CaptainPanic

I suggest you do not follow this guy's example. The "invention" isn't new (gasification for cars was used quite extensively during the 2nd world war, albeit not on plastics, but on wood and other residues)... and the fact that this guy wants to patent his idea shows to me that he doesn't know much about it (unless he's just a patent troll who wants to sue all the industry that works with gasification - and in that case I wish him good luck in court against multi billion dollar industry). Plenty of prior art exists. Also, the "invention" doesn't seem to include any gas cleaning. You probably cannot easily distinguish between all the plastics. Some may be quite harmless to your engine, but I don't know how PVC behaves in gasification, but I wouldn't be surprised if hydrochloric acid is produced... that can't be good for your engine.

So, assuming I'd live in that same country and county, how does all this affect me taking a shower? Should I really buff up my locks on the bathroom door and buy a non-transparent shower curtain just in case somebody breaks into my house? And another important question: did the guy get some time to dress himself before he was taken to jail? Or did the judge sentence him for 20 years in solitary confinement for appearing naked in court?

Yes. Sort of. What you need is a pressure difference. A vacuum is a good start, because almost certainly you will have a place somewhere else in space with a higher gas pressure. And then automatically the gas will flow from the high pressure area to the low pressure area. And you can move along with this flow of gas. This principle was already used by people thousands of years ago. In modern English, the craft that moves because of this principle is called a "sail boat". More recently, a new invention was made that created its own high pressure behind the craft. This is called the "rocket engine". Essentially, it creates a very high pressure gas (much higher than our own atmosphere). This gas wants to expand, and will therefore blend with the atmosphere. The action causes a reaction, moving the craft forward. You can also create a vacuum on the front of the craft, and sort of "suck" yourself forward. So far, scientists and engineers found that conventional rocket engines are more efficient, or at least are more cost-efficient. so, essentially it's the pressure difference that gives you power. The keyword here is "driving force", which is always a difference between somewhere and somewhere else. Potential, voltage, height, temperature, pressure, concentration - all these can have differences between two places - and can therefore create a driving force. A vacuum on itself it quite useless. But a vacuum and a high pressure gas next to each other will certainly cause some action. Did that answer the question?

Some facts (objective) -EU governments have created laws that say that pretty much any data (up or download) must be stored in a databank for up to 1 year. Every message I type, every sms I write, every phone call I make. It's all stored for 1 year. -The railroads/buses and all other public transportation services in the Netherlands have a new card which you can charge. You use it to check in and out when you enter the system. This information is stored for 7 years. -Cameras have been installed on motorways recording license plates of all cars passing. No idea how long the data is stored. -It is mandatory to carry identification at all times for everyone above 14 in the Netherlands. -Criminals must give their DNA. Opinion (subjective) Why? To improve the service of a railroad, you need statistics. You don't need to know if it was Harry or Jack who entered the train, you just need to know how many people (on average) went from A to B. Since data is stored, many innocent people were arrested. Our secret service and police have had to release (almost?) every terrorist they caught because there was too little evidence. Our country was safe also without these systems. I have no problem with the recording of the data itself - I have a very big problem however with all the money and effort spent on these systems. They cost billions of euros. And my country is already pretty safe. And incidents can always happen. The biggest risk is some disease, probably some typical old age disease. Why aren't these billions spent on that? If you want to increase safety and security, then spend money on getting a better network of ambulances and fire departments. Give all medicine students a scholarship to encourage this study. Give hospitals some more money for better equipment and more people. It's not the data being stored that worries me - I have truly nothing to hide - it's the pointlessness of it. It's just not cost-effective.

FOX does not make news. It's an opinion. However, I don't think there is any problem. If the lefties cry out that the information that FOX spreads is false, then why don't they oppose that with their own biased channel? The important part is that it is possible for anyone to set up a channel, and to reach the population. In the Netherlands, we have TV that is biased all the time. But luckily we get the whole spectrum, from socialist leftist propaganda to right wing war mongers nonsense. An organization with enough members gets some time on the public channels. An organization with enough money can get time on a commercial channel, or even start its own channel. Just accept it that there is not a single person on this planet who is truly objective about everything... And you still need a person to make the news. The news is never objective...

Gasification is the reaction where you heat up the plastic (or any other carbon/hydrogen/oxygen containing material) to about 800 degrees Celsius and you don't let any air in. The plastic/waste/wood/coal (pick one) will completely decompose into mostly CO, H2, H2O and CO2. That gas that you thus create can be used in the engine of the car. A few words of warning though: 1. You have to constantly feed new plastic scraps into a reactor which is very hot. If your car uses 10 liters of fuel in 1 hour, and you want to replace 30% by plastic scraps, then you need to put 3 kg of plastic scraps into this reactor each hour. 2. The gas that you produce is probably not very clean. It might corrode your engine in the inside - it may in other words reduce the life expectancy of your car. If you can create a link to this experimental old car, then I might be able to give better comments.

Funny thing is that the majority of the world's population logically should side with the more socialist politics - since the majority don't own companies, but simply work for them. Yet, many are brainwashed into thinking that as a worker, they should support the rights of the employers. Workers will happily vote for tax cuts for big business. Only in America is the least social party the red one. Everywhere else red stands for socialism.

Good for you. It's not an argument for or against anything, although I hope you'll never design a bridge with such a bad habit. I disagree. Providing a solution to a problem where you choose your quantities such that you give a particular constant the value "1", and then leaving it out altogether because it doesn't affect the outcome is stupid. It means that people will assume that this particular constant doesn't exist. They will not be able to solve any problem that doesn't involve heating water. We are in the "homework" section of the "science forum" aren't we? I'm just asking, so that I am not accidentally posting on the "diet forum for people with a single digit IQ". Apologies to all those who have a single digit IQ and are in need of a diet. While I agree that not much harm can be done in a miscalculation of the energy of a chocolate bar, actual rockets meant to achieve orbit have fallen from the sky because of conversion errors. If the whole world would just use the SI units, which need no conversion, we wouldn't have this discussion. Calories are not practical, because nobody cares how many degrees they can heat some water after they eat chocolate. The only people who will do such calculations are engineers and scientists, and they should use Joules. So why doesn't the rest of the population follow that brilliant example?

Another issue is the fact that you might want to use very tough metals (steel) for ball bearings, unless you are fine with replacing them soon. Machines might be able to replicate, but maintenance (or recycling and rebuilding) is another issue. I agree with alan2here that things like bearings, and other moving parts are the big trick in replicating.

I'm clueless on the topic itself, but I like to click. I want an option where I can just click without really interfering too much with the results. So, thanks for including that last option.

Ah, yes. Statistics. I try to ban it from my mind ever since I studied it at university, but it keeps coming back... perhaps because it's so useful? Here's a link to D H's formula.

The earth's circumference is 40000 km, and rotates once per day. To oppose the rotational velocity, the winds need to be 40000/24 = 1700 km/hr. Still, they're not that fast. [edit] Oh, wait - Jupiter's circumference is 449000 kilometer (!), and it rotates once every 10 hrs... so, that's roughly 40000 km/h. p.s. holy crap, the centrifugal force on Jupiter must be quite significant.

I am a strong supporter of the theory that certain types of animals leave no fossils... either because they're eaten before they get a chance to, or because they disappear for another reason (which I don't know). Therefore, the fossil records will almost certainly be incomplete, even if we were to dig up every individual fossil. The dinosaurs, the intelligent ones, might have burned their dead, so they cannot be discovered by archaeologists.

You don't think, but you're not sure. And while we disagree on this point, the rest of the discussion cannot start.

Heh, lol. I design chemical factories for a living, and one goal is to make the world a clean and nice place. I don't see myself as average. But another goal of mine is to go and drink beer. One does not exclude the other. Did you take the IQ test in English? I see you live in Iceland. You can certainly add a few points if you took a test in a language that's not your primary language... especially if time was measured.

Never blindly trust the meaning of a letter. Use your own brain, because different countries/books/websites have different letters. Although I agree that "r" most likely is for radius. Every good book or article will have a list of symbols. Unfortunately, there are many books and articles that aren't very good.

And while you're at it - tell his teacher that the proper unit for energy is called the "Joule", not the "Calorie". Through a lazy choice of a unit, one physical quantity (namely the "specific heat") is completely overlooked. I think that is very bad education. Leaving out vital information because it is possible will leave the student confused when things become more complicated. The formula you need is: [math]E=m\cdot{C_P\cdot{\Delta{T}}}[/math] with: [math]E[/math] is the energy (in Joule - For your info, 1 Calorie = 4.184 Joule) So, 18000 Calories = 75312 J [math]m[/math] = mass, in kg That's 300 g here, so 0.300 kg. [math]C_P[/math] = specific heat, in J/kgC or J/kgK That's 4.184*10^3 J/kgK [math]\Delta{T}[/math] in degrees (K or C) That's the one we want to calculate. changing the formula to calculate the temperature: [math]\Delta{T}=\frac{E}{m\cdot{C_P}}=\frac{75312}{0.300\cdot{4.184\cdot{10^3}}}=60[/math] The use of Calories is only easy in this very particular case - in all other cases, the use of Joules, and the method I just described is easier and more widely used. Only the USA use calories. The rest of the world uses Joules for energy.

On a very cold day, the air outside may feel moist (that's the relative one), but it's actually quite dry (on an absolute scale). If you have a fire inside, assuming your chimney works, the exhaust gases leave the house. That means that fresh air enters the house somewhere. This fresh air might have a relative humidity at 0 deg C, but at 20 deg C, it's quite dry. In case you thought that the fire produces water (it does!), that water will leave through the chimney. If any significant amount of gases from the fire would enter your house, you'd be in trouble.

Ok, I see the light. I always believe people innocent until proven guilty - even though the majority on this planet unfortunately doesn't seem to see the importance of that anymore. (That is a comment about the average person on this planet, not about the people on this forum in particular!). That last post by him was not a reply to anything any of us said. It was a copy pasted follow up on the 1st post. And just like the first one, this one appeared (according to Google) on 228 different websites. That's not communication, that's just "soapboxing"... and I believe it to be against the rules (section 2, point 8). Move on to section 3 of the rules where sanctions to rule violations are described.

I'm not sure what the point is of this thread. there is no clear question, statement or theory, and it seems that there is a lot of unhappy sentiment in this thread - I say we close it simply because it was started poorly. Dr. Syntax: please give us something to discuss next time you open a thread. Right now I disagree with everybody about what is actually the topic... I believe from the OP that the topic isn't Einstein's quote, but instead is vegetarianism. But I can understand that people disagree with me. So, we should start a discussion about what's the topic before discussing the topic itself. That's worse than politics. But anyway, if the quote is correct, Einstein seems to suggest that we evolve to become vegetarians. He doesn't suggest that individuals already alive today become vegetarians.

Yeah, Ohm's Law is short. The theory of thermodynamics is not. Yet the theories make sense. I could give you Ohm's Law. I cannot give you the theory behind all thermodynamics. In fact, I'd rather give you the theory of evolution than thermodynamics.

Copy (and) paste. Click here to see a website about it. Linking To make a link (like the one above) in your text, you need two webpages open: the one you want to link to, and SFN (this forum). Then: 1. You write something, like "link" or whatever text should link to the website. 2. You select that piece of text that will become the link, and you click the little blue symbol: . 3. You go to the other website and copy the url (url = webpage's address). 4. Enter the url of your link here in SFN, in the box that asks for "Please enter the URL of your link:" 5. Click OK. That should be all... shouldn't take half an hour, and certainly shouldn't cause any mistakes in typing the address.

Ban him? Why? It actually does not say in the forum rules that you cannot post the same message somewhere else on the internet... as long as it's no plagiarism. I don't like the idea of answering to a copy-pasted message, but it's allowed as far as I know. I would like to ask coberst to write more clearly. I can see that it's lots of fun to show off some skills in writing, but it's not useful if your goal is to have a discussion.

Modern wind turbines produce pretty much exactly 1 Megawatt (MW). The biggest can produce up to 3 MW, and plans exist to go for even bigger. Note that this is the maximum power output, not the average. Without wind, they produce a lot less obviously. You're wrong in your assumption. If you don't re-build the turbine, it would take the energy of 1000 homes to turn it. Remember that they can turn a lot faster, but there is a big gearbox and generator inside the top of the turbine that slow it down (that "extract" the energy). A wind turbine that doesn't have the breaks on can destroy itself... because it can turn that fast. Here's a youtube video of a wind turbine of about 1 MW that goes "top speed". If you just want to turn those blades.... sure... you can do that easily. If you want to overcome the generation of 1 MW of electricity, then you really have to supply more than 1 MW of electricity to turn it. Some big machines just use/generate a lot of energy! And a wind turbine is a pretty big one, and also: your house just doesn't use very much. You propose a perpetuum motion device, which not only keeps moving forever, but also generates energy. Simply put: that's impossible.

So far there is no suggestion that the two comets (Chicxulub and Shiva) were related. But earth really doesn't get hit that often by large comets, so it would be extremely unfortunate if it got hit twice in a relatively short period. The Shoemaker-Levy comet contained 21 fragments that all hit Jupiter. Could it not be that earth got hit twice by the same comet? Jupiter got hit on the same latitude, but spread out widely on its southern hemisphere. The fact that Chicxulub and Shiva are on the other side of the world, but (nearly) on the same latitude (just like the Shoemaker-Levy fragments) only seems to agree with my little theory here. Soil samples should be able to tell if the two are of the same origin perhaps. Or perhaps we can find a third crater from the same era and on the same latitude? Somewhere in the Sahara perhaps? p.s. Moontanman, your post is totally off topic, but would be a nice thread in itself. Perhaps the dino's cremated their dead, and that would be a good reason why we don't find fossils.