CaptainPanic

What I mean to say is: You can lower costs (reduce wages) to lower the product price... You can lower costs (reduce wages) to increase profit (increase income of someone else). These are two fundamentally different things.

Are all the employees also shareholders, or does the profit go to a selective few? In your first paragraph, I really think you should explicitely include profit. Profit is a part of the revenue. Revenue is all the income, and it pays for the salaries. But profit goes to investors...

Your Russian friend is completely right - Politics is responsible for all the things that happen with a country that they're running. They are often the ones who choose to go to war. So, yes, you could argue that they're the root of all evil. However, it would be fair to say that they're also the root of quite a few good things. Having a government is arguably better than complete anarchy. It's nice that they build infrastructure. And the list of things that is ultimately organized by governments is enormous. It's not a black and white question. The choice is not: "Government" vs. "No government". What is important is to remember that politicians are not just reponsible, but they also have a responsibility to us (the people). And that we occasionally remind them of that responsibility if they forget, which they ultimately will.

I don't know... there are no official numbers about this. The music industry continuously spams us (through the media) about lost revenues... but those numbers are obviously useless for reasons I've explained 2 posts above. And I also think that many people in the Netherlands do not know the law, or might just ignore it, thinking that breaking this particular law might have no consequences. At least I haven't heard of any case where someone was punished in any way for uploading anything.

A lot of media (BBC, Gizmodo (and a lot of others) report that a man was cured of HIV by a bone marrow transplant: It's wonderful scientists / doctors continuously keep getting closer to curing HIV. Obviously, there is a lot of work to be done... but I have to say that this seems the most promising bit of news in many years.

I think the almighty uses universal time. Stands to reason.

Just click on the links in my previous post! (the words with a line under it are links).

It's called capillary action. You cannot put it through a turbine on the way down (well, you can, but it's not gonna do much good). It requires more energy to get that oil out of the wick than the potential energy it contains. And it will require more energy to get the water out of the paper than the potential energy it has. The liquid moves up because it is actually attracted to the solid material (the wick or the paper). So, in order to remove it from that wick or paper, you must overcome that additional attraction... and that costs energy. It's like a magnet that attracts a piece of iron. The piece of iron can move against gravity, up towards a magnet. But since the magnet is able to move the iron up against gravity, you can bet that the piece of iron lost a little energy (it gains a little potential energy, loses some magnetic energy; and the combination will be a net loss). And in order to get the potential energy fromthe iron, you must overcome the magnetic attraction... so you must invest more than you will get out. Same with a capillary.

Given the fact that galaxies, stars and planets are formed and destroyed, it is extremely likely that a consciousness is also formed or destroyed at some point. I would consider it extremely unlikely that my consciousness has always existed, or will exist forever from now on... and I can imagine many environments where life itself just isn't possible.

There are many names for it... in general you can say that the materials try to be in equilibrium. Such equilibriums are everywhere. And nature always tries to move something towards the equilibrium if it's not in equilibrium yet. Generally, if you have bulk material A (let's say air) and bulk material B (something else)... and then another material C, which is present in one of the two... there will be an equilibrium where material C distributes itself over materials A and B in some way. (Nearly) all the material C can go in the air, or it can go into the material B, or it can be 50-50, or anything in between. If you use a liquid to remove something from a gas, it can be called absorption. If you use a gas to remove something from a liquid, it can be called stripping. If you use a solid to remove something from liquid or gas, and the material C would go onto the surface of the solid rather than into it, it's called adsorption (note, adsorption, and absorption are not the same!). If you use a liquid to remove something from another liquid or solid, it's called extraction.

LOL Good thread to dig up from the archives

Well... the LHC was built in an underground lair for a reason.

Liquid water is usually in equilibrium with the water vapor. And the amount of vapor depends on the temperature (the vapor pressure is a function of the temperature). Hygroscopic materials can 'suck' water out of the gas phase (air), and the water in the gas phase will then be at a lower concentration than the equilibrium concentration. Since water itself cannot make the water concentration in the gas phase go below its equilibrium concentration, water cannot be considered hygroscopic.

I don't think a genuine mortar is any good for water balloons. A mortar is basically a cannon... and I think it's a little too violent for the fragile water balloons. You can work with a pipe with air pressure perhaps? Especially if you use something like a sabot to protect the balloon. Anyway, to answer the question of the calculations... you have to solve some ballistics formulas. They may look complicated, but I am pretty sure that in most countries that's something you will learn in school before you're 18 years old anyway. Those formulas let you calculate where the balloon will land if you know the velocity at the start, and the angle. (Note: in practice it's pretty difficult to measure the velocity of the balloon). To find the force when the balloon comes down is even more difficult. It's easy to calculate the kinetic energy... but you must know how long the impact takes if you want to calculate the force.

Piston engines are really cheap. They are used in nearly all the cars, so the production volumes is many millions per year. To give an example of the difference in volume: - The most sold aircraft is the Cessna 172, of which 43,000 were build so far. - The most sold (single model) car is the Volkswagen Beetle, of which 21,529,464 were sold. We're basically dealing with a production volume which is 500-1000x larger for cars than for airplanes. And that's why the most sold airplanes actually use engines that are quite like car engines. I'm sure that if turbo props or jet engines were build by the tens of millions per year, they would also be a lot cheaper. [edit: forgot links for my claims - inserted them now]

It's not a technical problem, I'm sure. Kevlar and other high quality polymer and composite materials are already produced in automated factories. It would just be a matter of making those bigger, and making more factories. It's just a matter of the price. At the current price, the market is relatively small (although it's still industrial). And there is no real reason not to use good old fashioned steel or aluminium.

Note that the critical point of CO2 is at 31.1°C and 7.38 MPa (73.8 bar). That's within the safety limits of that cartridge. The 100 F mentioned by InigoMontoya equals 37.8°C. Anyway, please don't see this as criticism... it is never a bad thing to mention safety.

Sorry if I sound skeptical, but climate scientists have been trying to build models to predict the effect of greenhouse gases, ocean currents, etc. for quite a few years, but there is still a huge debate about it. And you just come in, present your video, say you will adjust pretty much ALL the parameters in the climate, and say you can predict that it will be better? I'd like to see some proper calculations by this point. Models. Publications. Not just a youtube video. Your claim is WAY too big for just that video.

True. But maybe people would learn fast, and the amount of accidents will drop quickly. I sure would want to give it a try anyway! Indeed, back on topic: sure, a good design could keep light weight cars on the road when they go at high speeds. But how will that help you in a gale force wind in a traffic jam (or when it's parked for that matter)?

If you move cold water up, warm water must go down, yes? The warmest water is at the top already... so radiation back to space is already at its maximum in the current situation. If you move cold water up, you reduce radiation, and you heat up the lower parts of the ocean.

Then why didn't you say that until post #10? Anyway, you cannot cool the planet by using the gulf stream to move cold water to the top of the ocean (if that's the plan). What would happen to the bottom of the ocean? (Hint: it heats up). And that completely ruins the gulf stream which powers your contraption in the first place.

No worries! If you're going to do a Bachelor, I wouldn't worry about it too much. The topic is more important than the school. If you feel really uncertain about it, you can always phone to a faculty you like in a "good" university, and ask if they often accept people with a BSc from the school you're about to go to into their own MSc program. If the answer is that it's no problem (ever), then you know you're fine. If the answer is that your school is simply too crappy, you might reconsider enrolling. If the answer is anything different, like they have too many MSc students anyway, ask the same question for PhD positions. Phone a couple of universities, and you might just get a picture of your future opportunities. But once again, the topics of the university you're about to start at are not typical "science"... and as far as I know, not many people do PhD's in it.

First of all, this exact same post appears 4 times on the internet (or, more specific, Google finds it 4 times). Are you planning to discuss all those threads? Is this problem extremely urgent? And frankly, the term "middle league university" on Google only links to your own posts. Care to explain what it exactly is? I've never heard of it. The reason you don't see many PhD students in your university is that the topics of your university are very business oriented, and not many people will do a PhD - instead everybody goes to commercial companies to work. If you want to become a typical famous scientist, topics such as IT, management, law and criminology, the creative industries and the environmental and sustainability industries are not the obvious choices. You're better off with physics, chemistry and the more exact studies.

You may not have been fishing for compliments, but this thread seems a very good place to give my compliments to all the mods of this forum. The place wouldn't be the same without you guys. And as a mod, it's your job to sometimes be hard. Just know that frequent members appreciate that. The most difficult subforums are (imho) the politics and religion. In those forums, we're not dealing with science. Instead, the participants in a discussion often base their entire argument on completely different sets of core-assumptions. And I am happy to say that even on those more difficult forums, I have still very nice discussions... which is a compliment to all participants - mods and members alike.

You're right. You can always, in any equation (not just chemical, also mathematical) add stuff on both sides of the equation, although in many cases it will only make things more complicated or confusing. Very often, chemical reactions are simplified into their simplest form (remove the molecules from both sides as much as possible).