Story Friday June 3rd 2016

[hkmaly 490]

10 hours ago, hkmaly said:

If by melt you mean "explode and cover the room with a hot red mist" you are correct. 

PS: Although I guess the word "vaporize" would be better than "melt". You can't exactly melt humans (or animals and presumably Uryuom as well), as they are already mostly liquid.

3 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

1.  The prototype Will and Gillian left with Tedd was not a ranged weapon.  As our resident mad scientist tweaked the device, he set the range in increments with which he was familiar.  Perhaps 60 feet is the longest straight line distance in his lab, or in the secluded area of the yard.

I think it was ranged, as Tedd probably wouldn't able to "tweak" it so radically. On the other hand, he MIGHT quite easily tweak the range, which would explain the feet.

3 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

2.  For security purposes, certain operational details of the device, like the exact range, must remain classified.  In that case, 60 feet is probably an underestimate of the effective range, but one that does not contradict details already presented in the comic.

We the comics viewers are not supposed to be under normal rules for classified information. Besides, it's DEFAULT. Of course the MAXIMAL effective range is bigger (likely around 300 feet, just like Ellen).

3 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

3.  This answer is a quick summary for the Q&A and too much detail would just get in the way. 

It would actually make sense if the sentence would be "TF gun default power settings have range 60 feet" or something like that. I just think it's not so much longer it would be shortened like that. How the sentence is written, it seems that the range is deliberate, already-rounded value written in manual.

2 hours ago, Scotty said:

4. The distance shown in the TFG's manual would have shown the range in whatever unit of measurement Uryuoms use

See above: Any distance written in any manual will be rounded to units used in manual. Any manual originally written in imperial units contains suspiciously ugly looking numbers when translated (unless the translator is impertinent enough to aggressively round them risking they would be wrong).

Of course, it's possible that the range is 100 of relevant Uryuom units and it just happens to translate to 59.8 feets so it's safe to round it. It's just not likely. On the other hand ... note how the minimal and maximal range - 30 and 300 feet - translate to 9.144... and 91.44 ... meters, which COULD be rounded to 9 and 90 meters without being dangerously imprecise OR suspiciously ugly. So, it CAN happen. 60 feet, meanwhile, translates to 18.288 meters ; 18 looks suspiciously ugly and 20 would be dangerously imprecise.

[Don Edwards 548]

Ordinary humans, if describing a distance of 60 feet 3.141592654 inches - and NOT giving specifications of a part that must exactly fit - will call it 60 feet.

[ChaosSepher 10]

All these semantics and physics speak, and all I care is the awesome legs these ladies are showing off.

[InfiniteRemnant 141]

15 hours ago, hkmaly said:

On 6/5/2016 at 10:41 PM, hkmaly said:

If by melt you mean "explode and cover the room with a hot red mist" you are correct. 

PS: Although I guess the word "vaporize" would be better than "melt". You can't exactly melt humans (or animals and presumably Uryuom as well), as they are already mostly liquid.

It does have solid components though, and if the beam were hot enough, they might liquefy... or sublimate...

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

Fortunately, Scientific American published a guide to vaporizing humans back in 2013
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/but-not-simpler/excerpts-from-the-mad-scientiste2809`9s-handbook-so-youe28099re-ready-to-vaporize-a-human/

[Waspinator 2]

Let's do some math. As was mentioned earlier in the thread, photons do have momentum, but this is a subject that does not come up in classical physics and is in the realm of the theory of special relativity. Most high school physics classes probably don't cover it and its therefore not common knowledge. But anyway, that means they push things. The momentum of photons is equal to planck's constant (6.6*10^-34) divided by their wavelength. Lets assume green light, which has a wavelength of 5*10^-7 meters. That's 1.3*10^-27 kg*m/s. Let's say that we want to fire enough green light at an adult human (65 kg) so that if they absorbed it all they would get a 1 m/s push. We need 5*10^28 green photons for this. If I'm doing my math right, those would have an energy of 1.9*10^10 joules (19,000,000,000 joules). For reference, the energy of the bullets from a browning machine gun is apparently about 15,000 joules. So this hypothetical green light bright enough to give you a 1 m/s push? Has as much energy as 1.3 million machine gun shells. Yeah, you'd be a cloud of paste.

[Don Edwards 548]

Pharoah, your link doesn't work. It apparently has one extra character in it, the apostrophe.

Let's see if this link posts correctly. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/but-not-simpler/excerpts-from-the-mad-scientiste28099s-handbook-so-youe28099re-ready-to-vaporize-a-human/

Edit: yep, it's good.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

 

25 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:

Pharoah, your link doesn't work. It apparently has one extra character in it, the apostrophe.

Let's see if this link posts correctly. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/but-not-simpler/excerpts-from-the-mad-scientiste28099s-handbook-so-youe28099re-ready-to-vaporize-a-human/

Edit: yep, it's good.

Thanks for catching that, Don,  My lap top crashed as I was posting that so I didn't double check it properly.

[hkmaly 490]

On 06/05/2016 at 6:04 PM, Don Edwards said:

Ordinary humans, if describing a distance of 60 feet 3.141592654 inches - and NOT giving specifications of a part that must exactly fit - will call it 60 feet.

Well, maybe .... but we are talking about engineer or other science-type person describing 60 feet 7.4 inches, if you mean 20 meters.

10 hours ago, Waspinator said:

Let's do some math. As was mentioned earlier in the thread, photons do have momentum, but this is a subject that does not come up in classical physics and is in the realm of the theory of special relativity. Most high school physics classes probably don't cover it and its therefore not common knowledge. But anyway, that means they push things. The momentum of photons is equal to planck's constant (6.6*10^-34) divided by their wavelength. Lets assume green light, which has a wavelength of 5*10^-7 meters. That's 1.3*10^-27 kg*m/s. Let's say that we want to fire enough green light at an adult human (65 kg) so that if they absorbed it all they would get a 1 m/s push. We need 5*10^28 green photons for this. If I'm doing my math right, those would have an energy of 1.9*10^10 joules (19,000,000,000 joules). For reference, the energy of the bullets from a browning machine gun is apparently about 15,000 joules. So this hypothetical green light bright enough to give you a 1 m/s push? Has as much energy as 1.3 million machine gun shells. Yeah, you'd be a cloud of paste.

I was hoping that someone actually KNOWS how to compute that.

6 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/but-not-simpler/excerpts-from-the-mad-scientiste28099s-handbook-so-youe28099re-ready-to-vaporize-a-human/

So, let's put it together: to completely vaporize human, you need 3GJ. To turn him to gas, you need 142MJ. To push him back 1m/s, you need 19GJ. Completely confirmed: pushing with light is dangerous.

[ijuin 572]

And that would be why using photons for propelling things tends to only be considered for highly reflective objects (e.g. Lightsails).

[Waspinator 2]

Right, photon propulsion becomes a little more practical when they're being reflected both because that increases the momentum gain on the target and means that you don't have to absorb stupid amounts of energy. I assumed absorption instead of reflectivity to make the math easier. I don't claim to be a physics expert, but if my math was off even majorly we're still talking about stupid amounts of energy coming at something to push it.

The lightsail spaceship concept is also helped by being in space, so friction is extremely low and you can accelerate slowly without losing much speed to friction. It also relies on “free” energy sources like the sun, which is good since this is NOT a very energy efficient way to accelerate something. For the TF beam though, we're not talking about slow acceleration over months or years. It's hitting a target hard enough to knock them back instantly, so it's delivering an absurdly high amount of momentum by photon standards. Easiest explanation: magic particles (for lack of a better term) behave like photons in many ways but have significantly higher momentum.
 

[hkmaly 490]

3 hours ago, Waspinator said:

Right, photon propulsion becomes a little more practical when they're being reflected both because that increases the momentum gain on the target

Only twice. That's nice, but not THAT important.

3 hours ago, Waspinator said:

and means that you don't have to absorb stupid amounts of energy.

THIS is important.

3 hours ago, Waspinator said:

I assumed absorption instead of reflectivity to make the math easier. I don't claim to be a physics expert, but if my math was off even majorly we're still talking about stupid amounts of energy coming at something to push it.

I'm not physics expert either, but I don't think humans reflects so much light. Grass reflects 25% - do you feel more reflective than grass? ... I mean, do you usually wear clothes lighter than grass? I don't think Vlad did.

3 hours ago, Waspinator said:

The lightsail spaceship concept is also helped by being in space, so friction is extremely low

Might actually be negative. Solar wind makes MOST of particles around you, and it moves in the direction you want to move. Still, the idea usually involves BIG sail, because more surface -> more acceleration.

3 hours ago, Waspinator said:

It also relies on “free” energy sources like the sun

Sun is not free, you will see in few billions of years

There are actually concepts of using lasers to accelerate something.

3 hours ago, Waspinator said:

Easiest explanation: magic particles (for lack of a better term) behave like photons in many ways but have significantly higher momentum.

I don't think there is only one kind of magic particles. Also, they may easily behave differently based on spell. And they don't really need to conserve momentum - they don't conserve energy either.

Remember that what we SEE as a spell is not the spell itself - it's photons emitted by spell. Only Tedd sees the spell itself.