CaptainPanic

Please, I wrote a lengthy post with multiple arguments. You just dismiss all of that without any decent argument. If this is all you can say, this discussion is over before it even started.

So, you expect people to spend time reading and replying, when you did not even have enough time to tidy up your post? My advice: if you have an unreasonable deadline, do not waste your time writing lengthy posts on an anonymous online forum. Unless there are some replies soon, I propose that you tidy up your post, and put the improved version in a new thread. Then please click on the report button at the bottom of your current post (the untidy one), and ask the mods to remove the old (and untidy) post. That should leave us with a better post, and we can all reply to that. Also, a word of advice: make sure to write a good abstract at the top of your post. Many people will read only the first few lines.

I cannot speak for all universities. I have experience at only 1 university, where I was educated. At my university, I have been totally indoctrinated with many things: thermodynamics, mass transfer phenomena, catalysis and even some physics and maths! But I cannot remember a single organized activity which focused on any political ideology. Students were mostly influencing each other... and that certainly influenced my political beliefs to this day. But indoctrination suggests that there is a plan behind it, and I object that. But even more interesting, if universities are indeed (1) the largest accumulation of smart people and (2) generally left wing, and (3) generally at the forefront of new developments, then is it maybe possible that it is the right wing which has somehow been indoctrinated? Indoctrination suggests that people don't use their own brains, but just blindly follow some leader. The students at universities that I know generally think for themselves.

It is a rare case where the question and answer are found in the same post, but there is no reason to remove or close it. But it seems we're done here.

Hurricanes, as well as every other type of weather are just ways for our planet to dissipate heat. If you're gonna kill the hurricane that is about to hit the USA, could you be so kind to at least guarantee that it will not screw up the weather elsewhere? Because I am living elsewhere.

Humans are trained to recognize faces. We are really (really!!) good at it. We can detect the smallest changes among people. We are almost never wrong, and we can keep thousands and thousands of people apart without mistakes. So, we also sometimes recognize a face when there isn't any. Nobody is denying that there are faces there. I can see them too. But it is just a coincidence. Nothing strange. There are also thousands of halos that do not look like a face. Did you know that cats see mice in every halo and every cloud?

You started the thread in April. Despite being bitten, you have survived more than 200 days since then. Congrats.

All computer companies use silicon in their products, because all computer chips are made (for a large part) of silicon.

What nonsense. To say that you could extrapolate anything from two small scale examples is rubbish. It is statistically wrong. Also, there are too many other parameters involved. In addition, we can observe right now that there are large differences between nations with pretty similar political ideologies: Take for example Scandinavia, which still maintains a relatively socialistic approach, with very high taxes, and lots of state-owned and state-supported institutions, infrastructure and even industry (note that there are multi billion multinationals on that list too), and compare that to Mozambique, which is also lead by a socialist party and president, but which is in comparison very poor. Furthermore, I reject your idea to use countries where human beings are living as test grounds. I reject the idea to subject a group of people to live in a political laboratory, just so we can find out what happens.

I think there exists some golden number. Too little growth, and you end up with too many old people a few decades later. This is happening in Europe now, where the baby-boomers who were born right after the WWII are now reaching their pensions. It is not often mentioned, but I think this is one of the main reasons that our markets haven't recovered yet. We'll have too few workers, and too many people to take care of in the coming decade. On the other extreme (too much growth) leads to the problems you describe - which I agree with. This is potentially even worse. Could you cite a source for this? I agree that most researchers, when talking about global problems, will avoid the population growth, because it is a sensitive topic. But I haven't seen many publications which advocate population growth as a means to achieve economic growth. But maybe I am just reading different articles. You describe a situation with increased incomes, and as a result also increased prices. This is called inflation, and not necessarily good. Agreed. And the same goes for infrastructure. With a growing population, you need more roads, houses, schools, shops, industry. It is already a massive effort just to maintain a constant level of wealth per head of the population. A bit off topic: Many European countries have an economic crisis which for a part is caused by way too much construction. But not due to population growth, but just because of an out-of-control construction sector, and an attitude that the sky is the limit. In many countries, the construction sector is suffering hard since the start of the crisis. This is because for years perfectly functional buildings were demolished and replaced by newer (more expensive) buildings. Obviously, this is a poor way to achieve economic growth, and a waste of expensive resources and people.

Yes. But you might have to build a specific setup to study it. Most practical applications (compressors) are not isothermal (they do not have a constant temperature).

I live in the Netherlands. Where I live, the police need a reason to pull you over. As far as I know, if they cannot state a reason why they pull you over (i.e. which law you broke), they cannot ask even for ID. So... If a Dutch policeman pulls you over you better have some ID, and they (i.e. the police) better have some idea of what is going on...

/me searches around frantically for a hat... any hat Strictly speaking, if you worship Charlie Sheen, this is a religion. Worshipping is a religious act, and worshipping Charlie Sheen means you place him above other mortals. This means you're not an atheist. Worship (google definition): Show reverence and adoration for (a deity); honor with religious rites. /me thinks hats are just compensation

A church is a building or organization for the worshipping of something. Atheism is the rejection of that. What you are proposing is similar to a "Government of Anarchy". It's nonsense.

I dedicate my life to making this planet a bit cleaner. I take pride in taking time to debunk populism. But here we have a thread which is called "Congratulations, Obama". We are not looking for any solutions in this thread. Anyway, I don't think that bipartisan cooperation within the USA will yield any results that are beneficial for the USA or for the world. To put it simply: the Republicans are just too extreme, because they have been hijacked by the Tea Party extremists and by extremist religious zealots. I view politics from a global perspective, and I am just really happy that the least extreme guy (Obama) won the elections in the US. At least this means that cooperation on an international level does not come to a complete halt again, like with the Bush administration.

I think I know what you mean, I think your post is funny too, but I am gonna pretend I don't get it and I'm gonna give a serious reply. Because I can. If people aren't used to state troopers asking for ID (for no apparent reason), that's a good thing, right? I mean, it would be a lot worse if 90% are so used to handing over their ID that it's a second nature.

If we extrapolate this, taking into account Sandy and Katrina, we could conclude that the political orientation of the president determines with 100% certainty where the next hurricane will hit. The Gulf coast is safe for 4 more years. Also, it seems that one should vote for the party that you hope does not win (people in Mississippi vote Republican, hoping for a democratic victory so the hurricane will be deflected towards the East Coast instead of the gulf coast). I am probably over-thinking this.

The dose is what really matters. Toxicity is a combination of the substance and the dose. All substances are dangerous and toxic if the dose is high enough.

On behalf of the rest of the world, I'd like to thank the Americans for being a little reasonable and giving the least bad guy a slight majority of votes. It makes a big difference.

That point was the year 2000, as far as I'm concerned. But I am not an American.

I think if you google around searching for "periodicals" (and then some other keyword), you might find quite a few magazines, ranging from very popular to super nerdy. Make sure to add the engineering as a keyword too. I think you'll be surprised how much there is. Not much is free though.

Did you vote though?

I agree with michel123456: the easiest term is the Heat Transfer Coefficient, U, expressed in (W/m².K) If you transfer some heat from A to B, you express this in Watts (power). Watts are Joules per second: how much energy you transfer per unit of time. This heat is transported through a surface area. Like the outside of the cup, in which you hold your hot or cold drink. And if you have a larger temperature difference between the cup and the air (or your hand which is holding the cup), this transfer will go quicker. So, that means you arrive at a formula to calculate how much energy is transferred (lost or gained) by or from that cup: [math]P = U\cdot{A\cdot{\Delta{T}}}[/math] in which: [math]P[/math] = power (Watts) [math]U[/math] = heat transfer coefficient (W/m².K) [math]A[/math] = surface area (m²) [math]\Delta{T}[/math] = temperature difference between object and outside (K) The next question would be: is there any way to predict the heat transfer coefficient U? And the answer is: yes. But it's pretty damned complicated. If you want to know anyway, please specifically ask for it, and we'll explain.

It is quite common in the north of the Netherlands to have minor earthquakes, and these are directly linked to the extraction of natural gas. I think this website, from our national meteorological institute (KNMI) is the most comprehensive: It should be noted that no earthquake of >4 on the Richter scale has occurred. All quakes were minor, with only minor structural damage - often no damage at all.

Isn't the standard deviation just a definition? It's like asking why a meter is exactly 100 centimeters? It's because we defined it to be like that.