this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I think someone made a floating lamp using the power of magnets about a decade ago. It looks cool.

Totally not magic at all, not even a little bit.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

The difference between physics and magic is that physics works by describing the forces acting on a system. To predict an outcome, you just progressivly apply those forces over time.

With magic, you just specify the outcome, but not how you get there.

This is how we know that thermodynamics is magic. Conservation laws and Lagrangeans too.

https://xkcd.com/2904/

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I love mercury vapor rectifiers!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

This is why I always appreciated that Brakebills in The Magicians was basically grad school with better dorm life.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

OK but electromagnetics is totally magic.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

As one of my Daughters told the Chair of the Physics department at a large Big 10 collage to switch her major from ME to Physics, "I want know the answer, not guess."

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

That's actually the reason a friend of mine gave for switching from physics to maths.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Weird, because my experience with science and mathematics is that everything I learned only leads to more questions. I personally preferred taking a small chunk of that knowledge and using it to do real-world stuff which was always surprisingly complicated but satisfying. An engineer that "guesses" is not a very good one IMO lol

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

My whole life I thought I'd study mechatronics. I was one of those kids winning robotics comps and getting sponsored to go to global ones and get my arse beat by actually smart people.

Anyway, I switched to physics because "I want to know why".

Ahaha, hahahahaha, aaahshahshshshs oh naive little me. Ha ha ha ha. Now I am an overeducated house wife with a head full of questions. I could have done something useful instead of rocking back and forth in a padded room screaming "but what is time? why does it break all the patterns?"

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (4 children)

What's the middle bottom one?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That orb in the middle of the apparatus is The Demon Core, a piece of plutonium produced during the Manhattan Project, for a third nuke which was never needed. So it was used for criticality experiments, which is where those hemispheres come in.

Anyway, in those experiments it was key in a few accidents, which caused the deaths by radiation of several researchers. After the later bout of experiments, the core was scrapped.

A little more reading in case you're interested

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Idk how you can include all this but not the Kyle Hill documentary

https://youtu.be/aFlromB6SnU?si=ApqgHynC0WopCQG1

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Good point, thanks for pointing to it.

(Also, pro tip: take off that ?si=... stuff from your link, that's tracking tags)

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