Strange

This was my interpretation as well. I think this is a good solution. It mustn't be too insulating, though or the static charge won't be discharged (or won't "turn into electricity" as some would have it). If this is a purely theoretical scenario, then I think FlamingoMan has to describe all the assumptions they are making before going on to describe the proposed solution. A tricky case is if the shock comes when the person on the treadmill touches the control panel to change the speed or stop the machine. (This may be worse psychologically, as well, because the user might think they are getting an electric shock from faulty equipment.) You can get flexible, transparent rubberised covers for equipment - normally intended to protect the equipment from water, but would work in this case to protect the user from static discharge. (When I lived in Japan, during the winter I used to walk around the office holding a key so I could discharge myself against a doorknob before touching it. There would be a mighty spark, but because the current was distributed over an area of skin, you didn't feel it. I can't see how this can be applied in this case, though.) Please provide a source for this definition. Or have you just made it up? It is not one I am familiar with. And it is certainly not the only one (even ignoring metaphorical uses like "the atmosphere was electric"). Lets see what some of the usual reference sources for the meanings of words say... (spoiler alert: none of them agree with you) Form the Encyclopaedia Brittanica: https://www.britannica.com/science/electricity From Collins Dictionary: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/electricity From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_electricity "Charges in the floor"? Are there monsters under your bed, too? In the case of the OP, the opposite charges are presumably accumulated on the running belt not the floor.

! Moderator Note Albion23, This is a Science forum. That means you need to provide evidence to support your ideas (and not ignore the evidence that contradicts them). So please provide some evidence that the ancient Egyptians (if those are the pyramids you refer) were aware of, and worried about, either nuclear weapons or alien attacks. There are a lot of written sources from the period so this should be easy to do. You could also provide some evidence (structural analysis or computer simulations, perhaps) that a pyramid would deflect such an attack. If you are not able to introduce some science into this thread it will be closed (amusing as it is). (Also, the dead were entombed in the pyramid, not in the soil)

You will find most people have an "entrenched belief" in the standard meanings of words. You can make up your own definition, like saying that "glory" means "a nice knock-down argument" but don't expect anyone else to agree with you. But do expect people to tell you that your definition is wrong. Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carrol

! Moderator Note Moved to Trash This is a Science forum. If you wish to discuss or learn about science, you are welcome. If you continue posting nonsense like this you will not be so welcome.

! Moderator Note Moved to Trash

! Moderator Note Moved to Trash

As pointed out at the start of the thread, the wavefunction is not destroyed by an observation (so you are making a strawman argument).

! Moderator Note Moved to Speculations The rules of the forum (which you agreed to) require you to present your evidence here, not just link to a video.

Err, yes it is. We calculate and use it everyday. You don't need a "zero point". Think about why it is called the theory of relativity.

I think you are going to face an uphill struggle trying to persuade everyone else in the world to accept your personal definition of the word "electricity". Especially when even you can't avoid using it in the standard way: "Static electricity is static charges that are not (yet) creating electricity." Nope. If you didn't connect your earthing strap to ground when handling sensitive component then you risk damaging them.

It should be trivial for you to do the calculations to support this claim. But it appears to be based on a misunderstanding. We don't just see stars orbit "too fast". As if the effective mass of the galaxy were different from what we estimated it be. How would we estimate the mass of a galaxy? One way is by looking at the orbital speed of the stars. So you are suggesting that the orbital speed of the stars is not consistent with the mass we calculate by looking at the speed of the stars. Or, to put it more simply, the orbital speed of the stars is not consistent with the orbital speed of the stars. That is obviously not the case. The problem is the distribution of speeds with radius. We can estimate how the mass profile of a galaxy (ie. how much mass is within a given radius) by looking at the density of stars, amount of light emitted, etc. It is this observed mass profile that does match the mass distribution measured from orbital speeds. So the problem is not that the stars are too fast, but that the distribution of speeds does not match the observed mass profile. Hence the need for extra mass, distributed throughout the galaxy. For your idea to explain this, you would need to show that looking at another galaxy from our gravitational potential affects the observed mass differently in different parts of the observed galaxy. No it is tiny. The mass of the Earth will have the largest effect. Followed by either the Moon or the Sun. Black holes or other galaxies will have pretty much zero effect. 1. The effect would be the same for all parts of that distant galaxy and so would not address the need for dark matter 2. The size of our local gravitation can be calculated and taken into account 3. There is almost certainly no point in doing (2) for most purposes because the effect would be smaller than measurement errors for distant galaxies. (It is required for some measurements, though.)

I thought there was no such thing as static electricity

I thought that is what I said. Well, it is what I intended to say! Teamwork: I do the "no" and you do the "but also yes"

Interesting question. I don't know if there is any direct connection like that. The conductivity of the conductor depends on how free the electrons (or other charge carriers) are to move. This is why metals are good conductors: lots of electrons free to move. Would liquid mercury be a better conductor than solid mercury (below its melting point)? I really don't know.

Looks right to me.

The trouble is that copper sulfate is electrically neutral; which means you have the same number of positive and negative charge carriers moving in the same direction. The magnetic fields generated by these will cancel out. In the case of a current through a wire you have the moevement of electrons only and so a magnetic field is produced. If you could arrange to get a flow of just sulfate ions (or just copper ions) then you would get a magnetic field. But I am not aware of any way of doing that. But a solution of copper sulfate is conductive, so presumably you could pass a current along the tube, and it would act like a wire

Just wanted to say that "I haven't enough think" is an excellent phrase and should be used more.

Maybe because that has nothing to do with free will. Oddly, you'll never see anyone who believes there is free will lie down in front of a train to prove their point, either.

You seem to be confusing “electricity” with “current”. Current requires a connection. Static electricity requires a separation of charges (no connection). This is wrong. (Or so oversimplified it might as well be.)

Sorry, I missed your previous comment and so misinterpreted what you said. The phrase "a machine holding down bolt" didn't help! I think your brush idea is a good one. What are those devices called that have the two bits of material that move apart when put near a static charge? Electroscope?? That could be used to find out where the charge is accumulated and then demonstrate that the fix works (without subjecting test runners to painful shocks). Yes, electroscope (brains are amazing at dragging up info you didn't think you knew) Build your own as part of the project: https://study.com/academy/lesson/electroscope-experiment.html

Not really. This is just an extreme case of swansont's "discharging to a large conductive reservoir would go a long way toward mitigating any static buildup". Unless this is a purely mechanical treadmill (which it might be) it would be earthed/grounded anyway. And I'm not sure that grounding the machine would necessarily help. The problem, I assumed, is that human running on the rubber(?) belt of the treadmill builds up a charge. They then get shocked when they touch the metal part of the treadmill (or something else) when they have finished running. In which case, you want to find a way of preventing them building up a charge in the first place. You could replace the treadmill belt with a more conductive material. Or coat it with a conductive coating. Or you could put a humidifier next to it. Or an array of very fine needles that act like tiny lightning rods to attract the charge - place these just behind the runner's as an incentive not to fall behind. But maybe you are right, and it is the machine that builds up a static charge so someone gets a shock when they first approach it. More information would be useful... Maybe the first part of the project should be to investigate exactly where (and why) the static charge is built up.

I am very (I mean very) sceptical of Hameroff's ideas. They seem to be largely based on "consciousness is mysterious. quantum theory is mysterious. therefore they must be related" However, the idea of "backwards time referral of conscious experience" (haven't seen it described exactly like that before) is definitely real. One of the most well-known examples is the "stopped clock" illusion. When you first look at a clock that has a hand that moves every second (rather than sweeping smoothly) then it will often appear that the hand does not move for a couple of seconds. This is because when your eyes move (which they do very frequently) your brain fills in the gaps to avoid blurs or blank periods in your vision. But it doesn't just keep a "freeze frame" of the last thing you looked at (that would be too easy) it takes the first thing you see when the eyes stop moving and fills in your past experience with that. As a result, you get the period for which your eyes were moving towards the clock filled in with an image of the static clock. The brain has to do this sort of thing all the time; creating the illusion that what we are experiencing now is actually happening now. Whereas it actually happened in the past. Worse than that, the various sensations we experience "now" may have all arrived at the brain at different times and the brain has to make you think they all happened at the same time. For example, you pick up a cold drink: your brain gets the visual stimulus of touching the glass a few hundred milliseconds before it gets the sensation of "cold" from your fingers. But as far as you are concerned, the two happen at the same time. And that they are happening "now" rather than half a second ago. While the first sentence is apparently true. He second sentence is a complete non sequitur, as far as I can see. Just because we are not consciously aware of things that happen or that our brain does at the instant they happen, doesn't imply that free will does not exist. Even if my brain (i.e. me) does not let me know what is happening in real-time (because that would be a disconnected jumble of sensations which would be impossible to deal with) that doesn't mean that it is not my decision. My "unconscious" mind is still me, just as much as my "conscious" mind. Hmmm.... I wonder (warning: evidence-free speculation ahead) if a failure in the integration of different sensory inputs might be a factor in autism? It could explain the sensitivity to environments with lots of source of sensory stimulation...

I can’t see any possible downside to using liquid sodium as a coolant in automobiles ...

I think you mean "If I have to tell you, I don't"

I doubt you have enough charge to need to ground it via a copper rod. A wire connected to anything grounded (a water or gas pipe, the ground pin of an electrical outlet, etc) would do. You could also search for "anti-static gun" - these discharge static by generating ionised air that allows the charge to dissipate. They are often used by people who play vinyl records, to remove charge that would accumulate dust. They are quite expensive though.