CaptainPanic

He's a British member of parliament. They have their own sources of information, just like the Americans do.

Ah, the next round of Obama bashing. I enjoyed this part the best: The same Pentagon that knew for sure that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Let me do a little Bush bashing, or republican bashing, with some facts. I'll put up a little youtube. rigney, maybe even the right wing Americans are tired of the lies and manipulations to talk the USA into yet another war?

The above answers are both correct. It's because of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. But in much simpler words: For example, first you had 1 kg of steam (which is essentially water), and it was at 160 C, in the vapor phase (approx.; 6 bars). If you had a steam engine, you could do some real work with that. But what if I would give you the equivalent amount of heat in a different form? What if I would say I give you 650 kg of water at 21 degrees (when the outside temperature is 20). It's just a large bucket full of lukewarm water. It's not gonna do much for you. After you used your material to do some work, it will not be at ambient temperature. It will be warmer than ambient, but it will be completely useless. Sure, with some smart contraptions you might extract a little more - but usually the efficiency of such contraptions is low and they tend to be expensive.

With such a clock you're lucky that you even made it past noon.

I can hardly believe this isn't faked. But then you do meet people this dumb every now and then. It's one of my main arguments against democracy.

I guess that's why sponsorship is smaller for javelin throwers. You need to be of Olympic quality to even get some. The number of fully professional javelin throwers (globally) is maybe... 5? I don't know. Compare that to the thousands and thousands of professional soccer players. Sponsorship is linked to visibility to an audience. Some of the athletes competing at the Olympics are actually not even professional - they have a job on the side because they cannot get enough sponsor money.

! Moderator Note Dear everybody, I'm (temporarily?) closing this thread. There are too many reported posts, and the poor moderators of this forum cannot deal with it at this moment. The sheer number of rule violations (mockery, prejudices, flaming, personal attacks and a huge list of logical fallacies) make it very hard to moderate this thread. We'll try to sort out the mess you've all created as soon as possible. Until then, please do not move your flame wars to another thread. Just be a little patient please.

Most of the sporters finance themselves - by just being a member of a sports club, and the top-athletes find sponsors (commercial). The common playgrounds and sports centers might be partially government funded, but everyone benefits from that. I do my sports there too. The really top-quality sports centers for the best of the world are again often also sponsored again. For example, the Dutch olympic (double) champion swimming is sponsored. She swims for a team that carries the name of a large company. A large company doesn't mind to pay as long as their name appears often enough in association with a winner. Now, those stadiums, the necessary infrastructure, and the security of the actual Olympic games... that's a different matter. That's costly. But in London, I suspect that most of it will eventually be used. It's such a huge city!

Alright American gun lovers, I'm sorry to say that: And obviously, gun laws in many other countries are even more strict.

What??? I don't know in which Non-transparent dictatorship you live, but over here in Europe, the EU is totally transparent about what they fund and what they don't. The FP7 programs (.pdf warning - see page 4), for example, are announced to all who want to know. It is public information. And anyone can enter a call. And they will evaluate the proposals and then choose a winner. This is a relatively objective thing. Same for national subsidies in most countries. All this transparency costs a lot of valuable time of the research community, because it's quite a bit of work to write a proposal. And specifically about genetics: I dare to say that in human history, there has never been so much research into genetics. The entire DNA of millions of people has been entirely sequenced. How much more research do you want? You can nowadays deliver a tissue sample of yourself to a lab, and they'll tell you what part of the world your ancestors came from. This technology exists already. What studies are cut off, exactly?

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! Moderator Note I'm closing this thread for two reasons: 1. It doesn't make any sense. 2. The author of the opening post has been banned twice already, once for not making sense, and the second time for being a sockpuppet of the 1st account. Thread closed. Member banned. (This was reviewed by multiple mods).

! Moderator Note I'm closing this thread for two reasons: 1. It doesn't make any sense. 2. The author of the opening post has been banned twice already, once for not making sense, and the second time for being a sockpuppet of the 1st account. Thread closed. Member banned. (This was reviewed by multiple mods).

It's not the gravity acceleration that makes the dent in the ground. It's the decelleration when the ball hits the ground until it comes to a complete stop that makes the dent. I'm happy that you're thinking for yourself, and that you're forming your own opinion. But please realize that science has little to do with opinions. So, please grab your schoolbook, and read the chapter on acceleration and decelleration again. Then make a good drawing of what you're calculating, and then try again. Drawings help.

You make it sound a lot more extreme than I meant. But in a way this is exactly what kids always do. Kids always form packs. I mean that at this very moment, schools are banning all forms of physical contact (in the UK, and the USA). I hope you can agree that this is a step too far. In the Netherlands, bullying is seen as a way to permanently mentally harm children. I think that they make it so much worse than it actually is. Also, in the real world people are being bullied. It's not all fair. Your boss might refuse your promotion for no other reason than that he's an a**hole. And if you suppress bullying at school, the kids will just wait until they're out the school gates. They'll get the kids they wanna get. Kids are ruthless. If you don't make so much fuss about it, then at least you can see who is bullying who. (I'm not saying you publicly support the bullies!). Teachers can then help solve a conflict or give some other form of support. My problem with our society is that the people growing up now are a bunch of sissies. They expect 100% protection from law enforcement, because they never learned to deal with problems. They never solved their own problems. Their entire youths there was someone stronger to protect them. I'm not saying you should deliberately expose kids to trouble. But I am saying that if children, for whatever reason, do not have the happiest youth possible, this can make them stronger instead of weaker too.

So, you're saying that you are Michael Phelps? (There is only 1 person who has won more than 9 gold medals).

Exact sciences Reverse the order in which physics and maths are taught. First physics. First some practical examples. And the more generalized cases follow later. Only the basic arithmatics should be taught as a separate course, pretty much like it is done nowadays. As soon as kids can add, subtract, multiply and divide, you can start with physics. They do not need to know what an equation is. Just take them out into the park, and set a racing course. Have them measure the length. Then have them run it. Time them, and ask them to calculate the speed. Or do it with a bike with a speedometer - which will confirm that the calculation is correct. It's a simple experiment - with an element of competition. Guaranteed that the kids will remember the rest of their lives how to calculate a velocity with two simple measurements. Then you can also work with more complicated things such as acceleration. Still, there is no need to actually explain derivatives or any algebra. Just work with an example. The equations are so simple that you do not need to actually explain the equation using symbols. Just write it out in full words. And then once you explain the algebra - the [math]x[/math] and [math]y[/math] actually mean something. As soon as the symbol [math]x[/math] is introduced, it should immediately be applied to something meaningful: to physics, or another practical real-life application. Give the kids a case where the maths are useful, or don't teach it at all. And use a different symbol, because in the real world it's not always [math]x[/math] and [math]y[/math]. Nowadays, many people simply do not know that they can solve a problem, because they never applied maths to a real-life situation. Maths is a bunch of [math]x[/math] and [math]y[/math] to them... and there is no [math]x[/math] and [math]y[/math] in real-life. Languages Almost the same goes for languages. I would put the focus of language teaching on speaking, rather than writing/spelling. Teach kids to speak, rather than to write a new language. It's incredibly demoralizing to learn spelling of a language when you cannot speak the language sufficiently to write something meaningful. It's a lot more important to be able to communicate with foreigners than to be able to correctly spell. Also, once you're speaking a language, you'll practice so much more, because it is actually fun to talk to foreigners. You also learned to speak your 1st language before you learned to write it... I do not see why we teach foreign languages in the opposite order. Also, I don't think there is a problem starting a 2nd language at the age of 6 or so. But it might be tough to keep the kids focussed in the beginning. Not sure about this. Sports and social stuff Finally, I would make it all a bit more rough again: Bullying and fighting is a part of life - so don't intervene all the time. Not nice for the one being bullied, but they'll survive. Let them climb trees or play rough games. Sure, some will get injured at school. Life is hard, but kids recover quickly. Also sports should be more competitive and varied. I disagree completely. It takes a certain level of maths to teach equations. But physics is so much more than equations. Physics is everywhere, also if you do not understand the equations. Give kids some technical Lego, and they're able to experiment. With such relatively intuitional toys comes greater understanding. Simple concepts such as Archimedes (will it sink?), levers or pulleys (can I lift it?) or gears (will it spin faster or slower) can be enjoyed with very minimalistic math skills, and affordable toys. And I described some other experiments that you can do with no real math skills earlier in this post. Maths skills and physics skills should be developed simultaneously... you can even develop some initial qualitative feeling for physics before ever getting into the maths. And when someone then offers the kids a tool to go from qualitative to quantitative, they might be actually motivated to learn the maths. And as a bonus, you probably save a lot of time, because you teach them the maths and physics at the same time.

It's called the Big Bang, because the idea was new, and "Big Bang" sounded different from earlier models of how the universe came to be. Fred Hoyle is (according to Wikipedia) credited with coining the term Big Bang during a 1949 radio broadcast. So, it's called "Big Bang" for marketing reasons.

Although this is not my field of expertise, I always understood that Drag is dependent on whether it is turbulent or not. In turbulent (high velocity) motion, like a rocket through air, the drag is a function of the air density (and that is a function of pressure). In laminar (low velocity) motion, the drag is a function of the viscosity, as described in Stokes' Law. But Stokes' Law is not valid for rocketry, because in rocketry you will have a high Reynold's number (Reynold's number is a measure of how laminar/turbulent something is). Still, the point stands that the drag of the atmopsphere will account for only a small fraction of the total energy required for getting into orbit.

Cheers for that link. It's awesome, even though it is a little slow. I guess that's just because the entire world tries to run the same application today. One more application to keep me from working. Holy! Here's a cool picture that shows just how huge this Curiosity rover is. (Hint, it's the biggest).

The simple reason is money. Water is so cheap that it's impossible to make it out of anything else. The price would be a LOT higher. As ewmon already said, it is always cheaper to transport the water than to transport some base chemicals to make it.

A. Same energy. Well, if we are really strict, then the reduced friction would make it a little bit easier, so you could argue that it's C (less energy), but it's a negligible bit less.

They did though. This wikipedia website is about "tiktaalik", which is one of the many animals which started to adapt to leave the water. On the same page, you will find several other links to other animals that were either more or less adapted. One of the best examples of how fish could evolve legs is Panderichthys, (also mentioned on that wikipedia site), which had fins adapted for mud and shallow water. This creature couldn't actually leave the shallow water yet.

I think that studiot came close to the right answer. Your body (or that of a monkey) will have an output of only a few watts on a keyboard. Probably actually less than 1 watt. If we assume it's 1 Watt, then you need 40 monkeys to power your lightbulb.

That's awesome news! I was very skeptical that the complicated plan would work (heat shield + parachute + thrusters + a rope?)... but apparently it did. I hope that all systems are functional... and I hope that Curiosity will stay alive as long as the other Mars rovers!