Huh. If you hadn't said it, I would have had to. People confusing mass and weight is a personal pet peeve, it's the classic issue that makes people unable to understand how things actually move in space and therefore demand stupid movie physics.Thorin wrote:No... In fact miles off. Gravity has no effect on the mass of a ship. Weight is not mass - increasing gravity increases weight. Mass is a constant throughout the universe that gravity has no effect it. It is the amount of matter in a body. Weight is the product of your mass and the gravity - in space you have no weight; thus are neither heavy nor light.Now if you made parts of the ship have higher gravity and some lower you may in a way make one part of the ship heavier. Now since the impulse engines work by reducing the mass of the ship it could become pretty screwy if one part wieghed a lot more than another. Ships need to be pretty balanced.
The Doctor's mobile emitter
If I were to really annoy you, I'd say everything I just said was wrong. Which it was. But only if you're a specialist on General Relativity and quantum/cosmological physicsJordanis wrote:Huh. If you hadn't said it, I would have had to. People confusing mass and weight is a personal pet peeve, it's the classic issue that makes people unable to understand how things actually move in space and therefore demand stupid movie physics.Thorin wrote:No... In fact miles off. Gravity has no effect on the mass of a ship. Weight is not mass - increasing gravity increases weight. Mass is a constant throughout the universe that gravity has no effect it. It is the amount of matter in a body. Weight is the product of your mass and the gravity - in space you have no weight; thus are neither heavy nor light.Now if you made parts of the ship have higher gravity and some lower you may in a way make one part of the ship heavier. Now since the impulse engines work by reducing the mass of the ship it could become pretty screwy if one part wieghed a lot more than another. Ships need to be pretty balanced.
80085
I've done the basic college physics overview on both. They are giant pains in the butt and I still shudder at the thought of some of the quantum physics equations. When one of the symbols in your equation stands for another equally complex equation, you've gone too far. *shakes fist*Thorin wrote:If I were to really annoy you, I'd say everything I just said was wrong. Which it was. But only if you're a specialist on General Relativity and quantum/cosmological physicsJordanis wrote:Huh. If you hadn't said it, I would have had to. People confusing mass and weight is a personal pet peeve, it's the classic issue that makes people unable to understand how things actually move in space and therefore demand stupid movie physics.Thorin wrote: No... In fact miles off. Gravity has no effect on the mass of a ship. Weight is not mass - increasing gravity increases weight. Mass is a constant throughout the universe that gravity has no effect it. It is the amount of matter in a body. Weight is the product of your mass and the gravity - in space you have no weight; thus are neither heavy nor light.
I just read Stephen Hawking's 'A Brief History of Time', so I'm a bit hyped up on the theoritical physics. Got it for christmas, so you know
Going to read his other two books for 'dummies', before moving onto his mathematical explanation (if singularities exist, which he now says they don't in imaginary time) on how the universe is finite without boundary.
Should impress the universities when I apply for theoretical physics.
Which reminds me, the deadline for applications is in two weeks, and I've still got to write it...
Going to read his other two books for 'dummies', before moving onto his mathematical explanation (if singularities exist, which he now says they don't in imaginary time) on how the universe is finite without boundary.
Should impress the universities when I apply for theoretical physics.
Which reminds me, the deadline for applications is in two weeks, and I've still got to write it...
Last edited by Thorin on Sat Dec 29, 2007 12:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
80085
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Nothing like waiting until the last minute...
A Brief History of Time was, IMHO, the best of his books written for "laypeople." It was understandable to me (as a person who is NOT a professional physicist) yet still managed to transmit a great deal of information without "speaking down" to its audience. The other books seemed to acheive that effect through the simple process of watering down the info.[/u]
A Brief History of Time was, IMHO, the best of his books written for "laypeople." It was understandable to me (as a person who is NOT a professional physicist) yet still managed to transmit a great deal of information without "speaking down" to its audience. The other books seemed to acheive that effect through the simple process of watering down the info.[/u]
I can't stand nothing dull
I got the high gloss luster
I'll massacre your ass as fast
as Bull offed Custer
I got the high gloss luster
I'll massacre your ass as fast
as Bull offed Custer
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I'm studying Mechanical Engineering (three semesters from graduation w/ GPA north of 3.5); I've gotten through the full calculus sequence (no problem!), linear algebra/differential equations (ODE's only, no partials, though I know finite difference methods for PDEs), probability, classical Mechanics and electricity & magnetism. I've read "A brief history of time" and "The Physics of Star Trek" and all those books. I haven't been asked to derive an equation yet
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I got A brief History of Time for Christmas as well. I'll have to start reading it soon...
"You've all been selected for this mission because you each have a special skill. Professor Hawking, John Leslie, Phil Neville, the Wu-Tang Clan, Usher, the Sugar Puffs Monster and Daniel Day-Lewis! Welcome to Operation MindFuck!"