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Alt-F4 #11 - Scientific Curiosities

Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2020 1:36 pm
by AlternativeFFFF
Welcome to the eleventh edition of Alt-F4, bringing you both mathematical analysis and a history lesson. So, listen up, student! Pocarski took it upon themself to see whether real-world mathematics works out on Nauvis. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t. Then, stringweasel returns once again to take a look at a bit of history, this time focusing on past mechanics that are now long obsolete.

Continue reading: https://alt-f4.blog/ALTF4-11/

Re: Alt-F4 #11 - Scientific Curiosities

Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2020 1:51 pm
by AlternativeFFFF
P.S. This is the first time we're posting to the forum about Alt-F4 so if there's anything we can do to improve the forum experience let us know :D

Re: Alt-F4 #11 - Scientific Curiosities

Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2020 12:48 am
by Gamatron332
You can keep being awesome that’s what.

Re: Alt-F4 #11 - Scientific Curiosities

Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2020 8:56 am
by ssilk
Big thank you for this great work! In my youth I made a similar newsletter for a BBS (no internet), only once a month and it was hard sometimes...

I suggest this: if there is a “normal” FFF, like this weekend, shift Alt-F4 to the next week (Shift Alt F4, lol). Because - I can speak only for myself - the FFF’s are so full of stuff, that the Alt-F4’s lose a lot of their relevance. It is nearly overwhelming to read all. ;)

So I think there is just a very minimal effort to coordinate this in with wube. And it spares you a lot of work, because you have a ... shift. :)

Oh, and far back in my webmaster mind there is a nervous little dwarf winking with a sign “FFF and Alt-F4 are both news, so put them into News-board ...”, but then a Centaur came and smashes that dwarf, crying “It’s wube news, of course, you idiot!! There is the Spread the Word-board for that”. And then came a gravedigger: “This is the 11th! Is this really needed? It’s just ok to post it in General-board, it’s relevant enough.”

I’m interested about your opinions for the right board for posts like this, especially from the devs.

Re: Alt-F4 #11 - Scientific Curiosities

Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2020 10:40 am
by conn11
I would also like to thank you for youre effort, Alt-F4 are making for a quite interesting read.
In addition to ssilk, alternatively you could release on saturdays instead if FFFs are due.

Re: Alt-F4 #11 - Scientific Curiosities

Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2020 3:49 pm
by Gamatron332
Also kudos on the spidertron. That’s really cool.

Re: Alt-F4 #11 - Scientific Curiosities

Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2020 4:24 pm
by Amarula
Thank you for all the work creating Alt-F4 and keeping it going, and for sharing it here on the forums. I try to follow reddit but I confess that having things organized here on the forums makes it easier to sort everything from new creations to beginner requests for help, so I spend more time here. (Many kudos to Koub and ssilk for keeping it so!)
ssilk wrote:
Sun Nov 01, 2020 8:56 am
If there is a “normal” FFF, like this weekend, shift Alt-F4 to the next week (Shift Alt F4, lol). Because - I can speak only for myself - the FFF’s are so full of stuff, that the Alt-F4’s lose a lot of their relevance. It is nearly overwhelming to read all. ;)
I am with ssilk on this one, I bubbled over with excitement from the FFF and only skimmed Alt-F4. And Shift Alt F4 would be really cool 8-)
ssilk wrote:
Sun Nov 01, 2020 8:56 am
It’s just ok to post it in General-board, it’s relevant enough.”
The perfect is the enemy of the good: the General board is good enough.

Re: Alt-F4 #11 - Scientific Curiosities

Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2020 1:35 pm
by DoubleThought
I would refute the assertion that locomotives are less dense than air. Perhaps, only taking the mass of metal into account, this is the case. However, locomotives are not vacuum chambers. They are not necessarily airtight. If they were filled with vacuum, they would be floating away. However, it's full of air, which adds to the density, and keeps the locomotives down on the ground.

Re: Alt-F4 #11 - Scientific Curiosities

Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2020 7:35 am
by ssilk
DoubleThought wrote:
Mon Nov 02, 2020 1:35 pm
However, it's full of air, which adds to the density, and keeps the locomotives down on the ground.
But that doesn’t explain, how it works, that a train can do a 45 degree turn with 300 km/h.
Or how I can put a locomotive into my pockets, but the loco needs wagons to transport locos.
How can a light on ground light an area of 30 meters in diameter?
How can I push 10 Gigawatts of electric power through one thin copper wire?

Thousands of questions. :)

Re: Alt-F4 #11 - Scientific Curiosities

Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2020 3:36 pm
by NotRexButCaesar
ssilk wrote:
Wed Nov 04, 2020 7:35 am
But that doesn’t explain, how it works, that a train can do a 45 degree turn with 300 km/h.
Or how I can put a locomotive into my pockets, but the loco needs wagons to transport locos.
How can a light on ground light an area of 30 meters in diameter?
How can I push 10 Gigawatts of electric power through one thin copper wire?

Thousands of questions. :)
For the 45 degree turn, it simply releases some high pressure air to one side and sucks it in from the other (the front is perfectly drag-less, but not the sides). Because it is so light, the inertia of the air is enough to keep it in place.

As for the locomotive carrying, they are super-collapsible, but those damn OSHA regulations prevent the storage on anything inside locomotives.

The light is actually much brighter than you think, but the engineers eyes sense light logarithmically.

The copper wires are actually supercooled by ablating the copper away in incredibly time amounts. This is the real energy source for nukes (wire in the RCU’s): the uranium is just there as an impact carrier for ablative copper particles(because it is so dense).

Thousands of answers :)

Re: Alt-F4 #11 - Scientific Curiosities

Posted: Sat Nov 14, 2020 3:32 am
by DaveMcW
Nice job on the Googlebomb.

density.png
density.png (66.96 KiB) Viewed 4135 times

Re: Alt-F4 #11 - Scientific Curiosities

Posted: Sat Nov 14, 2020 5:11 am
by valneq
Well … Google can tell facts and fiction apart. Thus, it is now scientifically accepted that Nauvis is a white dwarf.