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On September 17 2014 13:16 Yoav wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2014 12:11 Djzapz wrote:
What's a good topic to choose regarding US foreign policy? It has to be interesting, broad enough to l give me a multiple things to look into but it also needs to be able to fit into 15 pages. :D US policy on Taiwan would be a good one. Easy to research, as big or small as you want to make it depending on how much history you go into. The ambiguity means you can also pad with speculation where necessary.
I might do that, it was suggested to me twice. I also have North Korea and the war on terror.
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I just got curious, my physics knowledge is limited to my engineering experience, but my question is, is time continuous?
As in, lets take the # of people. Obviously # of people is a discrete quantity, but can be approximated to be continuous once a large enough population is reached, and then you can use calculus and other continuum operators on it. But we can obviously see, it is a discrete quantity.
Now lets look at a quantity of milk, we can have 500g on milk, and we can have 501g of milk, but we can also have 500.0001g of milk, so it appears it's a continuous property. But when we break it down far enough, you can only add one extra molecule of milk into your cup once you have exactly 500g of milk. So we can see that if we have exactly 500g of milk in a container, it's impossible to have 500g + 1e-40g of milk. So while for all intents and purposes, in the real world, it can be assumed it's continuous, when it reality is not. So using this example mass is not continuous (I imagine E=mc^2 complicated the equation, as velocity might be continuous if distance + time is continuous, and if energy is continuous, although we derive energy from mass and not vice versa so it's a bit confusing).
Amperes are also not continuous, as a Coulomb is not a continuous quantity (only approximated as one), as each electron has a charge of 1.6*10^-19C, and we have no way to split charges in continuous ways... A proton has a +1 charge, and we can split that into fractions based on the constituent quarks, and have +2/3 charges and -1/3 charges. So as we can see, Amperes are not continuous in the physical world, just approximated to be.
Distance is not continuous either according to Max Planck, because the smallest length possible is 1.6e-35 meters, which makes distance a discrete quantity too.
So my question is mainly directed towards whether time is continuous or not, and why? I think I could derive that temperature is not continuous either, as it depends on the movement of particles, which takes into account a mass and distance which I proved to myself are not continuous, moles are discrete due to their relationship to particles which come in finite amounts, luminousity would also be discrete if it's assumed that energy is transported in packets of energy (photons).
But from what I know, things like EMR have a particle that moves the force, gravity is transmitted via the graviton which is yet to be discovered, so forth and so forth. But I don't know what particle time is transmitted by, and if there's no particle associated with it, I cannot reason why there wouldn't be infinitesimal increases in time being possible. Anyway, pardon me if I am going over some simple fundamental physics concepts, I've tried to do this all through intuition and haven't done other readings about this topics to cloud my original perception.
Since to me it feels like the shortest time we could measure would be the exact time in which a particle moving at a dx/dt = c travels a length of the planck length.
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Germany11787 Posts
On September 18 2014 01:49 FiWiFaKi wrote:
Distance is not continuous either according to Max Planck, because the smallest length possible is 1.6e-35 meters, which makes distance a discrete quantity too.
This is a gross oversimplification. Theoretically the planck length is roughly the smallest theoretically measurable length. That does not mean that length needs to be discrete. It just means that due to a highly speculative general uncertainty principle, you could not observe any smaller distances.
The whole thing is also highly theoretical, since we have no way to actually observe anything at a scale that is ~ 25 orders of magnitude smaller than an atom.
Basically, it's really hard to tell and highly speculative. If time does indeed have "ticks", then they are so small that they have not been observed at all yet. This is weird shit like quantum gravity that a really, really small amount of people have any idea how it works.
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I think you are approaching it the wrong way. Time may or may not be continuous, but observing 3 dimensional objects will not give you evidence for time's behavior, since it operates in a separate dimension
(typically considered the 4th dimension.)
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On September 18 2014 02:59 Najda wrote:
I think you are approaching it the wrong way. Time may or may not be continuous, but observing 3 dimensional objects will not give you evidence for time's behavior, since it operates in a separate dimension
(typically considered the 4th dimension.)
Thinking you could see time with only 3d observation is like saying you can see a sphere with only 2d observation.
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How do you take pictures with a potato? Whenever I see a blurry photo online, someone usually brings up the potato camera they must have taken the picture with. But when I get a potato out of my own kitchen, I can't even figure out how to turn it on.
I've heard toasters also have a built-in camera function. I'll have to check out my toaster later and see if it has one.
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your Country52797 Posts
On September 18 2014 10:40 Epishade wrote:
How do you take pictures with a potato? Whenever I see a blurry photo online, someone usually brings up the potato camera they must have taken the picture with. But when I get a potato out of my own kitchen, I can't even figure out how to turn it on.
I've heard toasters also have a built-in camera function. I'll have to check out my toaster later and see if it has one.
You need to buy a specially made potato from the hardware store. It's pretty expensive.
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what letter is silent in the word "scent"?
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On September 18 2014 13:52 icystorage wrote:
what letter is silent in the word "scent"?
The 'c'.
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On September 18 2014 13:52 icystorage wrote:
what letter is silent in the word "scent"?
Neither. You pronounce both the s and the c much like you pronounce all the S in the word kiss and hiss.
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...dammit icy!
+ Show Spoiler +
I don't even get it either.
edit: wait, is this even a joke? It's in /r/funny, so I'm not surprised it's not funny, but idk what the joke implication here is.
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Does Braille have "Do Not Touch" signs?
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On September 18 2014 14:48 icystorage wrote:
Does Braille have "Do Not Touch" signs?
I heard they're coming out with Braille stop signs for the blind. I've never heard of Braille do not touch signs though. I can't imagine do not touch signs being too useful for blind people though if they're not supposed to touch them.
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On September 18 2014 14:20 Epishade wrote:...dammit icy! + Show Spoiler +I don't even get it either. edit: wait, is this even a joke? It's in /r/funny, so I'm not surprised it's not funny, but idk what the joke implication here is.
mostly the joke looks like its suggestng that black people are stupid.
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I thought the joke implied they were stoned? Seems like a classic case of stoner philosophy and their blank stares/red eyes/wearing their hoodie in that quite particular way are somewhat indicative. I actually didn't consciously notice they were all black until now.
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Germany11787 Posts
On September 18 2014 10:40 Epishade wrote:
How do you take pictures with a potato? Whenever I see a blurry photo online, someone usually brings up the potato camera they must have taken the picture with. But when I get a potato out of my own kitchen, I can't even figure out how to turn it on.
I've heard toasters also have a built-in camera function. I'll have to check out my toaster later and see if it has one.
Potatoes are slightly light sensitive, at least while they are growing. If you have ever grown potatoes, you know that if part of one is above ground, it turns green. With the right lense construction and a long enough exposure time (Probably in the order of weeks or months), you could use that to make a camera and take a picture with a potato. Of course, it would only be in different shades of green. It would probably also be really, really grainy. I have no idea how many different pixels you can distinguish on even a large potato, but i would guess it's not a lot, i would be surprised if it's a lot more than 10x10.
If you want to get a better resolution, you could even have a whole field of potatoes on a hill , and build a gigantic camera using that field of potatoes as a film. Though in this case you might have a problem because your potato plants will start dying off without any light. I guess single potato camera is still the way to go unless we make some major improvements in the field of potato imaging.
On September 18 2014 18:42 Ghostcom wrote:
I thought the joke implied they were stoned? Seems like a classic case of stoner philosophy and their blank stares/red eyes/wearing their hoodie in that quite particular way are somewhat indicative. I actually didn't consciously notice they were all black until now.
The "hits blunt" at the beginning also supports this theory. Not everything has to be about race. I had the exact same perception as Ghostcom.
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I guess it depends on what your culturally blind to.
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This thread is amazing, why can't I view "all" comments? =(
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On September 19 2014 20:17 MaTaAeRuKaNa wrote:
This thread is amazing, why can't I view "all" comments? =(
Camouflaged "someone please buy me TL+" post?
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Hey guys Thieving Magpie is a troll in this thread, right?
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/FCsDsq9.jpg)
