

In your example we are simply timing the echo! We know the speed of the radar signal. We send it out and start our timer. If we have an echo come back we simply divide the time in two and that tells us how far to the point of origin of the echo.

At this point nothing can tell us the DIRECTION of the reflection! Steve McQueen is sitting in his POW camp cell, throwing a ball against the wall. If we know how many feet the ball travels in a second and we time how long from the initial throw till it returns to his catcher's mitt, we can divide in half and figure out how far away is the wall.

Steve knows the direction because he has EYES! We tell the direction of a radar echo quite differently. We measure it's amplitude, or signal strength. This is after we've used a BEAM antenna to send out the signal, that focuses it in one direction. If we rotate the beam antenna until we see the maximum signal strength we will then know the direction.

Where the hell does the Doppler Effect fit in?

[GostHacked]

Wild Bill, I might be confusing two different concepts, and looks like you might be right on the weather thing. However, the doppler effect does tell us if something is moving away from us, or towards us. And in a sense, that is directional.

[Bonam]

It's that movement is the input energy, and without that input energy, the magnet isn't actually doing anything.

That's not really an entirely correct explanation. The reality is magnetic fields can be described by potentials, just like electrostatic and gravitational fields. A piece of ferromagnetic metal sitting at some position relative to a permanent magnet has a given value of magnetic potential. If it's floating in space with nothing stopping it, it will move due to the magnetic force it feels. As with any force that can be described by a potential function, energy is inherently conserved, and objects attempt to reach a configuration of the lowest potential energy (thereby converting it to kinetic energy).

The reason that magnetism is less intuitive than electrostatic forces and the everyday manifestations of gravity is that magnetic fields are a gradient of a vector potential, whereas electric and gravitational fields are each gradients of scalar potentials. That means that it is not only the distance from the magnet that is important but also the direction (for example, the orientation of the position vector relative to the dipole vector of the magnet).

Edited by Bonam, 25 October 2011 - 09:47 PM.