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Can't help Pushin That POV

(apologies to Jerome Kern - Showboat (musical) - Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man)

Fish got to swim, birds got to fly

ScienceApologist and Martinphi

Can't help pushin' that POV!


Tell them "be civil", tell them "go slow"

Tell them they're crazy, (maybe they know)

But they can't help pushin' that POV!

All the admins,

Sanction and ban them,

So they wrangle and cry

They plead and reason,

To stay another season,

And all of our patience they do try

So they retire

Tempo-rar-i-ly

But then they come back

As feisty as can be!

Can't help pushin' that POV

Fish got to swim, birds got to fly,

ScienceApologist and Martinphi

Can't help pushin' that POV!

24.91.208.46 (talk) 15:05, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Physics Poll

There is currently a poll about WikiProject Physics in general. Please take some time to answer it (or part of it), as it will help coordinate and guide the future efforts of the Project. Thank you. Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 18:21, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Tachikara

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would would render it more in conformance with Misplaced Pages's policies and guidelines. Lastly, please note that if the article does get deleted, you can contact one of these admins to request that a copy be emailed to you. andy (talk) 15:32, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Well-educated ants

Hi Rracecarr. Would you mind to join us on User talk:PeR? We are discussing about your ant and its "feelings". Paolo.dL (talk) 13:29, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

About your well-educated ant

Rracecarr, I trust you and I appreciate your effort to answer my comments. Your good faith and intelligence is evident. I will comment each of the sentences in your comment on User talk:PeR.

• You are right that when I say "feel" I partly mean "interpret". But I don't think that means I'm using an unusual definition.

If you say "feel", you are using a word that in the vocabulary means something else. "interpret" or "knows" is better.

• I think the natural tendency is to regard your surroundings as your reference frame, and not yourself.

Right!

• House cats obviously do not really understand Newton's laws. Except that intuitively, they do: a cat can jump from the deck railing and land on a small branch several feet away. Clearly, the cat knew exactly what arc it would follow--it knew, intuitively, that while in the air it would move horizontally at a constant speed, and it would accelerate downward due to gravity. It took the force of gravity into account in deciding how to jump. I do not believe that the cat moves to a reference frame that moves with it while it jumps. I think it stays in the earth frame, and is aware of its own acceleration relative to that frame.

You see, even you choose to use the words "understand", "intuitively understand", "knew", "took into account". You never used the verb "feel" or "experience". Do you have the courage to admit that on Talk:Centrifugal force?

• Real cats do not have to deal with fictitious forces, but I think that a cat raised in a spinning room would grow accustomed to them. It would take them into account when jumping, just like real cats take gravity into account. It would have an intuitive grasp of the fact that the centrifugal force is always present, but that the Coriolis force only acts when the cat moves.

Be realistic. We, humans, needed centuries of history of science before Newton could (after reading the contribution of previous masters) figure out a consistent theory.

I am being realistic. There is a big difference between knowing something intuitively or instinctively and knowing it intellectually. It is self evident that cats understand Newton's laws very well, in the sense that they can predict the motion of objects (including themselves) in free fall, and apply forces to get the results they want, even though they have no actual concept of acceleration or force. Before modern science, people might have thought that heavy things fall faster than light ones, if you asked them. They might have answered that the natural state of things was rest, and that you had to do work to keep them moving. They were intellectually wrong about these things. But intuitively, they understood the laws: people back then could throw a heavy rock horizontally off a cliff and hit a target below, and they could also throw light rocks--they knew, from experience, that they had to throw both with the same speed to hit the same target, even though they did not know that they knew it. They knew that you had to apply more force to stop a cart full of rocks rolling on a horizontal surface than an empty cart, even though Newton's second law hadn't been invented yet. It is this type of "knowing" that is necessary for "feeling" forces the way I claim people do. Education is not necessary. The ant does not need any formal education to "feel" the forces, only practical experience with how things behave in her reference frame. It did not take a scientific breakthrough to learn how to throw a rock so that it hits a bird. It took the breakthrough to describe that event mathematically. The math is necessary for analyzing situations which are too complex for the intuition, but not for simple events. Those outcomes can be predicted from experience, with no formal knowledge of physics. I stand by my statement above.

• It would still "feel" these two forces even when they cancel each other out, in the sense that it would interpret the cancelation in terms of the implied movement of the cat.

Here the word "feel" is inappropriate. If it were a well-educated cat, it would be able to "imagine" them. Neither you nor a well-educated cat, even knowing the existance of these forces, would "feel" them.

• If I am standing over a trap door with my eyes closed, and it suddenly opens, the change I notice is that there is suddenly no longer a force pushing up on my feet. How do I interpret this? One way would be to figure "oh, gravity just quit for the day". But of course, that is not how I interpret things.

Right: "interpret"! You see, we can easily agree!

• I know that gravity doesn't take breaks, and that the fact that there's no upward force on my feet means that I'm falling. I don't even have to think about this: I know it in my gut, and it scares me.

Right, you "feel" it in your guts. You "feel" like you are weightless. Your experience is identical to the experience of an astronaut in microgravity. Can you deny that? Don't do it, please. You can't do it.

Terribly sorry, but I can, and I will. I do not think, if you had had both the good luck to go to space and the bad luck, back on earth, to have a trap door opened under you unexpectedly, that you would find it so easy to call the experiences "identical". They are entirely different, because on earth, you are aware of the presence of gravity, and when there's no upward force to balance it you can feel that you're falling. In space, you grow accustomed to living in an environment with no gravitational acceleration--although physically the situation is the same, it feels very different. In one case, it's ho hum things as usual, and in the other it's HOLY CRAP I'M FALLING!!!! You cannot sincerely argue that the two experiences feel the same.

• Same with the cat in the spinning room. The fact that the cat feels no force when running such that the centrifugal and coriolis forces cancel would be interpreted by the cat as an indication of the cat's movement, and as such, the cat still "feels" both forces--it knows centrifugal force "never quits" just like I know gravity doesn't, so it interprets the fact that the outer wall of the room is not pushing it inward as an indication of how it must be moving.

That's the best prove that I am right. You first wrote, correctly, that "the cat feels no force", then you wrote that he "still feels both forces". Then again, in most cases you used "knows", "interprets"! By the way, actually the Coriolis force is twice as big as the centrifugal, in our examples.

Paolo.dL (talk) 18:39, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Let me be clear here: I do not see that any of this applies to the article. I don't think we have a disagreement that is relevant to the article. I enjoy arguing about it, but I do not think the article should talk about what people feel, beyond perhaps that in accelerating frames fictitious forces are experienced in the same way as any other body force, such as gravity. So if you convince me or I convince you, it won't change what is stated in the article. Rracecarr (talk) 19:30, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, I am appalled you tried to prove the impossible. Bad news for me. I have also enjoied discussing with you. Your hamster wheel example was amazingly appropriate, and your well-educated ant was a very nice invention. But it seems it is impossible to convince you, even using your own words. In your text, you used the words "interpret", "know", "understand" much much more frequently than the word "feel".

And I thought it was impossible to deny that the free fall experience is even used to train astronauts. Astronauts are well aware that they are still in earth's gravitational field, they know they have the same weight, yet they feel weightless... If you can deny this, how can we ever have an useful discussion? I can't help wondering: have you learned anything from our discussion? Paolo.dL (talk) 19:44, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

And you were even able to maintain that we and a cat can intuitively understand Newtons laws! How comes it was so difficult for the human kind to come out with Newton's first law? You first agreed on this fact, then you ignored it in your conclusion. Honestly, you seem biased to me (I keep high my esteem for you, anyway). Some things, such as the effect of gravity, can be predicted (not felt) by our magnificent brain, thanks to God or Nature. I call this "ballistic prediction". I also know how difficult it is to reproduce this function in robot's controllers. But some other things, such as Newton's first law, are not. And by all means, Coriolis forces and the consistency of centrifugal forces (even when they are cancelled out by Coriolis forces) are much more difficult than Newton's first law. Paolo.dL (talk) 19:55, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that if you grew up and lived your whole life in a rotating room, you would think Coriolis forces and centrifugal forces were any harder for our magnificent brain to predict than gravity.

I can see things from your point of view perfectly well. Honestly, I could easily argue your side of it with someone else. But I'm basically playing devil's advocate. The word "feel" has no place in physics. It's a mushy, subjective word. What someone feels is not something you can calculate from a free body diagram. You have to take their perception of their environment into account. Although the ant and the hamster are doing exactly the same thing, and are subject to all the same forces, I still argue that they feel different things because of their different perception of their environment. You disagree. So what? It's been fun, but I think the argument is over. We both understand each others' point of view. Neither of us is wrong. To you, feel=measure. To me, feel=much more complicated and messy subjective perception dependent on previous experience. Rracecarr (talk) 20:00, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

If you like! Thank you. I am glad, anyway, that you understand my point. Thank you. It has been a pleasure to meet you. Paolo.dL (talk) 20:03, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Image without license

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Unspecified source for Image:Equaltemper.svg

Thanks for uploading Image:Equaltemper.svg. I noticed that the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you did not create this file yourself, then you will need to specify the owner of the copyright. If you obtained it from a website, then a link to the website from which it was taken, together with a restatement of that website's terms of use of its content, is usually sufficient information. However, if the copyright holder is different from the website's publisher, then their copyright should also be acknowledged.

As well as adding the source, please add a proper copyright licensing tag if the file doesn't have one already. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then the {{GFDL-self}} tag can be used to release it under the GFDL. If you believe the media meets the criteria at Misplaced Pages:Fair use, use a tag such as {{non-free fair use in|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Misplaced Pages:Image copyright tags#Fair use. See Misplaced Pages:Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their source and tagged them, too. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link. Unsourced and untagged images may be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If the image is copyrighted under a non-free license (per Misplaced Pages:Fair use) then the image will be deleted 48 hours after 19:47, 11 July 2008 (UTC). If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice? --MifterBot 19:47, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Unspecified source for Image:Equaltemper.png

Thanks for uploading Image:Equaltemper.png. I noticed that the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you did not create this file yourself, then you will need to specify the owner of the copyright. If you obtained it from a website, then a link to the website from which it was taken, together with a restatement of that website's terms of use of its content, is usually sufficient information. However, if the copyright holder is different from the website's publisher, then their copyright should also be acknowledged.

As well as adding the source, please add a proper copyright licensing tag if the file doesn't have one already. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then the {{GFDL-self}} tag can be used to release it under the GFDL. If you believe the media meets the criteria at Misplaced Pages:Fair use, use a tag such as {{non-free fair use in|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Misplaced Pages:Image copyright tags#Fair use. See Misplaced Pages:Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their source and tagged them, too. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link. Unsourced and untagged images may be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If the image is copyrighted under a non-free license (per Misplaced Pages:Fair use) then the image will be deleted 48 hours after 21:24, 11 July 2008 (UTC). If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice? --MifterBot 21:24, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I believe you will need to add a {{GFDL-self-with-disclaimers}} template to any of these images that you want to preserve. (That is the template used by Image:Comparison of some tet-scales against M3P5P7.jpg.)

--Jtir (talk) 21:40, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. Seems a little weird, but I went ahead and plunked a template in there. The svg may as well get deleted.Rracecarr (talk) 22:03, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

What is Wiki stance on related articles?

As an encyclopedia, naturally Wiki consists of many related articles, each somewhat brief and narrow in scope, but like a mosaic, building a larger picture when taken as an ensemble. To me it makes no sense to say that when one of these articles refers to another, that the referring article must repeat the arguments and repeat the citations of the first. Rather, the referring article need only be a pointer to greater detail on a related topic, and can build on that topic without the necessity of repetition of any kind beyond what clarity of exposition demands. What is the "official" Wiki guidance on this issue? Brews ohare (talk) 13:22, 15 July 2008 (UTC)