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Nov 2023
11:06am, 15 Nov 2023
3,458 posts
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Kittenheels Kath
How does a fish know that it's in a shoal of the same type of fish as itself? I've asked that question every time I visit an aquarium (and there's someone on the staff who looks like they might know the answer). No luck yet.
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Nov 2023
11:08am, 15 Nov 2023
82,615 posts
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Diogenes
Computing: How zeros and ones can be used to produce all kinds of amazing and different results, according to how they are arranged, processed, and presented. Even if I could understand the technical explanation of how it works, I don't understand how people can work out how it might work in the first place.
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Nov 2023
11:12am, 15 Nov 2023
82,616 posts
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Diogenes
Television: How images can be captured and transmitted (either analogue or digital) and then rearranged as images on a screen.
Vinyl: How can a groove in a vinyl disk capture sound which can then be reproduced with suc richness and fidelity using a needle bouncing along that groove
(I don't really understand anything)
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Nov 2023
11:21am, 15 Nov 2023
3,288 posts
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cackleberry
How does a fish know that it's in a shoal of the same type of fish as itself? I've asked that question every time I visit an aquarium (and there's someone on the staff who looks like they might know the answer). No luck yet.
Electrical signals? A lot of fish use them.
Dunno, that is just a guess.
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Nov 2023
11:22am, 15 Nov 2023
992 posts
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Silent Runner
It's not the sealed air thing, it's conservation of momentum. When you jump or float up, you already had the same forward momentum as the plane, therefore you keep going forward at same speed as the plane. Newton's first law.  G
The sealed air bit is necessary too - if the plane was open at both ends, it'd be a very different experience for the passengers...
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Nov 2023
12:08pm, 15 Nov 2023
29,807 posts
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fetcheveryone
Computing: How zeros and ones can be used to produce all kinds of amazing and different results, according to how they are arranged, processed, and presented. Even if I could understand the technical explanation of how it works, I don't understand how people can work out how it might work in the first place.
I guess the answer is that they started small. Calculators convert numbers into their binary equivalents, which makes them easy to add by a machine that deals in 1’s and 0’s, or ‘high voltage’ and ‘low voltage’.
And once you can do stuff like that, you just need to master the Booleans, AND, OR, NOT, and XOR, and you can write algorithms that replicate real world processes. All of these are achievable with simple circuitry.
Then you just scale up until you take over the world.
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Nov 2023
12:16pm, 15 Nov 2023
82,621 posts
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Diogenes
I know, I've studied it and even worked with it to a limited extent, but I still don't believe it can and does work. It's just all too abstract and huge.
If you view-source for any web page it just looks overwhelming in complexity (even if much of it is down to templates and stylesheets or similar). I have no idea how you do it, Fetch. (or rather, I have a vague idea and am very impressed by your skills)
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Nov 2023
12:20pm, 15 Nov 2023
29,808 posts
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fetcheveryone
I think it comes down to being able to slice things up into smaller problems, which by definition become easier to solve. And building complexity one layer at a time. There are layers I never think about, like the ones and zeros - I just assume they will continue to work. I guess a good analogy is that you don’t need to know how the water gets to your house if you are installing a new tap.
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Nov 2023
12:39pm, 15 Nov 2023
48,438 posts
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HappyG(rrr)
Thanks for that link Mud Meanderer. Does anyone remember a website that allowed you to build simple machines, with moving parts, and gravity and force points to simulate different machine type movements? Zootopia or something? G
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Nov 2023
12:40pm, 15 Nov 2023
48,439 posts
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HappyG(rrr)
It's not the sealed air thing, it's conservation of momentum. When you jump or float up, you already had the same forward momentum as the plane, therefore you keep going forward at same speed as the plane. Newton's first law. G The sealed air bit is necessary too - if the plane was open at both ends, it'd be a very different experience for the passengers...
Not in terms of forces and being slammed against the back of the plane, which was the original question.
In terms of breathing, of course, I completely agree! G
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