Printer On Fire

I’m starting a feature called Ask Atomicthumbs. You can email me a science question (preferably related to physics, relativity, quantum mechanics, or electromagnetics). Alternately, you can post in the thread at Facepunch Studios or make a comment.

Rules:

1. Science questions only, though you can ask questions about this service, and they might be answered.
2. I can tell homework questions. Don’t ask.
3. I probably won’t answer silly things.

If you like this, click on “fund my electronics research” at the right.

To ask me a question, email to askatomicthumbs@gmail.com. The questions will be added to this page.

OK! Now, the questions.

Is it possible to use sound waves to force atoms to move?

- Quacles

A: Yes, whenever sound goes through a material the atoms move and bump into each other; that’s how sound propagates.

Why don’t we have people with yellow or red eyes? Or any colour excpet brown, blue, green or grey for that matter.

- Aero1444

A: The human body doesn’t produce pigments during eye development for those colors, although it would be cool if it did.

Can you inherit stupidity?

- Aero1444

A: If it’s caused by a genetic disorder, yes. Most things that cause mental retardation are genetic and can be inherited, but ignorance and the fact that somebody is a cretin cannot.

If space is a vacuum, there must be no pressure, so why can shuttles and probes survive without expanding from lack of pressure on the outside?

- Aero1444

A: In the case of the Space Shuttle, it’s because the metal it’s made of is strong enough to survive the pressure pushing out. For probes, it’s because there’s not really any “inside” so there’s no pressure.

Explain why people talk at a higher pitch after inhaling helium gas.

- Mikfoz

A: Sound travels faster in helium because it’s less dense than normal air. This changes the resonance of your lungs, making them effectively “smaller” because it takes less time for the sound to travel through.

Who shot first?

- mrchaos58

A: Han.

If you created a vacuum inside of a box, would it float?

- Evil Z

A: Yes, although finding a suitably light box might be a problem.

How does the brain remember?

- Lem_Nx

A: By making connections between brain cells; kind of like data stored in an electrically-conductive fish net.

Explain the process of using plasmids and transformation to inject alleles into the chromosomes of embryos.

- Zarithas

A: First, plasmids are only used with bacteria. It’s much more complicated with multicellular and eukaryotic organisms; bacteria’s genetic material is just floating. When the plasmid (circle of DNA) is inserted into the bacterium, it is “interpreted” by RNA, just like the other parts of the bacterium’s genetic code.

If a black hole would be encased in a ball shaped extremely dense metallic material (and of course positioned in the center), would black hole stay inside or grow bigger and swallow the ball?

- Murkrow

A: It would eat the middle of the ball, which would then be a hollow sphere with a black hole inside. If the ball was at the center of lots of gas (like a spent star’s iron core), it would collapse inwards and the entire thing would be eaten.

Prove to me in under ten words that the chair I’m sitting in doesn’t exist.

- american_moron

A: Illogical. The chair does exist.

How long will it take for elemental Hydrogen and Oxygen to react and form water without any outside forces?

- Wearwolf

A: You need something else, like heat, pressure, or an electric spark to start the reaction.

How close can you get to something without touching it?

- Acegikmo

A: A few nanometers, before the electric fields of the electrons in the atoms repel each other too strongly for you to approach any more.

If you have a beam of white light through a prism and seperate the colors, what would happen if you took a beam of violet (highest wavelength of all colors) and put it through the same prism?

- Kylel999

A: You’d get a violet stripe on the wall, maybe with a bit of a gradient if your light source wasn’t pure (I.E. not a laser).

Say there is a lightbulb. The lightbulb is 100% opaque, and has 100% reflectivity.
The lightbulb is turned on and no light can escape. What happens? What happens if the lightbulb is unbreakable?

- Kylel999

A: The lightbulb either explodes or melts due to heat. If not, the energy density gets too high and you create a black hole.

What happens when an unstoppable object hits something unmovable?

- Kylel999

A: It’s illogical that they both exist: if there’s an object that goes through anything, then there is nothing that can stop it: no immovable objects. If there’s an immovable object, there can be nothing that goes through it: no unstoppable objects.

Why does canned coke taste better than the coke sold in plastic bottles?

- demoguy

A: Because the chemicals in the bottles leach into the delicious soda and make it taste like polycarbons.

What is gravity?

- SherbetHead

A: Depending on which side you’re on, a distortion of space and time caused by mass, or an attractive force caused by closed vibrating strings.

Who came first, the egg or the chicken?

- AlexDeviant

A: The egg, because dinosaurs were laying eggs before chickens evolved.

Where do babies come from?

- SlippersFP

A: Your mom.

When two black holes collide, why do they merge even though they have different mass? Should’t the heavier one swallow the other?

- demoguy

A: Well, when one swallows the other, all the mass gets absorbed by the heavier one: they merge. A black hole increases in mass as it eats more; even though it’s infinitely dense, the mass at the singularity of a black hole is still mass.

How does a changing electric field induce a perpendicular magnetic field when no electrons are present?

- Cathbadh

A: With an antenna or other electromagnetism-generating source, the magnetic field generates an electric field and vice-versa. Very mysterious.

Edit: Think of an EM field. You have an electric field (generated by the electron’s charge), and a magenetic field (generated by the electric field’s effect on the electron). The magnetic field is N, and the electric field is positive. The electron oscillates, moving the fields to S and negative. So far, you’ve got a positive/N magnetic/electric field moving along at the speed of light, directly followed by a negative/S field. This continues, making an EM wave.

What does actually happen if you divided by zero?

- D3vils Buddy

A: How many times can you fit zero into twenty? Think about it.

Unify Newtonian physics and quantum theory.

- JohnnyMo

A: no

If you had a sheet of tinfoil, how would you make a platform that floats and can carry more then 100 pennys.

- The_Newb2

A: By making a platform with sufficient buoyancy on water (I assume) that holds 100 pennies.

How many licks does it take to get the tootsie center of a tootsie pop?

- Meeps

A: Over nine thousand.

Have you ever seen frozen helium? Is it as awesome as it sounds?

- Evil Z

A: No; helium cannot freeze except under huge amounts of pressure. And it wouldn’t float in air, unfortunately.

What is the maximum airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

- doomkiwi

A: Is it a European or an African swallow?

How is a velocity filter made using electric and magnetic fields and how does it function?

- DaveP

A: Considering the fact that neither I, Wikipedia, or Google Define know what a velocity filter is, no idea.

Considering that energy cannot be created OR destroyed…but only altered - do we therefore theoretically only have a certain amount of energy in the whole Universe considering the amount never changes?

- El Burro

A: Yes, a finite amount of energy and mass (because mass is energy: E=MC^2).

And if the above is true, will we eventually run out in the incomprehensable future when that energy has bee changed into something useless and wasted?

- El Burro

A: Yes, everything will have been transformed into heat if the universe doesn’t expand or collapse and stays stable. That’s called “heat death”.

What is a proton if it has 3 quarks?

- Dean

A: It does.

Please explain the logic behind the theory of relativity.

- Pepin

A: Special or general?

Electricity- Is it possible for a filimant from a lightbulb to work in space? Because there is no oxygen. Or will it still vaporize?

- Tristanrules

A: Yes, lightbulbs/incandescent filaments need to be away from oxygen to work, or they explode.

On a completely unrelated note - why the feck don’t my ratings appear next to my avatar whereas some other users will have theirs?

- El Burro

A: Because you have less than 50. You need to have 50 of some rating to have it appear.

If there were two kinds of plants that existed (well, those that exist now and another kind), one that relied solely on ultraviolet radiation, and one that relied on visible light, which would be more efficient? Less ultraviolet radiation reaches the surface but it’s stronger than visible light (is only slightly).

- sltlamina

A: The visible light plant, I think. I don’t know the energy density of various wavelengths of light - I need to get home and switch to my math brain.

And what if another form of plant came along that threw back blue or violet light (just to make things tricky) but absorbed all other visible light AND ultraviolet radiation? Which would win then, it or one of the other two?

A: Probably the new one.

How many volts does it take to jump an inch between two electrocuted metal contacts?

- Bean-O

A: It depends on the air pressure, air composition, and some other factors. My neon-sign transformer makes an awesome arc at 15 kilovolts.

Can a solid go to a gas directly, or does it have to become a liquid first

- Pepin

A: Yes, it’s called sublimation, which is when molecules break off the solid and fly away. This happens with dry ice; that’s why it makes fog.

So a dyson sphere (a complete solar shell) that doesn’t dispose of any energy will ultimately be doomed?

- sltlamina

A: No, the star would explode/collapse before it turned into a black hole.

Why do we like to smell our own farts?

- pistolero!

A: We don’t. That’s just you.

Just curious, how many tons of TNT would it take to move the moon off its orbit, or just slightly change it?

-Archer2338

According to my calculations, to smash the moon into the earth it would take 376,434,034,000,000,000 tons of TNT.

How much does anti-matter weigh?

- Cyrex

A: One pound of antimatter weighs the same as one pound of matter. They’re equivalent, except antimatter has opposite spin and charge. There could be a universe made of what we consider antimatter somewhere, and the residents would consider our universe to be made of antimatter.

If I put total vacuum in a room then putting a smaller room inside it with air in it, what would be the situation in the smaller box.

- Cyrex

A: It depends on the strength of the smaller room. If it wasn’t strong enough, it would explode. If it was, it would keep the air in it (like a pressurized airplane or a space shuttle).

When can we live on Mars?

- benzer

A: THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER

Will Humans ever terraform Mars?

- benzer

A: THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER

Why does water boil when thermal energy is transfered to it?

- PacificV2

A: As you transfer heat into a substance, the atoms vibrate more and more. Eventually, they vibrate so much they detach and fly away. This works the same for molecules of water.

[Expanding universe] Expanding into what?

- inthefrey

A: It’s getting bigger. There’s more space than there used to be.

Why does nuclear fusion occur in the sun even though it is just not hot enough?

- petieng

A: It is hot enough. The gravity of all the gas compresses the core, and through compression, it gains temperature. It’s hot and pressureful enough at the core to fuse.

Wold a magnetic Bearing work?

- MistaGiggles

A: Yes.

Are mice or guinea pigs better?

- ndsfreak

A: Guinea pigs. I’m right next to you; you could have just asked me.

What is dark matter made of?

- Paul -V-

A: It’s made of dark matter. That’s like asking “Explain a way that I can make a fusion generator that fits on my table and prouces more energy than I put into it”. We don’t know anything else yet.

When atoms are heated they move, right? So why is that Pancake ‘dough’ “freezes” when it become heated? Pancakes!

- Natty Deyaz

A: Pancakes “freeze” because the sugar turns to carbon.

Say that it was somehow possible…If i was traveling faster then the speed of light, and i looked at a mirror, would i be able to see my face or would it just be pitch black, what would i see?

- turbos_nos91

A: If you were able to travel faster than the speed of light, there would be no light to illuminate a mirror in front of you. If you were moving backwards, you would be irradiated by gamma rays caused by blueshifting (moving fast towards a light source).

Did Schrodinger’s cat die?

- He hated cats. Why do you think he put one in a closed box with a tube of cyanide?

Does science actually prove anything?

- Rodwy

A: For all intents and purposes, yes.

If superman flew really fast around the earth one way and Neo the other way would time stand still?

- m4rkg1

A: No, they would slam into each other on the opposite side and fuse into some sort of disgusting mass of flesh and bones.

Are you living in the 19th century?

- Sch£rf

A: No.

Is it possible to have a computer that just needs more power instead of hardware?

- gmaster

A: Sadly, all computers are limited by the hardware we build into them instead of the available energy. Unless you build a computer that can convert energy into mass and use it to build more hardware.

Where does shit come from?

- Domokun

A: Digestive processes.

Why is water wet?

- matark

A: It’s a liquid, which is a good heat conductor. The main “wetness” is the way it flows over your skin and the way it feels cold (mostly cold): put on a rubber glove and run water over it and your hand will still feel wet.

If i were to place my oxy welder on my skin when it is alight what might happen?

- scottybev

A: YOU WOULD FEEL THE BURN

How much wood could a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?

- Aman

A: One cord.

What is the meaning of life?

- Britishboy

A: 42

How do laser guided system work? Do they use light to measure the distance and such of the target relative to the ‘projector’ and then relay that information back to the missile?

- sltlamina

A: A laser guided missile would look for a specific wavelength or pulse code in the radiation; probably the laser would be pulsed in a specific sequence.

Why do humans have such a large brain if we only ever use 10% of it?

- Relf Ponk

A: We use all of our brains. The people think we use the “unused” 10% for PSYCHIC POWERS and ALIENS.

Do you think you (ever?) will be able to cure viruses by putting “good” cancer cells in the place where the virus “living”. Or vice versa.

- Natty deyaz

A: Perhaps. The virus would more probably be used to only attach to cancerous cells, and stay away from good ones.