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http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/
"ANSWERING YOUR HYPOTHETICAL QUESTIONS WITH PHYSICS, EVERY TUESDAY."
It seems that XKCD is expanding beyond cartoons to give us a better understanding of physics. At this point, there are two questions answered:
1) What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?
2) What if everyone who took the SAT guessed on every multiple-choice question? How many perfect scores would there be?
Question 1 is quite interesting and I especially love drawing number 3 in the explanation. Needless to say, it's something I will be looking forward to every Tuesday from now on.
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Seems like more general science and math stuff, the SAT question had 0 physics in it lol
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It was still pretty cool though
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This is amazing. I loved having these conversations when I worked in a physics research laboratory. The "what ifs" in physics are great. I'm hoping he does more relativity-based questions. Those are always the most fun.
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Israel2209 Posts
The first one was very nice, still not sure if it applies when the baseball bat has a huge mass.
The 2nd one was VERY disappointing though. Stuff that every person that learned probability in highschool should know how to calculate.
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The first one was great, I showed it to my dad and he thought it was interesting aswell.
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Very nice! Now I love xkcd even more :D
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The baseball one was pretty hilarious and went in a completely different direction from what the asker intended.
I think he did what he could on the probability thing - honestly, about all you can do is be creative in showing how ridiculously small the probability is. Perhaps he could have chosen a different question to answer.
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Saw this on Reddit today, really enjoyed reading the baseball one :D
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Didn't really like the yoda one that much :/
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I think this is growing nicely, so yes it's obviously not that amazing, but give it 10, 20 years? I'm excited.
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I remember spending like three consecutive days late evening watching XKCD youtube videos.
I still want more stuff on time! Honestly think this has the potential to become a full-fledged TV show.
I also recommend the philosophy simplifiers on youtube as well - basically a kindred spirit.
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The baseball one was definitely the best read, largely cuz there was much more science to it to calculate. Lol, and as for the SAT one, when I say I had good luck guessing, godddddaaaamn i must've been lucky =P
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Israel2209 Posts
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That picture of an unsuspecting batter is priceless.
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A careful reading of official Major League Baseball Rule 6.08(b) suggests that in this situation, the batter would be considered "hit by pitch", and would be eligible to advance to first base.
Hahaha can't stop laughing!
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Hey, this is actually pretty cool 
I gained significantly more respect for that guy after I learned about what he did for a profession. I thought he was just a random guy with too much time on his hands, but turns out he's a boss who has a lot of experience in these these and also happens to have a pretty good sense of humor 
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Hahahaha, this is by far the best one IMO.
Well at least it has the best comedic value. It doesn't really have as much physics as the others.
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thank you for giving me a good read!
these are pretty cool
moles .-.
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I remember reading the baseball one when it was the only one, will have to go through all the new ones, glad this reminded me.
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Sanya12364 Posts
The baseball has the energy of a 1 MegaTon bomb. So um yeah.
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On August 21 2012 12:50 Aerisky wrote:Hey, this is actually pretty cool I gained significantly more respect for that guy after I learned about what he did for a profession. I thought he was just a random guy with too much time on his hands, but turns out he's a boss who has a lot of experience in these these and also happens to have a pretty good sense of humor
Have you actually read the comic itself? There's a huge amount of maths/engineering/computer science stuff in there, most of it dead on. He hasn't got a Nobel Prize, but I'd have thought it pretty much impossible to conclude he's just a random guy.
If you haven't read the comic, you should. If you're a science nerd, xkcd is very high on the list of most awesome things on the internets.
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On August 21 2012 14:06 Belisarius wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2012 12:50 Aerisky wrote:Hey, this is actually pretty cool I gained significantly more respect for that guy after I learned about what he did for a profession. I thought he was just a random guy with too much time on his hands, but turns out he's a boss who has a lot of experience in these these and also happens to have a pretty good sense of humor Have you actually read the comic itself? There's a huge amount of maths/engineering/computer science stuff in there, most of it dead on. He hasn't got a Nobel Prize, but I'd have thought it pretty much impossible to conclude he's just a random guy. If you haven't read the comic, you should. If you're a science nerd, xkcd is very high on the list of most awesome things on the internets.
I don't read regularly, but I have seen quite a few. Eh obviously he's not a random guy, but I just thought he was a random nerd who knew a lot about math/science I guess haha, since it's not like his comics are too esoteric to understand or anything. An intelligent high schooler would probably understand all of it. No indication whether it was written by an intelligent guy or an absolute boss, but yeah, I suppose maintaining that consistent level of quality must represent his general amazingness though haha.
I wouldn't say that it's one of my favorite things, but he does have a multitude of fantastic ones though for sure
Also, random comment, but the SAT guessing article is actually, technically speaking, wrong. The question is "how many perfect scores". The SAT is graded on a bell curve, so whichever tests have raw scores that are in the 99.97% percentile or thereabouts will have a perfect SAT score. They call it "equating" but it's curved for all intents and purposes. In terms of raw score though, yeah statistically nobody will score a perfect.
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The baseball one is wrong!!!!!!
Well, kinda. Says the bat is hit first by the 'splosion, but unless the batter was standing with his bat already forward, swung before the ball was thrown or was moving at a similar speed to the ball, it would be held behind his head, so it would be hit after the batter.
These nerds don't know nuthin' about sports. :D
nb: XKCD is awesome, and these are ever awesomer.
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On July 11 2012 04:55 Noam wrote:
The 2nd one was VERY disappointing though. Stuff that every person that learned probability in highschool should know how to calculate.
Yeah, thats something we used to calculate when I was in school.
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I really liked the glass half empty one. Quite interesting.
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On August 21 2012 14:31 Sanctimonius wrote:
The baseball one is wrong!!!!!!
Well, kinda. Says the bat is hit first by the 'splosion, but unless the batter was standing with his bat already forward, swung before the ball was thrown or was moving at a similar speed to the ball, it would be held behind his head, so it would be hit after the batter.
These nerds don't know nuthin' about sports. :D
nb: XKCD is awesome, and these are ever awesomer.
It is actually right because it is assuming you are trying to hit the ball with the bat. XKCD is already making the assumption that you are throwing the ball near the speed of light, it is not a huge stretch to say that the batter has his bat already out waiting for the ball to contact it.
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On August 21 2012 17:08 TheRabidDeer wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2012 14:31 Sanctimonius wrote:
The baseball one is wrong!!!!!!
Well, kinda. Says the bat is hit first by the 'splosion, but unless the batter was standing with his bat already forward, swung before the ball was thrown or was moving at a similar speed to the ball, it would be held behind his head, so it would be hit after the batter.
These nerds don't know nuthin' about sports. :D
nb: XKCD is awesome, and these are ever awesomer. It is actually right because it is assuming you are trying to hit the ball with the bat. XKCD is already making the assumption that you are throwing the ball near the speed of light, it is not a huge stretch to say that the batter has his bat already out waiting for the ball to contact it.
Well...actually if you watch baseball you don't hold the bat out before the pitcher throws the ball. Even if you want to bunt it usually you don't have your bat out in front of you entirely before the ball even leaves the pitcher's hand. Usually the batters can take a fraction second to try to get a read. Anyway, if you're swinging a bat in one fluid motion, if the bat is in front of you before the ball even leaves the pitcher's hand, you're going to miss entirely because the ball has to travel 60 ft 6 inches while the bat doesn't have to travel very far (not to mention you swing it very quickly).
For reference, I searched slowmo bat swings on youtube
+ Show Spoiler +http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrpyBrbu8cop
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On August 22 2012 14:27 Aerisky wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2012 17:08 TheRabidDeer wrote:On August 21 2012 14:31 Sanctimonius wrote:
The baseball one is wrong!!!!!!
Well, kinda. Says the bat is hit first by the 'splosion, but unless the batter was standing with his bat already forward, swung before the ball was thrown or was moving at a similar speed to the ball, it would be held behind his head, so it would be hit after the batter.
These nerds don't know nuthin' about sports. :D
nb: XKCD is awesome, and these are ever awesomer. It is actually right because it is assuming you are trying to hit the ball with the bat. XKCD is already making the assumption that you are throwing the ball near the speed of light, it is not a huge stretch to say that the batter has his bat already out waiting for the ball to contact it. Well...actually if you watch baseball you don't hold the bat out before the pitcher throws the ball. Even if you want to bunt it usually you don't have your bat out in front of you entirely before the ball even leaves the pitcher's hand. Usually the batters can take a fraction second to try to get a read. Anyway, if you're swinging a bat in one fluid motion, if the bat is in front of you before the ball even leaves the pitcher's hand, you're going to miss entirely because the ball has to travel 60 ft 6 inches while the bat doesn't have to travel very far (not to mention you swing it very quickly). For reference, I searched slowmo bat swings on youtube + Show Spoiler +http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrpyBrbu8cop
Seems like you missed the point, it's not that people don't know how baseball is usually played, it's just you can't have a worthwhile thought experiment without making many assumptions.
Anyway this is a very minor and insignificant thing to be discussing haha don't know why I even got involved.
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The latest one is absolutely hilarious.
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Randall Monroe is quite the scientist, artist, philosopher, and thinker.
What if he became President of the USA?
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On August 21 2012 15:38 Khul Sadukar wrote:
I really liked the glass half empty one. Quite interesting.
I still think that ½*0 is 0, and so a half empty glass is still empty.
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Great series, some of it is terrifying but in a cool way, especially the ones about the baseball and the glass.
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On August 22 2012 19:13 Nytefish wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2012 14:27 Aerisky wrote:On August 21 2012 17:08 TheRabidDeer wrote:On August 21 2012 14:31 Sanctimonius wrote:
The baseball one is wrong!!!!!!
Well, kinda. Says the bat is hit first by the 'splosion, but unless the batter was standing with his bat already forward, swung before the ball was thrown or was moving at a similar speed to the ball, it would be held behind his head, so it would be hit after the batter.
These nerds don't know nuthin' about sports. :D
nb: XKCD is awesome, and these are ever awesomer. It is actually right because it is assuming you are trying to hit the ball with the bat. XKCD is already making the assumption that you are throwing the ball near the speed of light, it is not a huge stretch to say that the batter has his bat already out waiting for the ball to contact it. Well...actually if you watch baseball you don't hold the bat out before the pitcher throws the ball. Even if you want to bunt it usually you don't have your bat out in front of you entirely before the ball even leaves the pitcher's hand. Usually the batters can take a fraction second to try to get a read. Anyway, if you're swinging a bat in one fluid motion, if the bat is in front of you before the ball even leaves the pitcher's hand, you're going to miss entirely because the ball has to travel 60 ft 6 inches while the bat doesn't have to travel very far (not to mention you swing it very quickly). For reference, I searched slowmo bat swings on youtube + Show Spoiler +http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrpyBrbu8cop Seems like you missed the point, it's not that people don't know how baseball is usually played, it's just you can't have a worthwhile thought experiment without making many assumptions. Anyway this is a very minor and insignificant thing to be discussing haha don't know why I even got involved.
No of course I appreciate it for what it is...the guy just said something that was absolutely correct in terms of how baseball really works, someone else told him that realistically the bat would be in front of the guy, and he was pretty clearly wrong so I just felt like supporting the first guy.
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On August 22 2012 21:16 Vorenius wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2012 15:38 Khul Sadukar wrote:
I really liked the glass half empty one. Quite interesting. I still think that ½*0 is 0, and so a half empty glass is still empty.
"Half" can be both an adjective and an adverb. If it's an adjective, then "half empty glass" would indeed mean "half of an empty glass". If it's an adverb then it means "a glass, half of which is empty". Since the former makes little sense in most contexts, we should assume the latter meaning.
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On August 23 2012 07:26 Drunken.Jedi wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2012 21:16 Vorenius wrote:On August 21 2012 15:38 Khul Sadukar wrote:
I really liked the glass half empty one. Quite interesting. I still think that ½*0 is 0, and so a half empty glass is still empty. "Half" can be both an adjective and an adverb. If it's an adjective, then "half empty glass" would indeed mean "half of an empty glass". If it's an adverb then it means "a glass, half of which is empty". Since the former makes little sense in most contexts, we should assume the latter meaning.
Assuming is for chumps
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Great site.
Thoroughly enjoyed reading to the existing 8 article for now.
I know what i'll be doing tuesdays from now on
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EPT
