Scientists vs. Normal People

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

[thedarkshade]

Stubborness or curiosity?

Cool

[swansont]

Since we're nerds, too, there's this

 

(from http://xkcd.com/ of course)

[timo]

So what's the answer?

[thedarkshade]

So what's the answer?

to what?

[richard]

Is that the whole sign. It seems theres some info missing. 1.5 :S

[thedarkshade]

Is that the whole sign. It seems theres some info missing.

Like what?

[swansont]

So what's the answer?

 

A little less than an ohm. You can solve it using Green's functions. Yecch.

[Norman Albers]

Obsession. That and roughly ten years, according to Scientific American last year. A few years back my Mom sent a good kid's cartoon like Swansont's, where the nerd was holding a snowball and calculating for 3-4 frames. Coolly, the math was CORRECT! Then he gets creamed.

[swansont]

I'm guessing This Foxtrot cartoon

[Norman Albers]

Ah, sounds familiar; New York papers. Whaddaya think, 2, 1/2 points for a MATHEMATICAL PHYSICIST?

[iNow]

My last entry probably would have been better for the Jokes thread. Maybe I can make up for it with the below.

 

 

Know any chemists as smart as this guy?

 

[CDarwin]

My last entry probably would have been better for the Jokes thread. Maybe I can make up for it with the below.

 

 

Know any chemists as smart as this guy?

 

 

Is he mad?? Waft, man, waft!

[Norman Albers]

Hands-on leadership.

[ydoaPs]

So what's the answer?

 

That's got to be intentional. It's too ironic otherwise.

[Norman Albers]

(EPA standards being set.)

[D H]

So what's the answer?

 

This arXiv article (see appendix A) gives an absolute mess. Mathworld (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/news/2004-10-13/google, see question 10) uses a different expression from the arXiv article from which Mathematica yields [math](8-\pi)/(2\pi)\approx0.773[/math] ohms.

[DrDNA]

Is he mad?? Waft, man, waft!

 

 

W is apparently old school.

 

You know, in the old days, chemists tasted everything.

Hence the term "sweet urine" for diabetes.

[thedarkshade]

You know, in the old days, chemists tasted everything.

Hence the term "sweet urine" for diabetes.

No Waaay! :eek:

This GOT to be a joke!

[Norman Albers]

Piano rebuilders can taste old glues. Don't ask, don't tell.

[ecoli]

No Waaay! :eek:

This GOT to be a joke!

 

Quite true. Since diabetics don't respond to insulin (or stop producing it) glucose is not taken up by the liver. It must be excreted by the kidneys, therefore.

[DrDNA]

for those who doubt the taste test....

Quote:

"The ancient Hindus were the first to coin the term "honey urine," a thousand years before the first Europeans recognized the sweet taste of urine in patients with diabetes. The Hindu physicians Charaka, Susruta, and Vaghbata described polyuria and glycosuria. They noted the attraction of flies and ants to the urine of those affected by this ailment.

..................................

 

It was Thomas Willis’s observations of diabetes in 1674 and Matthew Dobson’s experiments in 1776 that conclusively established the diagnosis of diabetes in the presence of sugar in the urine and blood. Diabetes was no longer considered a rare ailment. Willis referred to diabetes as the "pissing evil" and noted that in patients with diabetes, "the urine is wonderfully sweet, as if it were imbued with honey or sugar." He claimed that diabetes was primarily a disease of the blood and not the kidneys. Willis proposed that the sweetness first appeared in the blood and was later found in the urine.

 

Dobson provided experimental evidence that people with diabetes eliminate sugar in their urine. He gently heated two quarts of urine to dryness. The remaining residue was a whitish cake, which, Dobson wrote, "was granulated and broke easily between the fingers; it smelled sweet like brown sugar, neither could it be distinguished from sugar, except that the sweetness left a slight sense of coolness on the palate." Dobson detailed his findings in a paper presented to the medical society of London in 1776. Prior to presentation of his findings, Dobson consulted with William Cullen, one of Britain’s foremost clinicians, consultants, and educators. "

End Quote

Diabetes Spectrum 15:56-60, 2002

 

I submit to you that this tendency to explore separates us from the rest of the population, except perhaps from the perverts.......

[Mr Skeptic]

No Waaay! :eek:

This GOT to be a joke!

 

It may seem a bit stupid, but remember that chemists (or alchemists) had very few tools back then, so tasting chemicals may have been one way to identify things. Don't forget that some of them were as mad as a hatter as well

[insane_alien]

Don't forget that some of them were as mad as a hatter as well

 

except they got that way by tasting the mercury unlike the hatters who just inhaled it.

[Norman Albers]

I use a coarse file if I have to file piano key lead weights, happily a rare job. What happened with lead and what happened with mercury? What is a "tinker's dam"?