Physics Trivia

[YODA74]

Problem: If your driving in a car at night, at the speed of light,And you turn your headlights on, Do they do anything

[yawningdog]

Why do mirrors reverse things right and left, but not up and down?

[Steve]

Yes...One night...after band camp...I was going almost the speed of light...and my headlights were really dim...http://216.40.249.192/mysmilies/cwm/3dlil/eek13.gif

[Whyzman]

I think you'll see the deer before you hit it.....:rolleyes:

[hawk7771us]

deer = bye bye car light

[steveo]

I remember this question being asked about 20 years while we were sitting around the basement listening to Pink Floyd while the strobe lights were on...yeah those were the days. I seem to recall a buddy of mine came up with some kind of answer but it involved placing a giant dome with a big bowl on top over the ocean with a bunch of hoses coming out of it.

[Eutychus]

I just want to know where you buy that gasoline! :D

[Sylvander]

"Do they do anything?"
Yes they do!

Consider a single light source/headlight:
The source radiates light, at equal velocity in all directions from the instant it is switched on and the initial light front is like an ever-increasing sphere, growing rapidly in size with time.
But the source is moving forward at the speed of light and so it moves with the growing spherical front as a point source on the surface of the sphere.
For simplicity:
Consider that the light is emitted, not “continuously”, [like water pouring from a tap] but “discretely” [like bullets from a machine gun].
The second, third, fourth emissions, etc, of light, would be from new locations further along the line of travel and each would produce a newly radiating spherical front.
The net result would be an infinite number of radiating fronts [which were not really discrete but actually continuous and] which would fit inside a cone-shaped wake which had the light source at the point travelling at light speed. The other end of the cone would have a hemispherical light front. The whole thing would be growing in size at light speed.

Whether anything could detect this emission of light can only be speculation.
I do not agree with the idea that if it is not detected then it does not exist.
“It is not possible to prove a negative.”
Hence it is not possible to prove that it doesn’t exist.
You might use logic to reason that it should or must exist and go seeking proof.
If “someone” [a detector] were sitting in the car so as to be outside the light envelope of the wake, they would see nothing emitting from the headlight.
I confess I’m unsure what they’d see if they were inside the wake.

[Budfred]

Ohh! Now I understand! It all becomes clear and I am transcending to a higher plane of consciousness... uhhh, hello, how did I get here, what was I saying???

Budfred:D

[Sylvander]

Oh! it can get MUCH worse than that Budfred.

Did you know that as an object approaches the speed of light it's MASS INCREASES TOWARDS INFINITY. WOW!

Now, since mass is a measure of the amount of MATERIAL [or substance] then the material making up the object becomes INFINITE.
Where does all this material come from?
Is it being converted from the energy/work required to accelerate the mass.
You see, as the mass becomes greater and greater, the FORCE required to accelerate it approaches an infinite force.
The WORK done during this is the multiple of the force times the distance moved [in the direction of the force]. Because the force is infinite, the work done is infinite. This converts to KINETIC ENERGY which is now infinite.
This creates the suspicion in my mind that material stores energy as measured by mass.
E = m x C x C tends to confirm this.
An atomic bomb converts material to energy.

By the way, how does a vacuum flask know to keep cold things cold and hot things hot?

[Budfred]

I know! I know! :p (re: vacuum flask)... It doesn't know anything. It simply doesn't allow the transfer of heat (energy) across the vacuum thus keeping the temperature of the substance in the flask more stable over time. :p

Budfred

P.S. Oh, yes I did know that, although the totality of the concept is beyond my capacity to completely understand. Of course, that can be said for anything that includes infinity in the equation. Being a fan of existential absurdism, I rather like playing with the concepts even if I can't fully grasp them.

Budfred again

[saphalline]

(more on the vacuum flask) - Also the linings of vacuum flasks are shiny, which better reflects electromagnetic radiation, both internally and externally, so that heat trying to get in or out is constantly being reflected back to where it came from!

This is also a property of colors. White reflects much more radiation than black, which is commonly known. The reason white works so well in the desert is because it reflects the heat in the day, and keeps the wearer warm at night (by not allowing body heat to escape during the cold nights).

Thus it stands to reason that all heatsinks should be black, to better absorb and expell all the heat they collect! :D

[Flick]

For years, it has been believed that electric bulbs emit light, but recent information has proven otherwise. Electric bulbs don't emit light; they suck dark. Thus, we call these bulbs Dark Suckers. The Dark Sucker Theory and the existence of dark suckers prove that dark has mass and is heavier than light.

First, the basis of the Dark Sucker Theory is that electric bulbs suck dark. For example, take the Dark Sucker in the room you are in. There is much less dark right next to it than there is elsewhere. The larger the Dark Sucker, the greater its capacity to suck dark. Dark Suckers in the parking lot have a much greater capacity to suck dark than the ones in this room.

So with all things, Dark Suckers don't last forever. Once they are full of dark, they can no longer suck. This is proven by the dark spot on a full Dark Sucker.

A candle is a primitive Dark Sucker. A new candle has a white wick. You can see that after the first use, the wick turns black, representing all the dark that has been sucked into it. If you put a pencil next to the wick of an operating candle, it will turn black. This is because it got in the way of the dark flowing into the candle. One of the disadvantages of these primitive Dark Suckers is their limited range.

There are also portable Dark Suckers. In these, the bulbs can't handle all the dark by themselves and must be aided by a Dark Storage Unit. When the Dark Storage Unit is full, it must be either emptied or replaced before the portable Dark Sucker can operate again.

Dark has mass. When dark goes into a Dark Sucker, friction from the mass generates heat. Thus, it is not wise to touch an operating Dark Sucker. Candles present a special problem as the mass must travel into a solid wick instead of through clear glass. This generates a great amount of heat and therefore it's not wise to touch an operating candle.

Also, dark is heavier than light. If you were to swim just below the surface of the lake, you would see a lot of light. If you were to slowly swim deeper and deeper, you would notice it getting darker and darker. When you get really deep, you would be in total darkness. This is because the heavier dark sinks to the bottom of the lake and the lighter light floats at the top. The is why it is called light.

Finally, we must prove that dark is faster than light. If you were to stand in a lit room in front of a closed, dark closet, and slowly opened the closet door, you would see the light slowly enter the closet. But since dark is so fast, you would not be able to see the dark leave the closet.

Next time you see an electric bulb, remember that it is a Dark Sucker.

SO, then, you now have the basics, lets move on to more advanced theory:

It had been thought until this time that shadows were merely the absence of light; but an innovative research team from the University of Lower Sodbury has ruined that perfectly good theory by discovering a new wavelength of light -- that responsible for shadows.

Doctor Bob Wigglebottom, head of the research team, explains the accidental discovery that instigated the research:

"While fiddling around one day with a couple of uwave fluxometers and a jug of Bozleys Best Bitter, I noticed a peculiar thing. But it went away again when I stopped moving my head. Anyway, after that I noticed that when the fluxometers were waved in the shadow of the beer, there
were some slight, unexpected fluctuations in the readings on the U.W.F.

I tried it again, only sober this time, and noted the same effect. I began thinking about the possible cause...".

After 2 years of painstaking research and extra-long lunch breaks, the Sodbury team have gathered enough data to reveal their discovery -- the fascinating world of Shadowlight.

Shadowlight is a form of light which exists at very small wavelengths, far beyond the visible spectrum. It has a smaller wavelength even than microwaves, enabling it to propagate through solid objects (without exciting their molecules and making them explode, as luck would have it). As it passes through solids, shadowlight excites the dark particles lying within them, causing a current* of dark in the same direction. Thus, dark can be seen flowing out of the side of objects facing away from the light source. Transparent objects contain a much lower dark density, and thus produce weaker shadows.

[A related discovery of the team explains the danger of standing under a levitated piano: Should the dark inside slip, it can be propelled towards the ground by shadowlight at very high velocity, and if it hits a person, it can supersaturate their eyes and brain with dark so that they are temporarily blinded and fall unconscious. (Often the piano will also be sucked down by the vortex created by the sudden movement of dark, which can cause great damage and may get blood on the piano.)]

It is thought that if Newton was aware of the way in which solar Shadowlight accelerates dark, which in turn applies a downward force to solid objects, our concept of gravity would be quite different.

This phenomenon is also responsible for the movement of rivers: as solar shadowlight reflects down from snowcapped mountains, it drives deep into the river, pushing the dark downhill. The slight friction between dark particles and water particles pushes the water. This moving water in turn pushes the water that lies further down out of sight of the mountains, until it flows out into the sea.

Although the emitted dark is carried out of the solid by the shadowlight, it tends to spread out slightly as it leaves the object, resulting in a fuzzy edge (the shadow penumbra). Test this for yourself - as you move an object further from its shadow, the shadow spreads out and gets fuzzier and fainter. This is because the cone-shaped flow of dark is being spread out over a larger area, and is therefore diluted by more light.

Postulating that objects 'recharge' by absorbing dark during the night, the team set up an experiment where objects were continuously exposed to a 100 watt dark sucker. After 3 months the observed shadows had not weakened, and it was then that an able young student realized that the dark sucker had been running on 50 Hz AC power, and that dark was able to leak back into the objects between AC cycles. Experiments are planned to use a second bulb with a 90 degree phase-lag to provide a more constant dark vacuum, as soon as the funding for the extra bulb comes through from the University Senate.

Doctor Wigglebottom is now collaborating with Bell Laboratories on research into the potential uses of solar shadowlight in driving dark through power-generating turbines.

* Dark current is measured with an SI unit based upon the number of negative candelas of light (or positive candelas of dark) emitted from an appropriately excited black-body object (such as a Nubian woman's brazier, heated to body temperature, and folded to make a roughly spherical shape), the 'candelabra'.

So, yes the headlights suck dark.

[mjc]

FFT, really you ought to do someething about that.............maybe a hunting trip somewhere a little warmer. That cold north wind has frozen something......

[Sylvander]

Ah Flick, that really takes me back in time!

I was about fourteen.
I always thought that you SUCKED liquid up in a straw to drink it, but my science teacher told me that actually it was atmospheric pressure which PUSHED it up the straw and that you couldn’t get it to rise any more than 32 feet because of that. That the pressure at the bottom of a 32 feet column of water is exactly equal to atmospheric pressure holding it there. I had to totally rearrange my way of looking at things.
Then I used to think that when I sat on a cold seat or block of stone and felt the heat being “sucked” out of my posterior regions I was again wrong. Cold objects do not “take” heat FROM things; rather hot objects “give” heat TO things.
By the way the definition of “heat” that I was later given was; “Heat is an interaction between a system and it’s surroundings due solely to the temperature difference between them”.
I really hated that one.
That’s a bit like saying; “Rain is an interaction between a cloud and its surroundings due solely to the difference in vapour concentration between them”.
My version goes; “Heat is the name given to thermal energy while it is in the process of transfer between materials as the result of a temperature difference between them”.
Notice that neither of these mentions GIVING or TAKING but only TRANSFER.

My “15 year old” thoughts were beginning to give form to an idea within my mind that there was a general rule that things which possessed more GAVE to things which possessed less; not that things which possessed less TOOK from things that possessed more.
You might call this a POSITIVIST theory.
Yours was the “NEGATIVIST theory of light”.
I think you may have a book in the making there. I look forward to the film of the book.

Later I became aware that it’s all just a constructed scheme for a coherent way of looking at reality.
Your story illustrates that quite well.
One thing that convinced me of that was the story of the flow of electricity.
Originally it was decided [in the absence of any proof of how things really worked] to assume that “electricity” [whatever that was] “flowed” from positive to negative.
This is “positivism” in action.
Later, when the situation was better understood [“with all thy getting get understanding”] it was realised that electricity was a flow of electrons from [that pole which had unfortunately been classified as] negative to [that which had been classified as] positive.
Oops!
Had they understood what was happening before the naming and arranging, probably electrons would be classified as positive and they would flow from the positive terminal to the negative.

[jabarnutcase]

Well YODA-
I'm not so sure about all of this other stuff, but I do know that after you turned your headlights on, the light beams would travel approx. 186,000 miles every second.

If I were living somewhere within the Andromeda Galaxy, I could sit on my porch and gaze towards the Milky Way.
2,370,000 years later, I would then say to myself: "Oh- That must be Yoda driving around again" (Looking at it in terms of entire universe, you would be so close my chin would be resting on your bumper)

Too bad you couldn't drive at warp factor 2 or 3...All this talk about light would be behind us once and for all.

(Sorry, must be the Pink Floyd):confused:

[Lucias_Clay]

Well you could go here and read an educated? guess.
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/headlights.html

[saphalline]

Originally posted by Sylvander
...there was a general rule that things which possessed more GAVE to things which possessed less; not that things which possessed less TOOK from things that possessed more.
Does this mean that Robin Hood wasn't really a hero or criminal, he was just a balancing force of physics? :eek:

Or maybe this general doesn't apply to economics, or even human behavior as a whole, since equlizing forces do NOT dominate.

[Sylvander]

Oh dear Saphaline, you’ve opened a real can of worms now!

Let me tell you of some concepts as stated in some “Laws” of thermo-dynamics. I’ve forgotten whether they are designated the 1st, 2nd or 3rd laws. I only remember the general idea.

1. Heat always flows from high temperature [hot] to low temperature [cold].
[That’s like things always go from those that have to those that don’t.]
This will TEND to continue [unless some insulating or isolating effect prevents it] until all differences have been eliminated and all temperatures are equal.

2. This is a good point at which to introduce the concept of ENTROPY.
The precise definition of Entropy [dS = dQ/T; where S = Entropy, Q = heat, T = absolute temp] is so difficult to grasp and deal with as to be of little help to anyone but an expert. I always struggled and failed to fully understand.
Better to say that it is a measure of the [thermal] chaos or disorder in a “system”.
The universe could be such a “system”.
My understanding is that the Entropy [chaos] of a system [system 1] can only increase [that is provided any change takes place at all] if there is some input of work by some other system [system 2] to reverse that.
Furthermore system 2 must be at lower Entropy than system 1.
Only a more orderly system can increase the order [or decrease the disorder] within another system.
In this case the increase in Entropy of system 2 is greater than the decrease in entropy of system 1 and the total effect on both systems is an increase in Entropy.
[That’s like saying that a rich man can increase the wealth of a poor man by giving him some of his money but since the banker has to be paid a commission the total wealth of the two is reduced in the process.]
Basically this says that no process or set of events is free of imperfections or inefficiencies and these inefficiencies increase the total disorder every time something happens.
The order of individual parts of the whole can increase but only at the expense of other parts and of the whole.

3. There is another “law” which says that heat can only be converted to work provided heat is transferred from a high temperature “source” to a low temperature “sink” [this is a “heat engine”]. The proportion of transferred heat which gets “creamed off” as useful work is greater as the temperature difference is increased.
If you consider this as a system, it will give out work, but only at the expense of increasing its Entropy or disorder. This is system 2 above. Why this is so is very involved.

3. Another [converse] part of that law says that it’s possible to reverse the process [this is a “heat pump”].
If you input work you can force heat to transfer from a low temperature source to a high temperature sink.
[Like it's possible to make wealth go from the poor to the rich provided you input work to achieve it.]
This would DECREASE the Entropy in this system. Consider this system 1 above.
Life forms [of ALL kinds. All the life on planet Earth or anywhere else] are like system 1.
They start as genetic “blueprints” with very little order [the total quantity of orderly material is low and also the quality/intensity is low]. But with the sun supplying energy to lower, less orderly life forms [like plants] and those being used like system 2 to supply energy to increase the order of more orderly, higher life forms, like humans, gradually their orderliness is increased at the expense of the sun's orderliness. It becomes more disorderly and will eventually die.
All life forms exist at the expense of their surroundings.
Higher life forms live by killing other [usually lower] life forms. It is not possible to do otherwise.
They cannot live except by consuming something, which also has lived.
With this in mind consider the following quote from:

http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-332.htm

“There are no evolutionary transitions that have ever been observed, either during human history or in the fossil record of the past; and the universal law of entropy seems to make it impossible on any significant scale.”
[I consider this patently false. Is it knowingly so?]

In relation to this string:
http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17349&perpage=20&pagenumber=3

Likewise Saphaline, often the rich become so by preying upon their own kind [perhaps they consider them lower life forms] and increase [their own monetary order] at the expense of the monetary order of those around them. They increase as the others decrease and the net result is a decrease in the whole.
Perhaps you’ve noticed, as I have, the tendency to extol the virtues of predators and name things after them. The Nazis were particularly fond of predatory behaviour. Those who are most powerful and rich tend to include a higher proportion of those who most admire predators.

[josemavicente]

... color affects temperature somewhat. I'm sure you all know that black clothes are great to wear on a cold day and white on a hot day...

... but in physics, the color black absorbs heat faster, but dispels heat quicker than white, which is the other way around.

Thus, a tinted car anda car with no tint are left outside the scorching heat. The tinted car accumulates heat faster but when the owners drive away turning on the air conditioner, the tinted car will cool off faster....


.... How to keep your coffee hot: put the creamer immediately after you get your brewed coffee. Brewed is black. Adding creamer turns the coffee light brown. It stays hotter longer than way.

CHEERS!!!

[Flick]

Your refrigerator uses almost total darkness to create the cold. This is why it has such tight, magnetic seals around the door. It needs these seals to keep out all of the light, so this absence of light makes it cold in the refrigerator.

This theory can be proven to be true by simply going out into your garage and feeling the concrete floor. It is cold because of all the dark under the cement migrating up through the cement and making the surface cold.

Surprisingly, this effect takes no electricity to take place. For years, the makers of refrigerators have been including a complex bunch of equipment with the refrigerators to help keep the price of them high. This equipment also serves the added effect of transmitting electric power, via subaudible wavelengths back to the refrigerator company. That is why all refrigerators have the big antenna either on their back, or underneath them. The manufacturers harness this energy to provide them with free power to manufacture new appliances. This complex equipment can also be controlled by the appliance company completely. If you unplug the refrigerator, the power transmission to the appliance company is stopped, which sounds an alarm at the appliance companies secret control room. Then, they send out a signal to your refrigerator to open a small aperture in a hidden place on the refrigerator to allow a small amount of light in, thereby slowly allowing the refrigerator to warm up when unplugged.

There are those who argue with the cold-dark connection. To them I say this:

1. Why then does it always get coldest at night?

2. Why is it always colder near the bottom of a lake than on the surface?

You'd think that your cars, lawn and garden equipment would have cold tires if all of this were true. In fact, tires are semi-permeable by light, therefore they don't get very cold. This can easily be seen by getting inside a large tire, just before it is mounted on the rim. It isn't as dark as you would expect in there.

The theory can also be supported by a simple experiment with an aerosol spray can. The can sits there at room temperature because as long as there is pressure in the can, it is permeable to light (due to the slight expansion of the can itself while under pressure). Now, spray the can for a few seconds...Gets cold. This is because the release of pressure allows the light admitting gaps in the skin to temporarily close up, thereby creating a temporary dark area, which gets cold just like a refrigerator.

When the can is totally empty, the effect stops, due to the specially designed light admitting valve (provided by the refrigerator people, to prevent us from getting free cold).
There have recently been some advances in producing solid-dark. Solid dark is not black, like you might expect. instead, it is opaque in color, just like an ice-cube. It isn't black because of it's dark sucking ability (just like a new lighbulb isn't black) Anyway, The little things in the middle of an ice-cube are actually little bits of solid dark, held in place by frozen water. you'll notice that the little bubbles disappear when the ice-cube melts? This is because the solid dark has turned back to its normal quasi-gaseous state.

If you go to Wal-Mart, you can find little greenish blue bottles of rechargeable dark. They aren't charged when you buy them. These operate similarly to the batteries we use to hold dark. To use the rechargeable dark bottles, simply put them in a dark place like your freezer (which by the way is kept darker than the refrigerator). Once devoid of light (dark), these bottles of dark can be placed in a cooler to keep food items cold. They work best when used in the dark, so keep the cooler lid closed! Also note that they won't last as long in the daytime, as they do at night, due to the massive amount of light they have to absorb.

Another innovation in dark-cold engineering is the can-coozy. They simply keep the drink inside them mostly dark, thereby keeping it cold longer. Don't believe me? Then why are can coozy's almost never transparent? Actually, another advancement has been made which allows visible light to move through an object, but not dark. This stuff is used in stuff like High-E glass, and transparent can coozies.

Things that suck dark have a limited life span. This is because they eventually fill up with dark. Engineers privvy to the design of such items, are highly trained to prevent disaster, caused by reaching the critical mass of dark.

If any of the many types of dark-suckers are allowed to operate for an excessive amount of time, a critical mass of dark will develop. Once a critical mass of dark develops, very odd things happen.

Government researchers postulated that the so-called "lightbulb" manufacturers were making a huge mistake when they were producing all of those really reliable "lightbulbs" back in the early part of the century. You know the clear ones lots of people still have in outbuildings, and basements of old farm houses. Since those things never seem to "burn-out", Government officials had to begin marketing B-B guns to little boys to prevent any of them from reaching critical-dark-mass. A seemingly innocent toy prevented the sure destruction of mankind. Now that there are a safe number of those long-lasting dark-suckers, B-B guns aren't marketed as aggressively.

I am not very well versed in the nature of these things, but the common scientific term for a critical mass of dark is a "black hole". From my very basic understanding of black holes, they can bend light, have temperatures approaching absolute zero, have a huge gravitational pull, which can cause an uneven cut on your lawn or cause disk drives to fail, among other horrors.

Anyway, since these black holes have a huge gravitational pull, due to their density, it is impossible to measure if they actually get larger, or smaller when more dark is added. Sorry to say that many of these questions will have to go unanswered until someone invents a measuring device with no mass, which might take a week or two.

I'll refer you to what happened at Chernobyl, when the USSR's government dark experiments went awry. Nuclear reactors are just a cover-up for government sponsored Dark experiments. it's no coincidence that a large portion of your governments budget goes for "Black" programs. They don't call them "Black" for nothing....nosiree, they are performing experiments with massive amounts of dark, and one cannot be sure what will happen when "Superdark" masses, and intense light are combined. I'd like to continue but I have to take my medications now.

hope this helps...

[Sylvander]

Och! Flick laddie.

After a lifetime of trying to figure out how things work, you have to come along with your light sucking negativity and fill my world with darkness and cold.

Does this mean that the sun isn’t really hot at all: that it in fact it’s lacking in cold?
That it’s really sucking the darkness away and it’s the lack of darkness and cold that we mistakenly perceive as heat?

Does that mean that darkness, cold, inaction and death are the natural state of things and that the universe is gradually reaching that natural state of perfection?

Wouldn’t that make all life-forms an aberration, a reversal of the natural scheme whose attempts at survival were bound to fail in the end?

By the way is that really Latin, or is it fake also?
Does it have a meaning?

[Flick]

Hi Sylvander. You're postulations are for the most part correct. You learn fast!

As for the Latin term, "Quondo Omni Flunkus Mortati", it means, "When In Doubt Play Dead". Nothing fake about that! :D

[Sylvander]

I wonder what kind of activities you're involved in that make it necessary [sometimes] to play dead to survive?

Pray tell.

I tried to translate it here
http://www.nd.edu/~archives/latgramm.htm
but failed to get an exact match.
There were no exact matches for the words you used.
Quondam = formerly, at one time.
Omnis = every, all.
Fluctus = wave, billow.
Mortalitas = is mortal.

Hence:
"At one time, every wave was mortal (and therefore died) [but they don't now?]."
Do you believe in life everlasting I wonder?
Are you a secret Christian?

[Paul Komski]

Flick All good stuff. If you haven't already, then you just might enjoy The Third Policeman (http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton/thirdpol.htm) ;)

[Flick]

Originally posted by Sylvander
I wonder what kind of activities you're involved in that make it necessary [sometimes] to play dead to survive?

Pray tell.

I tried to translate it here
http://www.nd.edu/~archives/latgramm.htm
but failed to get an exact match.
There were no exact matches for the words you used.
Quondam = formerly, at one time.
Omnis = every, all.
Fluctus = wave, billow.
Mortalitas = is mortal.

Hence:
"At one time, every wave was mortal (and therefore died) [but they don't now?]."
Do you believe in life everlasting I wonder?
Are you a secret Christian?

Well, if I told you, then I would have to kill you. Instead see this link: http://www.redgreen.com/