casrip1@gmx.com

so today i was think, and then i thought about thinking... literally... before continuing, take a couple minutes right now and think about something, anything now think: the thought you just thought of was thought up in a language you speak... language is something we use to communicate our thoughts to someone else. so why would we need language to think for ourselves. so when we think we're thinking, we're not really thinking, but talking to our brain, who is actually doing the thinking and then putting those thoughts into words so that we can understand what it (the brain) is thinking... so we have no idea of what we're thinking about except that which our brain decides to let us know by translating it to a language we can understand

i think this is a lovely video that you will enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxJ4M7tyLRE it answers exactly what you ask

hey guys, i'm planning out a model rocket design with store-bought motors (unfortunately i can't get my hands on any oxidizers, stupid canadian law...) and i'm planning to go with a cluster motor design because i plan on sending some payload. i'm planning on using 3 estes e12-0 standard motors (those are the strongest e-type motors right?) what i'm wondering is what type of mounting design should i use. i have two ideas: 1. put in 3 motors evenly spread out, tilted parallel to the tangent of the circle. 2. 3 motors evenly spread out, tilted both, parallel to the tangent of the circle as well as perpendicular to the tangent of the circle. i don't know if that made much, if any sense... by circle, i refer to the body of the rocket. by moving it parallel to the tangent of the shape of the body, it adds a simple tilt in the motor placement which should cause the rocket to spin to increase stability (think of it as mounting the motors tilted on the sides of a triangular prism). by moving the motor in parallel AND perpendicular to the tangent, i feel like it would add even more stability but i'm not sure (think of it as mounting the motors tilted on the sides of a tetrahedron) which of the 2 placements sound better to you guys? also, this rocket design will be a non-recovery type; more specifically, i plan on making the rocket split in mid air into 2 pieces, exposing the payload in mid-air. so i'm wondering, can i drill into the backs of the rocket motors (in the end cap) in order to insert a fuse which would light up when the motor runs out of propellant? this fuse would run along the side of the rocket body (which would be pre-cut in half and taped together with the fuse running along the tape) so when this fuse ignites it will basically split the rocket in two (by burning off the tape). then, i could place a small charge above/below the payload with a fuse leading to a 2nd motor with a slightly longer fuse than the first fuse (separation fuse). this would give the first fuse the time to separate the rocket into two, and then the small charge would ignite and push the 2 sides of the rocket body apart, exposing the payload. i'm totally in love with the idea of working with multi-sequence rocket designs and eventually i wanna get to a point where i could launch a rocket into the air, have it split and then have the payload deploy (or perhaps, maybe have the payload carry another motor to take it further, or whatever). so does the design plan so far sound like something that can be successfully implemented into an amateur model rocket? keeping in mind this rocket will be no longer than 2 feet.

i recently realized that although i've known forever that memory exists only as a base 2 to the power of x (128, 256, 512, 1024 etc) , i've never quite learned why... so why can't we have 500GB or 1000GB? why must it be 512GB or 1024GB instead?.

lol you guys are missing the point here, the idea is to brainstorm what would happen. you gotta try and process this without the actual experiment (doing mental experiments to determine the outcome )

this notion has been bugging me since forever and i like to think of it as (sort of) a paradox... take a high intensity laser pointer, hook it up with a light sensitive switch, and program it so that when the light sensitive switch is hit with light, the circuit is open and the laser will turn off. now go in a dark room, and point the laser pointer (which should now be nice and bright) on the light sensitive switch. it sort of creates a paradoxical event because if the laser is on, the switch is told that there is no need for the laser to be on, but as soon as it would turn off the light sensitive switch would close the circuit, turning the laser back on. thus creating a cycle of continuous repetition; an infinite loop, if you will... what do you guys think world happen? and how would it look; would the laser be on like it normally would? or will it flicker? or will it be stable at a lower intensity? i would test it out but i don't really know how to work with a light sensitive switch (i believe it requires some sort of circuitry)

so you're saying 1/(1+x) where x is one of these series is what you are using to get the answer for the series? if so then thats not really the answer for the series, thats the answer of 1/(1+series). i meant for a discussion about the series itself, not some function of it

i'm sorry, but did you just state 1 + 1 + 1 + ... = -1/2 and 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ... = -1/12 and 1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + ... = -1? could you please elaborate how an infinite sum gave you an answer smaller than the smallest number in the series (1)? and try to use terminology understandable by a mediocre high school student. and as for the 3rd paragraph, i understood about as much as an ant (assumingly) understands about the vastness of the universe

saw this very interesting video: and wanted to share/talk about it in a place without 500 character limit lol i personally believe the answer can be considered undetermined, or both 0 and 1. to have a definite answer, we gotta know the number of 1's we have, and the operation sign we start with. starting with a - sign and having odd number of 1's means you have the final answer = 1 (1 - 1 + 1 = 1) and having even number of 1's means you have final answer = 0 (1 - 1 + 1 - 1 = 0). infinite, by oxford's definition means "impossible to measure or calculate" which means there is an undetermined numbers of 1's involved. to want an definite answer is to collapse the infinity and assign it a finite numbers of 1's (either an odd or an even number) which would give you the answer of 1 or 0 respectively (assuming starting operation is - ). so the answer can be assumed to exist in a superposition of both 0 and 1 and it will randomly result in either 1 or 0 depending on the number of 1's once the infinity is collapsed. sound familiar? (Schrodinger's cat)

right, i meant change in t, forgot since in general we used t to represent (delta)t as we always set t1 = 0 (thats how its been throughout the whole high school) also, could you confirm whether 2 and 3 are correct? if they are, then all my confusions have cleared for the moment, if not, well s**t...

if i have a load with energy consumption of 2watts per hour, does that mean a 2 watt output with 4 volts and .5amps and a 2 watt output with 2 volts and 1amp both be able to power the device for an hour? or is there more to it than just having the same wattage? would i have to have a way to convert the volts to amps or amps to volts for an optimum operation?

correct or incorrect: 1. |impact force| = |impulse| [(p2-p1)/t] where p = momentum 2. mgh = impact force given terminal velocity is not reached 3. mgh =/= impact force given terminal velocity is achieved midway though the fall (as the potential energy after terminal velocity would be converted into heat instead of velocity)

hey guys, as far as i know the impact force depends on velocity just before impact (its the impulse of the crash right?). http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/flobi.html this website uses mgh to calculate impact force. so if mgh can be used to calculate impact force, does that mean there is a maximum cap on the potential energy based on terminal velocity? i'm sure i'm mixing up a lot of things here, so if someone here who knows the relation between the 3 concepts (mgh, TV and IF) please explain to me the relationship of these 3 forces?

screw this, finishing monofilament method it is jk, the magnetic is perfect, just what i was looking for. ill just attach the magnet to the door and the switch parallel to it, and then run the wire inside and setup a simple circuit. thanks everyone for your ideas and input

@Externet, my parents don't turst me enough to mess with the internal circuitry of the system, and i don't trust myself enough to mess in there either. so i gotta build an external circuit MacGyver style. i was thinking of using an IC555 like in this circuit http://bit.ly/1c3SkA5 BUT replacing the speaker with the LED1 and LDR with a simple switch which would connect to the door. once the door opens, the circuit breaks, and the designated light turns on.

well i'm making a "garage door open" idicator for my mom, she always forgets to close the garage door. i have 2 methods in mind: 1. i can set a circuit which would close when the door is open but this will only light up when the door is open fully. i can attach a conductor to the top of the door and another conductor where the track ends, so when the top of the door is open all the way the 2 conductors touch and the circuit is completed, lighting a blub inside. 2. this is the one i need help with: i wanna make it so that i have a conductor mounted on the door and it touches the other conductor while the door is closed. but when it opens, the 2 disconnect and this will trigger the light. i like this better than the first idea because the door doesn't have to be open all the way for this to work. even if the door is only open part way, this kind of design would let you know that the door is open. i suspect idea 2 requires 2 circuits, when circuit one is off, the power goes to circuit 2 kind of a thing

i need help making an inverse switch. i don't know what to google for to get a proper result and i've been digging around a bit and didn't find anything. i need to make a circuit where when a switch is closed, the circuit is incomplete, and when that switch is opened, the circuit is complete.

lol so i'd say its safe to assume that this summertime project is a tiny bit too big for a high school graduate?

if you've seen my previous post, i talked about planning to make a small scale flywheel battery. to make this work with minimum energy loss, i plan to isolate the flywheel in a vacuumed chamber with magnetic or electrodynamic bearings. in order to maintain high efficiency its important that no direct contact is made with the flywheel. so i plan to add magnets to the flywheel and put coils of wires around it. its kind of like a brushless motor, but in reverse; instead of the coil being at the center and a magnetic ring surrounding the coil, i will have a shaft with magnets in the middle that rotates and coils towards the outside. - what i'm wondering is, will i need a controller like a brushless motor to charge/discharge the battery? and how exactly could i make this work?

mass doesn't directly affect voltage, correct, but it will affect power output. as i extract electricity from the system it will slow down the flywheel, so mass of the flywheel has more to do with how much power i can extract. which raises another issue in my eyes, will voltage drop as the flywheel slows down? since the number of passes drop along with the speed. EDIT: and i will need to isolate the flywheel in a vacuumed structure to reduce friction. i am also planning on using electrodynamic bearings if i can buy some for a reasonable price. i originally intended to use magnetic bearings but it seems like for my purposes that would be adding another layer of complications as i'd have to worry about the whole magnetic bearing management... so i'm wondering if anyone knows of a easily available material in which i can house the flywheel in a vacuum without having the housing interact with the magnets (so it can't be a magnetic material). it would have to be a spherical shape to allow maximum vacuum without collapsing the housing on itself. EDIT 2: basically, i want to build a small scale flywheel battery that will be as efficient as an amateur could make it. and i need a lot of help with it because i haven't done anything of the sort before so i need help with both the math of it and the general info of what i could use, where i could find it ect. the goals i have for the finished product are to have a 10cm diameter, a voltage capacity of ~9 volts that could run for a couple of hours per charge (2-4 hours at least), and should be chargeable by solar power

hey guys, i was wondering how to calculate the voltage output of an inverse generator (so instead of coils on the shaft surrounded by magnets, its magnets on the shaft, surrounded by coils). i want to calculate at frequency at which a flywheel with a certain mass needs to spin to produce certain voltage. assume mass, magnetic field strength etc is given, what is the procedure to to calculate voltage given mass and diameter of the fly wheel, and the magnetic strength of the magnets mounted on the wheel

hey, so recently i discovered flywheels and their potential of being the next gen batteries due to magnetic bearings. so i was talking to my teacher about them and how efficient would this be vs the conventional chemical batteries and he mentioned that soon a motor is attached to the flywheel shaft it would cause massive friction, wasting a lot of the stored energy. he also mentioned that if the spinning mass itself was to be magnetic and a coil was to be put around the whole flywheel assembly then the flywheel would be in an isolated, vacuum system and there would be very little resistance and therefore energy stored into the flywheel can be extracted with a great amount of efficiency. but then he mentioned something that's been messing with my mind ever since. he talk about how it could potentially be possible to get more energy out of the system (maybe i just misunderstood him but this is what i gathered). he mentioned how new discoveries are being made that potentially suggest that the laws of thermodynamics might have an exception to them (kinda like how we thought newton's 3 laws governed all motion in the universe and then discovered special relativity) and it could be possible that there is more to conservation of energy than just energy and matter. i'm not sure where he was going with this but we had to cut the conversation short b/c he had to leave. does this make sense to anyone here? or does anyone here have any idea what he might be talking about? and also, is it possible to have a magnetic mass in a flywheel assembly on magnetic bearings? or would that cause some kind of problems?

hey, my teacher says that centripetal force is the real force and centrifugal force doesn't really exist. whereas my philosophy is quite the opposite. we argue that an object travelling in a circle experiences an acceleration towards the center of the circle. but i find it hard to wrap my head around that concept. if you were on the curved ramp of a highway entrance, you don't feel that centripetal force, you feel that centrifugal force, you being pulled out and away from the circle. the earth spinning in a circle doesn't increase the gravity we feel pulling on us, it decreases it. we experience acceleration away from the center, aka the centrifugal acceleration. so why is it that we argue that centripetal force is the real one and centrifugal is the "fictitious force" when we feel centrifugal force yet never actually experience the centripetal force first hand.

but what components of the forces contribute to that centripetal acceleration? i gather its the horizontal component of static friction, horizontal component of the normal. but what about gravity? since the obj is on a bank would the horizontal component of gravity also contribute to the centripetal acceleration?

thanks everyone for their response, i think i understand the concept a little better now. so to sum it up (and make sure that i didn't misunderstand), the "poor man's solution" (i'm only in high school) would be that the final velocity when it just reaches the collision surface becomes the new v1 and v2 = 0 (since the object will crash to a stop) and then you need either how much the ground gave in OR the time it took for it to go from contact to full stop (the impulse time? if i'm not wrong?) and then you can use acceleration equations to find the deceleration rate and the collision force = m*a to find the collision force? it would make sense because the v1 (aka the velocity at which the object contacted the ground) would be greater for greater heights and the impulse would probably be same/similar (totally guessing that part) and so therefore the deceleration would be greater, producing a greater force sorry about that i made a mistake, i did m*d instead of m*a by accident but that wasn't the point, the point was how would one calculate the force of an object crashing to a stop given the height and mass. but thanks for pointing it out EDIT: and i assume that if one was to find a force at which an object strikes another object (i.e a bullet vs different objects) it would be the same principal? you take the velocity right before contact, then the time it took for the bullet to come to a rest, and then find deceleration of the bullet and then plug it into f = ma