In other news today...
-
@Mason_Wheeler said in In other news today...:
@boomzilla Hmm... knives, sure, but how dangerous is a chainsaw in the hands of a baboon? If you're not able to start the motor and then hold it effectively and operate the trigger, they're basically harmless.
Dude, don’t jinx it!
-
@dcon said in In other news today...:
There is approximately 18 tons of
pressureforce being exerted by the stretched steel piano strings. In a concert grand, it is close to 30 tons ofpressureforce. The average string having about 160 pounds of tension. There are 230 strings inside a typical piano.
-
@GOG said in In other news today...:
@dkf said in In other news today...:
@dcon said in In other news today...:
Somehow, I just don't see Legos withstanding the forces needed to use actual strings. There's a reason there's a massive hunk-o-metal in a piano!
There is approximately 18 tons of pressure being exerted by the stretched steel piano strings. In a concert grand, it is close to 30 tons of pressure. The average string having about 160 pounds of tension. There are 230 strings inside a typical piano.
Oh, you'd certainly not be using metal strings! The volume would need to be a lot lower as a consequence. I was instead thinking about using various weights of ordinary string, but I've not run the numbers to see if that could produce the right range of pitches. It would also need a sounding board, but that's much more like a real piano.
I had a brief look and it appears that, for guitar strings, at least, the lowest tensions you're looking at are in the region of:
- 9.8 lbs with a .008" metal treble E, or
- 17.21 lbs with a .028" nylon treble E.
I expect that, even accounting for the shorter string lengths, stretching a number of strings tight enough to produce a range of defined pitches is outside the tolerances of a LEGO set.
The short length also matters. If I am not mistaken, shorter string produces higher tone and more taunt string produces higher note. So the short strings would need less tension to compensate. The problem is that lower tension means lower volume, so a very good resonator would be needed, but there is none at all.
-
@Bulb That's why I said "even accounting for the shorter string lengths". A typical guitar scale length is 25.5" (64.77 cm), the dimensions of the piano are over 8.5” (22.5cm) high, 12” (30.5cm) wide and 13.5” (35.5cm) deep (which, honestly, seems a weird way to describe it), so the longest strings are maybe 20cm long? That's roughly a third of the guitar scale length, so - assuming a proportionate decrease of tension (pitch would matter too) - we might get something like 5 lbs (nylon) or 3 lbs (metal) per string.
The piano has 25 keys and, hence, 25 strings. Eyeballing the photos, five of those strings appear to be 1/3 of the longest string length, four appear to be 1/2 the length and the rest appear to be full length.
Again, assuming proportionate decrease of tension with length, and the lower of our two tensions (3 lbs for the longest strings) we get:
- 5 x 1 lbs (shortest strings): total 5 lbs
- 4 x 1.5 lbs (medium strings): total 6 lbs
- 16 x 3 lbs (longest strings): total 48 lbs
Total string tension: 59 lbs
This is hardly a realistic calculation because different pitches require different tensions and will usually involve different gagues of string, but it gives us some idea of how much tension would actually be involved.
-
@GOG said in In other news today...:
deep (which, honestly, seems a weird way to describe it)
Common here for any piece of furniture set against the wall - height is obvious, width is the dimension parallel to the wall, and depth is the dimension perpendicular to the wall. My desk is 80cm high, 300cm wide, and 80cm deep.
For a piano, I expect the depth is the dimension perpendicular to the keyboard.
-
@PleegWat I suppose that makes sense. In that case, I expect the longest strings to be closer to 30 cm.
-
@PleegWat said in In other news today...:
I expect the depth is the dimension perpendicular to the keyboard.
That would be up.
-
@Zecc That's an upright piano.
-
@Bulb said in In other news today...:
If I am not mistaken, shorter string produces higher tone and more taunt string produces higher note.
Why are you taunting those poor strings? They're just trying to do their job and produce beautiful music. It's not their fault they're so high-strung all the time!
-
-
-
@Mason_Wheeler You'd also be high-strung if someone told you C strings and C# strings differ only in length.
-
@Applied-Mediocrity said in In other news today...:
@Mason_Wheeler You'd also be high-strung if someone told you C strings and C# strings differ only in length.
Aye. C strings have a '\0' at the end.
-
@GOG said in In other news today...:
Aye. C strings have a '\0' at the end.
No, they haven't.ve for the first time managed to use electricity to switch on magnetism in a material that’s normally non-magnetic. The fi꤀�녙Ӯ콿�᧩쥀ⶌ杻ㆧꔌ物켻쩭Trolleyb
-
First, they placed the pyrite in contact with an electrolyte – an ionic liquid they compare to Gatorade.
They had previously tried using water, which didn't work. The lead scientist explained, "water, like from the toilet? I never seen magnets grow out of no toilet"
-
-
Why are they so interested in the stonks guy's crotch
-
@Bulb said in In other news today...:
@dcon said in In other news today...:
There is approximately 18 tons of
pressureforce being exerted by the stretched steel piano strings. In a concert grand, it is close to 30 tons ofpressureforce. The average string having about 160 pounds of tension. There are 230 strings inside a typical piano.You do know that mass is not a measure of force? Your is just as "correct" as the original one.
-
@Rhywden The imperial system uses pounds for force (equivalent to gravitational force in Earth's gravity on one lb) so by extension a(n imperial) ton could be used the same way
-
@hungrier I don't acknowledge this system as a valid way to measure anything. Get with the times already.
I mean, measuring weight in stones? We're not in the Stone Age anymore.
-
@Bulb said in In other news today...:
@dcon said in In other news today...:
There is approximately 18 tons of
pressureforce being exerted by the stretched steel piano strings. In a concert grand, it is close to 30 tons ofpressureforce. The average string having about 160 pounds of tension. There are 230 strings inside a typical piano.Talk to Google. I just copy/pasted!
-
-
-
-
@loopback0 said in In other news today...:
I’m betting it’s got a “Florida Man” friend he’s keeping supplied with flip-flops.
-
@hungrier said in In other news today...:
The imperial system uses pounds for force (equivalent to gravitational force in Earth's gravity on one lb)
Imagine if standard gravity only needed to be accounted for when you were working with gravity, rather than every time except that.
Quick: what force will accelerate 1 pound by 1 foot per second squared? For bonus points, how does that answer make any goddamn practical sense?
-
@kazitor there is also the lb-mass (pounds, but mass not weight). For US engineering, they use that. I believe it's set so that 1 lb-weight == 1 lb-mass * 1 ft/s^2, but I may be wrong and
-
Testing in production? Or producing in test?
The R.I. Division of Taxation, which is under the umbrella of the Revenue Department, uses the names “Mickey Mouse” and “Walt Disney” on dummy checks for internal testing, but the test-image files were mistakenly assigned to the real checks — resulting in the error, according to a spokesperson.
-
@boomzilla Disney lawsuit in 3... 2... 1...
-
@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
I believe it's set so that 1 lb-weight == 1 lb-mass * 1 ft/s^2
Nope; 1 lb × 1 ft s⁻² ≈ 0.03108 lbf, and it doesn’t make any goddamn practical sense. Retard units get that name for a reason, y’know.
-
@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
@kazitor there is also the lb-mass (pounds, but mass not weight). For US engineering, they use that. I believe it's set so that 1 lb-weight == 1 lb-mass * 1 ft/s^2, but I may be wrong and
WTF would 1ft/s^2 even mean in this context? That’s surely not the earth gravity constant.
-
@topspin said in In other news today...:
@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
@kazitor there is also the lb-mass (pounds, but mass not weight). For US engineering, they use that. I believe it's set so that 1 lb-weight == 1 lb-mass * 1 ft/s^2, but I may be wrong and
WTF would 1ft/s^2 even mean in this context? That’s surely not the earth gravity constant.
@kazitor as well
There are two different, incompatible meanings of pound-mass. Engineers, amirite.
-
@Benjamin-Hall yeah, but
The pound-force is the product of one avoirdupois pound (exactly 0.45359237 kg) and the standard acceleration due to gravity, 9.80665 m/s2 (about 32.174049 ft/s2).
And 32.174 != 1.
-
@Benjamin-Hall
I didn’t find anything about alternative pound-masses, especially not on the linked page. If you’re talking about “slugs” then call them “slugs,” because I’m not finding anything that equates “slug” and “pound-mass” either.Which is all a distraction anyway, because nobody uses slugs. Nobody knows what a slug is. In
retardUnited States customary units, the principle unit of mass is a pound and the principle unit of force is a pound-force, and that is completely impractical for anything useful.
-
@kazitor look at the column labeled EE. That's engineering imperial units.
-
@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
look at the column labeled EE.
which is under the column “weight” because it describes a system where the unit for force is inexplicably bound to gravity for no goddamn practical reason. Did you… did you miss the part of that column where the equation divides by gravity?
The table in question. Save a click, save a warthog
-
@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
engineering imperial units
As an engineer in America, I am very happy to say that (even 40 years ago, when I was studying engineering) I never learned anything about engineering imperial units. They were probably mentioned in passing (I do recognize the term "slug", but I'd have to look up what it is), but we never did any significant amount of work using them. If I were to somehow find myself in Weirdland, where I was required to use imperial units for engineering, I'd have to look up the conversion factors, convert everything to SI, do the calculations, and convert back to imperial for the final result.
-
@HardwareGeek said in In other news today...:
@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
engineering imperial units
As an engineer in America, I am very happy to say that (even 40 years ago, when I was studying engineering) I never learned anything about engineering imperial units. They were probably mentioned in passing (I do recognize the term "slug", but I'd have to look up what it is), but we never did any significant amount of work using them. If I were to somehow find myself in Weirdland, where I was required to use imperial units for engineering, I'd have to look up the conversion factors, convert everything to SI, do the calculations, and convert back to imperial for the final result.
Yeah. I never said it was sane, but it exists. And there are a lot of SI-based unit systems that are even less sane. And pieces of the imperial system that are exponentially less sane.
-
@Benjamin-Hall Shed, outhouse and barn come to mind.
Yes, those are actual units.
-
@Zecc said in In other news today...:
@dkf said in In other news today...:
@Zecc That's an upright piano.
But keys are horizontal?
Depends on your dexterity..
-
@GOG said in In other news today...:
@Applied-Mediocrity said in In other news today...:
@Mason_Wheeler You'd also be high-strung if someone told you C strings and C# strings differ only in length.
Aye. C strings have a '\0' at the end.
Which end?
-
@HardwareGeek said in In other news today...:
If I were to somehow find myself in Weirdland, where I was required to use imperial units for engineering, I'd have to look up the conversion factors, convert everything to SI, do the calculations, and convert back to imperial for the final result.
Didn't NASA try to do most of that with the Mars Climate Orbiter? The problem being when they missed one of the steps?
-
@PJH said in In other news today...:
@HardwareGeek said in In other news today...:
If I were to somehow find myself in Weirdland, where I was required to use imperial units for engineering, I'd have to look up the conversion factors, convert everything to SI, do the calculations, and convert back to imperial for the final result.
Didn't NASA try to do most of that with the Mars Climate Orbiter? The problem being when they missed one of the steps?
An investigation indicated that the failure resulted from a navigational error due to commands from Earth being sent in English units (in this case, pound-seconds) without being converted into the metric standard (Newton-seconds).
The error caused the orbiter to miss its intended orbit (87 to 93 miles or 140 to 50 kilometers) and to fall into the Martian atmosphere at approximately 35 miles (57 kilometers) in altitude and to disintegrate due to atmospheric stresses.
So not a round-trip conversion, but a communication issue. The system expected metric units but was given english ones.
Another failure of using primitive data types!
double
can't tell you that it's supposed to be metric, so you can plug in any random number in there!
-
@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
@Benjamin-Hall Shed, outhouse and barn come to mind.
Yes, those are actual units.
Are those the imperial variants of milli-, centi, and deci-Jeff?!
-
@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
@Benjamin-Hall Shed, outhouse and barn come to mind.
Yes, those are actual units.
Wikipedia has an entire list. Some of which are actual, some are just to see the fishies.
Physicist Paul Dirac was known among his colleagues for his precise yet taciturn nature. His colleagues in Cambridge jokingly defined a unit of a dirac which was one word per hour.[47]
Banana equivalent dose, the amount of radiation exposure gained from eating an average banana.[41]
Barn-megaparsec
This unit is similar in concept to the attoparsec, combining very large and small scales. When a barn (a very small unit of area used for measuring the cross sectional area of atomic nuclei) is multiplied by a megaparsec (a very large unit of length used for measuring the distances between galaxies), the result is a human-scaled unit of volume approximately equal to 2⁄3 of a teaspoon (about 3 ml).A Wiffle, also referred to as a WAM for Wiffle (ball) Assisted Measurement, is equal to a sphere 89 millimeters (3.5 inches) in diameter – the size of a Wiffle ball, a perforated, light-weight plastic ball frequently used by marine biologists as a size reference in photos to measure corals and other objects.[20][21] The spherical shape makes it omnidirectional and perfect for taking a speedy measurement, and the open design also allows it to avoid being crushed by water pressure. Wiffle balls are a much cheaper alternative to using two reference lasers, which often pass straight through gaps in thin corals.
-
@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
Barn-megaparsec
This unit is similar in concept to the attoparsec, combining very large and small scales. When a barn (a very small unit of area used for measuring the cross sectional area of atomic nuclei) is multiplied by a megaparsec (a very large unit of length used for measuring the distances between galaxies), the result is a human-scaled unit of volume approximately equal to 2⁄3 of a teaspoon (about 3 ml).I've not heard of that one, but I have heard of the barn-hubble, a unit of volume roughly equal to thirteen litres, or in sensible units, about three and a half gallons.
-
@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
@kazitor look at the column labeled EE. That's engineering imperial units.
“poundal” != “force-pound”.
-
@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
Another failure of using primitive data types!
double
can't tell you that it's supposed to be metric, so you can plug in any random number in there!
-
@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
Another failure of using primitive data types! double can't tell you that it's supposed to be metric, so you can plug in any random number in there!
... static_assert(1q_km / 1q_s == 1000q_m_per_s); ... Speed auto v1 = avg_speed(220q_km, 2q_h); ...
(Not sure what the
q
is about, this was just one of the first hits demonstrating this; there are a pile of different libraries out there. This one does try to get into the C++ standard, though.)
-
@cvi said in In other news today...:
@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
Another failure of using primitive data types! double can't tell you that it's supposed to be metric, so you can plug in any random number in there!
... static_assert(1q_km / 1q_s == 1000q_m_per_s); ... Speed auto v1 = avg_speed(220q_km, 2q_h); ...
(Not sure what the
q
is about, this was just one of the first hits demonstrating this; there are a pile of different libraries out there. This one does try to get into the C++ standard, though.)I don’t understand (i.e. I had that thought years ago) why they did all this complicated compile-time unit check and conversion (using actual rationals) stuff for the
timechrono library, but didn’t go the pretty obvious extra step of enabling other units.
With the same type system approach you can make it so that e.g. dividing a length by a time gives a velocity, etc., and make it completely general.