CaptainPanic

I don't think they are commercial yet - so all "guides" will be research papers. If wikipedia isn't good enough, then your best chance is on scientific search engines such as "Science direct" or similar websites. Try searching through google scholar.

Using nuclear power to keep something up in the air indefinitely is a tried concept... or at least, it was investigated by both the Americans and the Russians. In another thread that I opened once I also linked to a documentary about Project Pluto - a nuclear ramjet cruise missile. Concluding: it could be done... in more than one way... but practical problems are huge but I assume that's not unexpected.

Nothing about engineering or thermodynamics? Pfft... that's one of the things that make me angry about education nowadays... people are clueless about important concepts such as Thermodynamics which, to be honest, are possibly more important than most fields mentioned above. Anyway, on topic... for Chemistry, I'd recommend Atkins, Physical Chemistry. And in case you like chemical engineering: I recommend you look up something about Thermodynamics - but my book sucks (although it's very complete), so I will not recommend you a title. I'm just saying that your list is incomplete

Why do you ask for an effort by the non-violent Muslims when they are in fact victims who are being stereotyped? They find themselves in a situation where they are "the terrorists": People who disguise themselves as ordinary citizens only to attack the good guys at their weakest point... and the Westerner thinks of himself (obviously) as the good guy. Ten years ago, many people felt that Muslims have to integrate. Then some attacks happened, and people started to mistrust Muslims. And through false generalizations (majority is peaceful, and does not hate the Western countries) this is now turning into hate. And you can't turn around hate by a few words of peace. I fear that any improvements have to come from people in Western counties... it's those people who invented the stereotypes, so they have to change them. I do my part in this - simply by having Muslim friends.

Can all the employees of Kender Solar please raise their hands? Why is it that only new members with less than 10 posts on the forum are defending this scam?

Basically, if the other side isn't listening to arguments, then it is not a "debate"... it's a campaign. Watch advertisements to see how to do that. I believe you're best off to study logical fallacies, and make sure that you can hide them so that the other person isn't aware you use them. You can also attempt to achieve a higher volume (shouting louder) to make your point.

The most important people, and the world's best quotes can be found here.

Merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year!!

Why don't you write it yourself? You have to do the most work yourself anyway: input the data. The data will be a matrix of altitude numbers. then you need to calculate the gradient in your map (difference between numbers) and you need to find local and global minimum locations. Locally, the water will choose the steepest gradients, and it will accumulate in the minimum locations. I've never heard of such a program... but just start with a simple matrix with only a few numbers. Any programming language should be able to do this - personally I'd go for Matlab / Octave. Write the .m file and run it.

If you have 3 apples, and 4 oranges... And you multiply that: then you get 12 apple*oranges... ... which makes absolutely no sense from a physical point of view - in the end you still have only 7 pieces of fruit - but it might come in handy in some calculations.

Unless you put energy into the object, the object will eventually stop. Friction is never zero. And if you cannot explain the source of your energy, then there probably is no source - and therefore the objects will stop. And with "object" I meant any combination of walls + balls + strings + whatever you can imagine.

I don't know, guys... I've kept quiet for a while before jumping to my own conclusions... but all the pictures I've seen so far do not look like a missile to me. Missiles generally spew out gasses at supersonic velocities from shaped nozzles. That is 100% guaranteed a turbulent flow. In addition, the atmosphere is likely (but not necessarily) turbulent too. With at least one turbulent flow in a possibly turbulent medium you do not expect geometrical patterns like we see here. You would certainly expect to see some kind of deformation of the plume because of different wind speeds at different altitudes. Also, exhaust gases don't glow-in-the-dark. Why wouldn't this be an EISCAT / HAARP and/or Russian equivalent experiment? According to wikipedia, EISCAT is based on Tromsø, and has a: An "ionospheric heater facility" sure seems to fit the bill better here. Blast some radiation at ions... the usual thing that happens is that you bring an electron in an excited state. When it falls back, it will often produce a photon - light. Seems like a decent explanation for the glow-in-the-dark effects. The location (Tromsø) however is 1000 km away from where the phenomenon was observed. The Russians have an identical machine. (listed in the same paragraph as the above quote) Only thing that does not match again here is the location. The article suggests this was seen at the lower Volga (Kapustin Yar). The site mentioned above is again an estimated 1000 km more north. Then again - maybe 1000 km isn't that much if you're dealing with something as high up as the ionosphere. In both the Norway and Russia case, the phenomenon was observed about 1000 km south of where some ionosphere heating facility is built. Coincidence? I'm not sure. It seems more likely than that those crazy Russians are launching missiles around the lower Volga. I'm not able to find an explanation of the patterns you see - spirals and such... but rockets also don't do something like this... and when rockets fail, they blow up. They don't create perfect glow-in-the-dark-spiral-exhaust-gas-plumes.

It already changes when one ant walks in any direction. p.s. don't tell this to the ants. We'd better keep them ignorant.

Well... at least we're talking about numbers now. My job's done.

Pedanticism? You're all crappy scientists. Everybody else gets negative points for not simply calculating the difference due to the curvature of the earth. And dalemiller for... also not calculating the difference. Guys, you can make a pretty good guess using nothing but Pythagoras. And wikipedia will give you an even better formula if you're interested. Is this a science forum, or a discussion forum? Shame on you all, lazy people. Circumference of the earth = (roughly) 40,000,000 m (radius is 6378 km) Trajectory bullet Mythbusters = (roughly - I didn't watch the movie, movie is removed from Youtube) 500 m That means that the bullet traveled 0.0000125 part of the curvature of the earth. In degrees (the earth being 360 degrees) that is 0.0045 degrees, or 0.000078 rad. Now, we draw a triangle, with a 90 degree angle at the point where the gun was fired. One line starts horizontally (parallel to the surface of the earth), and one perpendicular to the surface of the earth, all the way to the center of the earth. From the center of the earth, we draw a 2nd line, at an angle of 0.000078 rad with the one coming from the point where the gun was fired. That 2nd line will intersect with the line which goes horizontally. And it should be slightly longer than the one exactly perpendicular... Using Pythagoras to solve this: Length of non-perpendicular line = [math]\sqrt{6378000^2+500^2=6378000.02}[/math] So, the answer according to my calculation is actually 2 cm over a 500m trajectory. We should be able to measure the difference in how long it takes to drop... but only using accurate measurements. And for those who say that I filled in the wrong numbers... try to find better ones - I bet that the outcome does not change much. the only big change of course is if you have a shorter or longer trajectory of the bullet before it hits the ground. p.s. this also shows that this is only relevant if you're able to measure the angle of the gun's barrel up to at least 0.0001 rad, or about 0.005 degrees. the curvature of the earth is quite irrelevant if you don't aim exactly parallel to the surface of the earth. 2 cm is not all that small of an irregularity... assuming that the trajectory was indeed about 500 m. But it's a good point anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if the floor is actually completely straight - since it's a single building... which does make the curvature irrelevant. Not because it's such a small difference... but because of the architect who designed a flat floor.

Don't be so hard on the crackpots. Many of them are just kids. We've all gone through a stage during our education where we knew too little, and thought too much. Stages where we thought that the 1st or 2nd law of thermodynamics don't apply to our idea. The real difference between kids and true crackpots is that kids learn, and crackpots try to teach us.

Mind that I didn't read the rest of the thread... (sorry!!) Three things that come to mind: supercooling, gas solubility and nucleation 1. Supercooling. Obviously, the beer is below freezing point, although it remains a liquid. 2. Gas solubility. The lower the temperature, the better the solubility of gasses. That's why there is no "psssht" when the beer is opened, and no gas bubbles form in the beer either. 3. Nucleation. When the beer is tapped on the top however, gas bubble do form (a tap on the top creates large differences in pressure, causing a low pressure at the bottom which causes bubbles to form). Gas bubbles create a place where the bulk of the liquid is not completely homogeneous. The ice will form there. 2nd movie confirms that after the beer was tapped on the top, the ice floated to the top and then got stuck there. Pretty cool actually. Might have to try this myself. I love experiments where you get to drink beer afterwards.

Your first step is to write down the reaction equation. What goes in, what comes out... and in which phase it is (solid, liquid, gas). Also, you must write down units and equations, because despite me being a chemical engineer (solving mass and energy balances every day) I do not understand what you wrote down, or what you're trying to calculate. However, your answer (28 kW) is in the correct range of biomass-type fuels: 5 kg/hr, with a heat of combustion (dHc) of about 20 MJ/kg (typical for wood or grass or other plant materials) --> P = dHc * flow = 20*10^6 J/kg*5kg/hr = 100*10^6 J/hr = 27.8*10^3 J/s = 27.8 kW. with P = power in W =J/s dHc = heat of combustion in J/kg flow = flow in kg/hr or kg/s ... So it might be correct. I cannot check it though.

The download button is found here. I reach that url when I click on the "wordpress" link on my own blog. I haven't put that link there.

Washing machines have electric engines that do sometimes run at a relatively low rpm (but they do have a gear usually - and they can also go up to very high rpm during centrifugation). They are quite serious electric engines. Another option might be the most simple: the fans that hang from the ceiling have both an electric engine and blades that will have the right rpm's. Not sure if the engine is ideal to reverse. A last idea: a lemon juicer / lemon squeezer. These are quite small, and definitely have a very low rpm. Probably have a simple gearbox too though, but you might just salvage the whole lot. Regarding the voltage - I cannot solve that for you. I don't know any applications that run on 30 V. It's either 220V or 12 V. Maybe some camping gear might be at 30 V?

plants.

I've opened up a blog as well (was getting frustrated trying to be objective all the time on this forum - need to vent some excess pressure sometimes). But, I cannot make any categories, and I cannot approve of comments. The error simply says "You do not have permission to do that." Any ideas what's going on there? In addition, on the Wordpress main webpage, there is a download button. Should I download something? I managed to make 4 posts and do a lot of stuff without downloading anything! Making blogs seems to be harder than designing chemical factories! Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged hmm - approving comments seems to work when I do it as a "bulk action". I'm glad this is solved. The biggest problem was that I pissed off my only two readers when I never approved their comments.

Agreed. Conservation of energy is rock solid. I have never seem anyone suggest that this theory needs an addition, or that it is incomplete when you look at lightspeed velocities, lightyear distances or micro-sized particles. Correct me if I'm wrong, and maybe I might re-design some factories.

I know, I might overreact a little (a lot?). But I find it worrying that these are connected somehow. They seem to copy not only news, but also ideas. This makes me wonder how often there is a contact between the papers. Do they also agree not to publish something? Who decides this? It's probably all very innocent in this particular case... but this has the potential to be less innocent. I am overreacting because the media are our only way of getting information. They are basically the only reason that the democracy functions. They are essential to freedom. And the newspapers involved are among the largest papers in the countries.

Although I like the idea this time - this is also the biggest propaganda I've ever seen. It's nice that they address global warming, and urge politicians to come to an agreement. However, this also shows how independent newspapers are nowadays. What's next? 100 newspapers urge politicians to start a war? 200 newspapers who urge you to buy a new car? Newspapers are supposed to be independent. They should inform us, not set the agenda for politics. This is one of the main problems in our modern world: Media think they can set the agenda of politics... and they cause politics to rush, they cause politics to focus on incidents and they cause politicians to become populists caring more about the headlines than about the actual added value of their actions to the country... So, in short: I think this confirms what I feared: newspapers are not independent, and set the agenda of politics. and I very much dislike that. .