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Thorin wrote:

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.

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.

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.

Jordanis wrote:

Thorin wrote:

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.

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.

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.

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 physics

Thorin wrote:

Jordanis wrote:

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.

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.

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 physics

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*

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...

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]

Never read 'A Brief History of Time', though I've sort of meant to. I've always admired Hawking, but taking 'College Physics for Physics Majors' 200-level class made it clear to me that a career as a theoretical physicist is not for me.

I got through "Calculus V (for mathematics and physics majors ONLY)" before I realized that.

Yes, that was the actual, full name of the class in print.

Mikey wrote:I got through "Calculus V (for mathematics and physics majors ONLY)" before I realized that.

Yes, that was the actual, full name of the class in print.

I'm in Engineering now, so I still have to take plenty of calculus, but at least I am spared the horrors of analysis et al.

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

I got A brief History of Time for Christmas as well. I'll have to start reading it soon...