...like magic.

[killerdwarf]

Soulgasm has inspired me. If he can play Ann Landers, I can play Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Arthur C. Clarke has stated that any technology that is significantly advanced will seem like magic to people unfamiliar with it (paraphrase). For example, think about the reaction of someone from the 1600's (brought to our time) to a cell phone network, or a microwave oven. Is there something out there that seems like magic to you? Ask away, and we'll all put our brains together and try to figure it out! But just a warning...I will probably need a bit of help, so if you know, chime in! I know the basic physics behind stuff, and my electrical ticket means I'm supposed to know some other stuff...but no software questions...I suck at software!

 

[nerd4hire]

Soulgasm has inspired me. If he can play Ann Landers, I can play Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Arthur C. Clarke has stated that any technology that is significantly advanced will seem like magic to people unfamiliar with it (paraphrase). For example, think about the reaction of someone from the 1600's (brought to our time) to a cell phone network, or a microwave oven. Is there something out there that seems like magic to you? Ask away, and we'll all put our brains together and try to figure it out! But just a warning...I will probably need a bit of help, so if you know, chime in! I know the basic physics behind stuff, and my electrical ticket means I'm supposed to know some other stuff...but no software questions...I suck at software!

Oh wow...I almost slipped by this thread, and that would be a shame for me. You know I wanna jump all over this one. Free access to a tech-guy. That's great!!!

The first thing that jumped into my head when you said "things that seem like magic", was, you know those little 12 to 15 year old gymnastic girls that jump horse-high in the air then flip and spin? How the Hell do they do that? Are they enchanted?

OK that isn't what you were looking for, right? Let's try another one.

There was this thing that was all over the tech journals some time ago. It was was supposed to revolutionize modern technology. I think it was called induction, or something like that.

It had something to do with running an electric or magnetic current through hyper-freezed porcelain. Apparently once you did that, all kinds of things from saving energy to Anti-gravity were possible. What happened to that? Are they still working on it? Did they give up. Have they made any breakthroughs? How exactly does that work?

Also; Hydrogen fuel cells. How exactly do they work? Will you really save gas, and will we be able to tell the Saudis to shove it, or is it one of those things like electric cars where you actually wind up using more oil to create the electricity?

Also; You know those karate guys that break bricks with their bare hands? Is that physically possible, or is it like a magic trick or something?

Gotta go now. Gotta go buy beer and nachos for Calgary Vs. Vancouver.

 

[Kevin]

Also, how did David Blaine manage to survive 6 weeks without eating?!

 

[nerd4hire]

Yeah, and how does he do that one, where he walks up to someone on the street, and he seems to be floating in mid-air?

Oops...off to the beer store.

 

[killerdwarf]

The first thing that jumped into my head when you said "things that seem like magic", was, you know those little 12 to 15 year old gymnastic girls that jump horse-high in the air then flip and spin? How the Hell do they do that? Are they enchanted?

I'm not sure about this one...maybe they're all related to Tigger ("their tops are made out of rubber/their bottoms are made out of springs").

There was this thing that was all over the tech journals some time ago. It was was supposed to revolutionize modern technology. I think it was called induction, or something like that.

I think you're talking about superconduction. The factor that limits conduction of electrical signals or power through wire is the resistance of the wire. Resistance is caused by the length of the wire, the diameter of the wire, and what the wire is made from. As you put a current through the wire, the wire will heat up due to the resistance of the wire to the current running through it (think about the resistance of your skin to the skin of your older brother when he gave you an "Indian burn" by twisting his hand around your wrist and you'll get what I mean). The heat eventually will cause the rate of conduction of the passing current to slow down, and as the heat increases, the speed decreases accordingly.

Superconductors in theory will pass current with no heat and minimal (theoretically non-existant) resistance. This will allow massive amounts of power to be sent through very small conductors (wires, if you will) at speeds approaching light speed. There is always a loss now due to heating, which would be virtually eliminated. This is good for two reasons. the first is cost of the conductor...the smaller it is the less expensive it is...the second is efficiency...if there is no loss during transmission, there is more available to do the work at the other end! Superconduction would revolutionize power distribution as we know it, but right now, it is only theoretically possible in space (no atmosphere, really cold). Last I read, some places were trying conduction in liquid-nitrogen cooled pipes, but this is still not true superconduction, and is very expensive and somewhat dangerous.

Also; Hydrogen fuel cells. How exactly do they work? Will you really save gas, and will we be able to tell the Saudis to shove it, or is it one of those things like electric cars where you actually wind up using more oil to create the electricity?

I work in the auto industry, so this one is kinda important to me. I've got some info somewhere, and I'll dig it out and get back to you on this one!

Also; You know those karate guys that break bricks with their bare hands? Is that physically possible, or is it like a magic trick or something?

Nope, it's not magic! My son is in Karate and breaks boards with his hands and feet...the boards are always very dry wood, which makes them easier to break. As for the bricks, I've never seen it live, but everything has a weak spot that will allow it to be broken. For example, your knee supports your weight, and can support you carrying many times your weight on your back. However, a sharp blow to the side of your knee of only 25lbs pressure can tear it to shreads, if it is the right spot! The karate guys practice the brick thing a lot, and they know the right spot and the right amount of force to use. They channel many pounds per square inch of pressure to the critical spot (a small spot, for sure) and crack the brick. Another example is an egg. Try to crush a raw egg in your hand. Unless it has a flaw in the shell, you can't usually do it. But lightly tap the egg on the edge of the bowl and it breaks. If the pressure is applied to a small spot, the item (brick) will not be able to distribute the pressure over its whole surface, and it breaks! Notice also that the bricks or boards being broken are held rigidly in place to allow all the force to be applied to the board, not absorbed by what is holding the board.

Gotta go now. Gotta go buy beer and nachos for Calgary Vs. Vancouver.

Have some for me, pal...I'm stuck at work...

 

[Kindred]

I thought I would mention that my chem teacher is friends with Bill Nye... They went to school together and worked together.

Anyway, magic... I'm always baffled by, well, mostly everything, but the stuff that really gets me is that laserscopic surgery or whatever... Where they can operate inside of someone without cutting them up. If the laser's the equivalent to a scalpel on the inside, how the hell does it get there without cutting up the outside at well? I understand that they can focus it in one place, but still....

 

[killerdwarf]

Also; Hydrogen fuel cells. How exactly do they work? Will you really save gas, and will we be able to tell the Saudis to shove it, or is it one of those things like electric cars where you actually wind up using more oil to create the electricity?

I found my literature on fuel cells.

Basically, they will be the power source for electric cars. The driver will provide a source of hydrogen (more later on that). The fuel cell will use a catalyst (usually some type of platinum gizmo) to split the hydrogen into a (+) proton and a (-) electron. Along with oxygen from the atmosphere, it will provide an electric current that will power the vehicle. It could also charge a battery in the vehicle for other purposes. The cell will provide power as long as it has fuel. Its waste product is water (more later). There are many types of cells that use many types of fuels. Some can use regular gasoline, but then the byproducts will contain some carbon, and lotsa water, and the gasoline would have to be relatively pure, or it would damage the cell. It would still be way cleaner than a combustion engine, but not totally pollutant free! A cell that used pure hydrogen could be used, but there are few hydrogen stations on your nearest corner, and if there were I'd be worried...think "Hindenburg"...hydrogen is very volatile. If a cell could be developed that would use non-volatile hydrogen source that was "cleaner " than gas, that would indeed put the Saudis etc. out of business! Ethanol comes to mind, and it is in the works.

Fuel cells are more efficient than a combustion engine when gasoline is used, but remember, you'd be driving an electric car...no tire squealies, no muscle...just moderately fast transport with little pollution.

Kindred: Cool, he's one of my heroes! I'm not ignoring your question, it's just that I'm at work and I have to cover calls while doing this...so I only have a limited amount of time for every post...later!

 

[killerdwarf]

Anyway, magic... I'm always baffled by, well, mostly everything, but the stuff that really gets me is that laserscopic surgery or whatever... Where they can operate inside of someone without cutting them up. If the laser's the equivalent to a scalpel on the inside, how the hell does it get there without cutting up the outside at well? I understand that they can focus it in one place, but still....

Laproscopic surgery is a big leap forward for medicine. The surgeon uses a bundle of tubes and fibre optic strands that allow a camera and a laser to be placed inside the patient. For example, if they are removing a gall bladder, the docs will make a very small incision in the abdomen wall over the gall bladder, which also enters the structure. The bundle is slid into the opening and the camera is used to direct the laser. The docs watch on a large screen. One of the tubes in the bundle is a small suction tube, which removes any particles that are cut off by the small and very precise laser. If they remove the whole gall bladder it is all suctioned out thru the tube as it is cut away. The biggest benefit is the quick recovery time due to lack of intrusion into the body...no big cuts to heal, no major openings to the atmosphere and possible contamination, and small scars! This is used on knees, hearts, uterusesesese (oops), and anywhere that they can use it to reduce the trauma associated with surgery. The fibre optics for the laser and camera are very small, maybe the diameter of a typical human hair, and the suction tube isn't much bigger. The fibre optics are good because they bend but unless they are kinked, they still convey the signals sent down them with close to 99% efficiency! Gotta go duty calls...I'll check back and finish later...

 

[nerd4hire]

This is great KD. You're better than Bill Nye. I can actually understand you. I'm learning stuff.

Hey, how do you make a suction tube the size of a human hair? What is a fibre optic cable made out of?

Here's one that always confused me. Suppose they're doing laser surgery on someone's eye. How come the laser doesn't go right through the guy's head?

 

[killerdwarf]

Hey, how do you make a suction tube the size of a human hair?

Not too sure on that one, but miniturization is really cool, and it probably is made the same way as they make regular plastic or rubber tubing, just really small!

What is a fibre optic cable made out of?

I do know this one...it's made of glass or plastic, heated and pulled until its as fine as they need it to be. Usually the molten glass is extruded thru a form and cut at standard lengths. They can be fused (spliced) together with a heat splicer. Also, you can't use a broken fibre optic cable...the fracture lines screw up the signal. You have to use a heated cutter to cut a line!

Here's one that always confused me. Suppose they're doing laser surgery on someone's eye. How come the laser doesn't go right through the guy's head?

The power of the laser is variable, according to the wavelength of light used, and what is used to generate it. A scalpel is sharp, and if you push too hard you'll cut too deep. Lasers too. They only cycle it for a fraction of a second to get the cut they need, and they can dial back the power some too!

 

[nerd4hire]

Still...you wouldn't wanna sneeze, right?

Hey how far are they away from laser weapons? Will people like bank guards have them in the near future? Not that I'm a bank guard, but I still want one.

 

[Happy]

Hey how far are they away from laser weapons? Will people like bank guards have them in the near future? Not that I'm a bank guard, but I still want one.

I read an article on this quite a while ago and they are not as far away as you'd think. There are working proto-types. They are highly accurate at long distances, cause tremendous damage to soft targets, and are completely silent, and the "beam" is invisible to the naked eye. Supposed to be very heavy though, due to the battery, and they aren't supposed to be able to fire too often or for too long due to the drain on that battery. Not much of an assault weapon, but a perfect sniper rifle from what I read.

It is unlikely though that they will ever be able to be used in combat. The Red Cross and similar orginizations have been working toward banning there use for quite some time and it looks like they might succeed. Apparently the damage they cause to human tissue is incredibly horrible and difficult to treat. The are also supposed to cause blindness.

So, the technology probably isn't that far off, but you're not likely to ever get your hands on one.

 

[killerdwarf]

Still...you wouldn't wanna sneeze, right?

Nope, that'd leave a mark...

Thanks for the assist Happy...what you say makes sense, lasers are energy pigs, especially at the power levels needed for weapons.

***note that I edited my talk on fibre optics above, if you care to reread it...***

The laser weapon would be nasty. And superconduction (see above) would make it more feasible ***shudders***

And You're right on about the blindness... you can cause blindness now with a laser pointer if you hit someone right in the eye...it burns the retina. Imagine what this thing would do!

N4H: I'm glad I'm making sense...I seem to be better in print than in person, though. Sometimes my brain works faster than my mouth, and the words get lost...not that that is always a bad thing...

 

[nerd4hire]

Speaking of high-tech magic, I need to know about telephone connections.

What happened was my phone stopped working, so I took the wall socket apart, and I noticed a couple of connecting wires had corroded off.

So I'm repairing these wires, and I'm noticing, I'm touching these wires, but I'm not getting a shock, as is the usual routine when I'm doing electrical repairs.

What's going through these wires? If I touch the wrong long distance wire, could I start speaking chinese? 🙂

And what about wireless connections? How do they work? They're amazing. All these little messages must be zooming around everyone's heads all day, every day. If you had the right receiver, you could listen to anyone's wireless phone you wanted to right?

 

[Jacklyn]

I do know that there is no electrical current in telephone wires. I learned that because my friend told me as he placed the wire in his mouth to hold it while he worked and I had a heart attack thinking he was about to be char-broiled...as for your other questions, I'm not sure.

 

[Happy]

Actually, there is some electrical current passing through phone lines, just not enough to fry anyone. There are disks in a phone. The vibrations caused by sound waves (usually by a voice) cause the disks to vibrate. The vibrations are then converted to an eletrical pattern which is transmitted over wires (usually copper), which is then converted back to sound by yet more disks in the phone to which the call is placed. Essentially, during a phone call the kinetic energy of sound is translated into electrical energy, then back into kinetic energy at the recieving end.

Wireless calls work pretty much the same way except with satellite signals involved instead of wires. As far as being able to intercept call, yes it's possible. There are encription codes used on all modern cell phones to prevent that though (it is by no means impossible to crack that code though).

 

[nerd4hire]

As far as being able to intercept call, yes it's possible. There are encription codes used on all modern cell phones to prevent that though (it is by no means impossible to crack that code though).

Yeah there's phone phreaking, right? Those guys don't even have to physically connect to the phone, do they?

I was having debt collector problems at one time, and I swear this one debt-collector guy knew everything I talked about on my phone. So I googled phone phreaking, and I was freaked. Apparently there are 2 categories of phone phreaks, each with a different name to describe themselves. One is guys who go through dumpsters looking for phone codes, and the other is guys who go through phone trucks looking for the code. I guess if you knew someone on the inside, you could get the codes that way too.

I just started phoning every one I could think of, and started telling them my phone was being phreaked. They all thought I was crazy of course, but the next time the debt collecting agency called me it was a different idiot, and this one wasn't telling me about a conversation I had the night before with a buddy.

Hey what about ADSL? That goes through your telephone wire also right? How would you convert a graphic into kinetic energy. Is it just like code or something?

 

[No Angel]

If you open up your eyelids as much as you can and get hit in the back of the head will your eyeballs fall out?

 

[killerdwarf]

I do know that there is no electrical current in telephone wires

Happy has it right about this. Telephones run on what we call an intrinsically safe voltage, that is less than 24 volts dc or ac. ***I need to check this, my colleague disagrees. I'll research!****The amperage (current) is also low, so you could handle the wires without harm...but don't try this with power wires in your house...they run at 120v ac and at that voltage, it only takes 40 milliamps of current in the right place (thru your heart) to kill...and a house circuit is 15 amps!

And yup, your cell phones can be hacked...the government is the biggest hacker...and you can be fairly accurately positioned with your cell phone...someone with the locations of the cells your call is routed thru could triangulate your position using the distance you are from any two cell towers...scary, eh?

Graphics are essentially changed from binary code (0 and 1) for transmission on a telephone line. Your modem (stands for MOdulator/DEModulator) converts the digital stuff from your computer into analog signals to send over a phone line. The modem at the other end does the opposite...converts analog to digital. Modems are right inside computers in the 21st century, so there is no need to convert the analog signal to kinetic energy, as Happy explained! If you have a digital line, you still need a modem...it allows the signals to be synchronized, and will convert them to whatever is needed for transmission, but there is no conversion needed to analog...therefore it is lots faster. You can have both digital and analog signals at the same time. They can be conditioned to not interfere with each other ,and be sent on the same line.

Happy: Thanks, buddy. You're a knowledgeable guy! :: tu ::

No Angel: It depends on how hard you're hit, and how big the ball bat is...🙂 and if you happen to be in Toon Town!🙂

 

[Mr. Pointy]

And yup, your cell phones can be hacked...the government is the biggest hacker...and you can be fairly accurately positioned with your cell phone...someone with the locations of the cells your call is routed thru could triangulate your position using the distance you are from any two cell towers...scary, eh?

If this site about Project Echelon is right most electronic forms of communication are monitored by our beloved governments 😉 - at least for those of us in UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
http://archive.aclu.org/echelonwatch/faq.html

You're spot on about the cell phone triangulation as well KD. I believe this is regularly used by the police in the UK to find people (obviously with the co-operation of the mobile networks). I'm not sure if it would be at all easy for someone outside the industry...