[QUOTE=OvB;32070609]They once said that about flying machines and ocean going ships so you bet your ass its gonna happen.
[editline]1st September 2011[/editline]
We'll all be long dead though so....[/QUOTE]
But even though they eventually build one, how are they going to deal with the time problem?
What are some good books to read if you want to learn Chemistry and Physics? I fucked up and didn't take them this year at school.
[QUOTE=OvB;32070609]They once said that about flying machines and ocean going ships so you bet your ass its gonna happen.
[editline]1st September 2011[/editline]
We'll all be long dead though so....[/QUOTE]
I think it'll happen much sooner. Honestly we've come this far and we see a steady increase in new technologies every single year, so who knows what ten years from now we'll see.
[QUOTE=RidingKeys;32079078]I think it'll happen much sooner. Honestly we've come this far and we see a steady increase in new technologies every single year, so who knows what ten years from now we'll see.[/QUOTE]
You Americans have the resources to do amazing things with science, yet you spend it on the army.
As much as I wouldn't want to believe it myself, I must say that todays scientific progress is definitely partly dependant on the United States.
If only a small fraction of those $660 billion dollars spent on the army every year were put into science, it'd help a bunch.
[QUOTE=booster;32079835]You Americans have the resources to do amazing things with science, yet you spend it on the army.
As much as I wouldn't want to believe it myself, I must say that todays scientific progress is definitely partly dependant on the United States.
If only a small fraction of those $660 billion dollars spent on the army every year were put into science, it'd help a bunch.[/QUOTE]
Too bad most of our real scientific feats had some sort of military reasoning behind them.
While I do agree with you Booster, I'd have to say that the only reason I was planning on joining the Air Force is because not only do they get a shit load of the Military's funding but they have the most potential when it comes to developing technologies for space.
[QUOTE=OvB;32083195]Too bad most of our real scientific feats had some sort of military reasoning behind them.[/QUOTE] Yea but most of that has to do with the fact that we spend so much on it. I mean a lot of useful discoveries come from other places like nasa or other government science funding but because the military has so much more funding it would make sense that they would come up with a lot more stuff.
[QUOTE=imasillypiggy;32101447]Yea but most of that has to do with the fact that we spend so much on it. I mean a lot of useful discoveries come from other places like nasa or other government science funding but because the military has so much more funding it would make sense that they would come up with a lot more stuff.[/QUOTE]
That's what I mean. Imagine if we put that money into NASA.
[QUOTE=OvB;32103060]That's what I mean. Imagine if we put that money into NASA.[/QUOTE]
Shit would get done so much faster.
And imagine what new discoveries would be found if you put some of that money into medicinal research.
I'm kinda pissed off with physics this semester. Last semester (optics, QM and special relativity) our lecturers taught us basically EVERYTHING we needed in class. If you went to the lectures: bam, you could get 90+% in all of the tests and exams. EVERYTHING was explained.
Then this semester we started doing Electrostatics and Thermodynamics and half of the questions in the online tests can't be answered based on what we've been taught in class. We've been given simple algebraic formulas in class and all of a sudden I'm given a question that, once I've google'd it, turns out I needed some integral that I've never seen in my life to solve. Yes, I could read the text book but that takes time (I might do so next week, though), and I'm pissed off that I'm taking like 4 hours of my week to go to class only to learn bugger all there.
My lecturers last semester were waaaaay better. I guess that's WHY my lecturer for QM and relativity last semester is head of the research division of the uni, though - because he's fucking good at what he does.
[QUOTE=sltungle;32108084]I'm kinda pissed off with physics this semester. Last semester (optics, QM and special relativity) our lecturers taught us basically EVERYTHING we needed in class. If you went to the lectures: bam, you could get 90+% in all of the tests and exams. EVERYTHING was explained.
Then this semester we started doing Electrostatics and Thermodynamics and half of the questions in the online tests can't be answered based on what we've been taught in class. We've been given simple algebraic formulas in class and all of a sudden I'm given a question that, once I've google'd it, turns out I needed some integral that I've never seen in my life to solve.[B] Yes, I could read the text book but that takes time[/B] (I might do so next week, though), and I'm pissed off that I'm taking like 4 hours of my week to go to class only to learn bugger all there.
My lecturers last semester were waaaaay better. I guess that's WHY my lecturer for QM and relativity last semester is head of the research division of the uni, though - because he's fucking good at what he does.[/QUOTE]
:V:
I get you though, there is such huge variance in lecturers no matter what field you're in.
Stick the lectures on at 2x speed, waste less time.
At least you're in the hard sciences, I get marked down for having an opinion that the assessor disagrees with.
[editline]7th September 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=booster;32107448]Shit would get done so much faster.
And imagine what new discoveries would be found if you put some of that money into medicinal research.[/QUOTE]
Medical research already has an immense amount of money pumped into it.
I feel the big issue is in the way that researchers have to secure funding.
Instead of doing something like DARPA, where they give someone a blank cheque for five years and say "Innovate!", most funders need really specific research objectives, even though something like 30-50% of scientific discoveries are by chance (not that it's all luck ofc. but that it's not expected theoretically).
[editline]7th September 2011[/editline]
This is better at articulating my views:
[quote] [B]Funding people, not projects[/B]
Tim Harford (author of The Undercover Economist and The Logic of Life has a new book coming out, called Adapt. It's about success and failure in various kinds of projects, and excerpts from it have been running over at Slate. The first installment was a look at the development (messy and by no means inevitable) of the Spitfire before World War II (I'd also add the de Havilland Mosquito as another example of a great plane developed through sheer individual persistence). And the second one is on biomedical research, which takes it right into the usual subject matter around here:
[I]In 1980, Mario Capecchi applied for a grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health. . .Capecchi described three separate projects. Two of them were solid stuff with a clear track record and a step-by-step account of the project deliverables. Success was almost assured.
The third project was wildly speculative. Capecchi was trying to show that it was possible to make a specific, targeted change to a gene in a mouse's DNA. It is hard to overstate how ambitious this was, especially back in 1980. . .The NIH decided that Capecchi's plans sounded like science fiction. They downgraded his application and strongly advised him to drop the speculative third project. However, they did agree to fund his application on the basis of the other two solid, results-oriented projects. . .
What did Capecchi do? He took the NIH's money, and, ignoring their admonitions, he poured almost all of it into his risky gene-targeting project. It was, he recalls, a big gamble. If he hadn't been able to show strong enough initial results in the three-to-five-year time scale demanded by the NIH, they would have cut off his funding. Without their seal of approval, he might have found it hard to get funding from elsewhere. His career would have been severely set back, his research assistants looking for other work. His laboratory might not have survived.[/I]
Well, it worked out. But it really did take a lot of nerve; Harford's right about that. He's not bashing the NIH, though - as he goes on to say, their granting system is pretty similar to what any reasonable gathering of responsible people would come up with. But:
[I]The NIH's expert-led, results-based, rational evaluation of projects is a sensible way to produce a steady stream of high-quality, can't-go-wrong scientific research. But it is exactly the wrong way to fund lottery-ticket projects that offer a small probability of a revolutionary breakthrough. It is a funding system designed to avoid risks—one that puts more emphasis on forestalling failure than achieving success. Such an attitude to funding is understandable in any organization, especially one funded by taxpayers. But it takes too few risks. It isn't right to expect a Mario Capecchi to risk his career on a life-saving idea because the rest of us don't want to take a chance.[/I]
Harford goes on to praise the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's investigator program, which is more explicitly aimed at funding innovative people and letting them try things, rather than the "Tell us what you're going to discover" style of many other granting agencies. Funding research in this style has been advocated by many people over the years, including a number of scientific heroes of mine, and the Hughes approach seems to be catching on.
It isn't straightforward. You want to make sure that you're just not just adding to the Matthew Effect by picking a bunch of famous names and handing them the cash. (That's the debate in the UK after a recent proposal to emulate the HHMI model). No, you're better off finding people with good ideas and the nerve to pursue them, whether they've made a name for themselves yet or not, but that's not an easy task.
Still, I'm very happy that these changes in academic funding are in the air. I worry that our system is sclerotic and less able to produce innovations than it should be, and shaking it up a bit is just what's needed.[/quote]
[url]http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/05/18/funding_people_not_projects.php[/url]
[editline]7th September 2011[/editline]
That's from an engineer whose worked in drug discovery for the last couple of decades.
I don't want to have to read the text book simply because I shouldn't NEED to. It's the principle of things. If I'm paying these people THOUSANDS of dollars a year to get higher education then I expect them to fucking educate me and not just go, "read a book lol."
[QUOTE=sltungle;32160566]I don't want to have to read the text book simply because I shouldn't NEED to. It's the principle of things. If I'm paying these people THOUSANDS of dollars a year to get higher education then I expect them to fucking educate me and not just go, "read a book lol."[/QUOTE]
I pay hundreds of dollars for textbooks so they should be useful for something at least!
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;32165210]I pay hundreds of dollars for textbooks so they should be useful for something at least![/QUOTE]
Yeah, they're useful for when you need to revise, fill in small gaps in your knowledge. It shouldn't be the OPPOSITE case though whereby you need to read the text book to get the bulk of the knowledge and use the lecturers to fill the gaps in.
Help!
I need to buy Aerozine 50 and dinitrogen tetroxide.
Aerojet probably sells it but i'm not going to Virgina to get it. Does anybody know how I can make/buy these materials?
[QUOTE=RidingKeys;32175149]Help!
I need to buy Aerozine 50 and dinitrogen tetroxide.
Aerojet probably sells it but i'm not going to Virgina to get it. Does anybody know how I can make/buy these materials?[/QUOTE]
Firstly, you should talk to rocketry enthusiasts so you don't blow your hands off, or get arrested for domestic terrorism.
[editline]8th September 2011[/editline]
I've got a few partial synthesis guides, but have you some experience in chemical manufacture?
[QUOTE=Contag;32176422]Firstly, you should talk to rocketry enthusiasts so you don't blow your hands off, or get arrested for domestic terrorism.
[/QUOTE]
I am a rocketry enthusiasts and I know about the risks involved with the chemicals listed. Especially hydrazine.
Secondly I can already build both a solid rocket fuel motor and a liquid based propulsion system. Both of which are not difficult. Fuel for liquid based systems can be quite challenging to find though, and storing the most commonly used combination(LOX and LH2) at home is impossible.
[QUOTE=RidingKeys;32178103]I am a rocketry enthusiasts and I know about the risks involved with the chemicals listed. Especially hydrazine.
Secondly I can already build both a solid rocket fuel motor and a liquid based propulsion system. Both of which are not difficult. Fuel for liquid based systems can be quite challenging to find though, and storing the most commonly used combination(LOX and LH2) at home is impossible.[/QUOTE]
Okay, that's fantastic then :v:
Here's a thread on dinitrogen tetroxide, I imagine there are countless others.
[url]http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=12966[/url]
It really depends on what apparatus and reagents you possess.
Here's another on hydrazine sulfate
[url]http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=1128[/url]
Sciencemadness should help you with all your apparatus construction and synthesis needs.
I've been trying to get FPSI started but I don't have the money to do so and nobody is willing to donate. Anyways i'll take a look at those guides although Hydrazine Sulfate is different than normal Hydrazine isn't it?
Is it possible to cool down massive ammounts of water?
(like 50-100 km^2)
Hard to cool down a surface, man.
[QUOTE=MountainWatcher;32187736]Hard to cool down a surface, man.[/QUOTE]
I know, but if we found a way, hurricanes could be prevented right?
Aslong as we keep the water levels below +26 centigrade.
Geoscience/Geology is the best science. So many sexual innuendos.
[QUOTE=Mort and Charon;32197069]Geoscience/Geology is the best science. So many sexual innuendos.[/QUOTE]
It has nothing on botany, which has the subtlety of a brick to the head.
First private study (basically homework) task I got this year was describing specimens. Taste and smell are valid observations. So the teacher said "so yes, I do want you to lick the specimen's cleavage!". 3 lessons in I've already learnt about "streaking" and heard the term "tension gash" used. And by the way, Cleavage is a mineral's plane of weakness and how it tends to break, normally visible as uniform lines on the surface.
You know.. I'm not sure how the actual scientists have predicted. But assuming that energy sources like Suns, they all run out really really slowly, which means that eventually the whole cosmos should fill up with dark matter.
So once the WHOLE Universe is so dark and silent that there's only dark matter taking over, I can't imagine anything else happening than a big ass fucking explosion. Like the big bang. It would be the ultimate recycle.
[QUOTE=Bat-shit;32204906]You know.. I'm not sure how the actual scientists have predicted. But assuming that energy sources like Suns, they all run out really really slowly, which means that eventually the whole cosmos should fill up with dark matter.
So once the WHOLE Universe is so dark and silent that there's only dark matter taking over, I can't imagine anything else happening than a big ass fucking explosion. Like the big bang. It would be the ultimate recycle.[/QUOTE]
I had never actually thought about this before.
Astronomy is just so fascinating. There's always new stuff.
Energy can't just run out. Photons are constantly being transmitted from one place to the other, it's just a matter of the concentration of them.
but yeah, I guess eventually, every body would have an equal concentration of energy.
After the last photons have transmitted around the place for long enough, I guess they grow tiresome too of the vastness of dark matter all around them.
But anyway, it's just the concept, or the equation, of universe being full of dark matter that is pretty incredible. And plausible too. It kind of reminds me of an syntax error with a calculator if you go over the board.
[quote=MountainWatcher]eventually, every body would have an equal concentration of energy.[/quote]
And I do not know what you mean by that.
Entropy. If you have a system with 3 bodies, all radiating energy (and receiving them), they will, eventually, equalize the energy inside of them, since some will be receiving more than they will be emitting, their energy level will increase, increasing their energy output, while the other body is emitting more than he is receiving, meaning his energy output will decrease, eventually they get to an equilibrium with equal output( and therefore input), meaning you have bodies with the same energy level.
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