Learn something new everyday!

[Kel_Grym 1,917]

Someone once said that you aren't living if you don't learn something new everyday.

 

So I made this thread.

 

If you learned something new today, post it here. All genre's of knowledge welcome here. History, Science, Math, General life lessons, Social stuff, Technical things you learn on the job, 'Street-knowledge', whatever...

 

Feel free to cite the new thing you learned if it's cite-able, and keep discussion to a minimum so the thread doesn't become all about one thing. (you can always take discussions to pm or make a new thread for that)

 

The primary purpose of this thread is to just post something new you learned today and to build a repository of facts n knowledge so others can come to this thread and do the same.

 

Don't get cute and repost something new you learned from this thread

 

Something new I learned today:

 

A dime has 118 ridges around its edge, but a quarter has 119.

 

 

[Guest90210 3,568]

Today, I learned that on YouTube, if you press "K" on your keyboard, it pauses the video, no matter where you last clicked on the screen. Also, "J" takes you back 10 seconds, while "L" takes you forward by 10.

Edited December 16, 2014 by Rivendare

[Neutral 1,185]

Abraham Lincoln apparantly didn't care about the slaves and said he could have fought the war without freeing them.

[Justin_Case001 4,881]

Today I learned that the word for making someone out to be a villain is "vilify", not "villainize".  Shoulda known that one.

[Jeric 46,850]

I just learned -  the division symbol ÷ actually has a name -  Obelus

[SasQ 1,376]

Hmm... Let me think which one is best to share...

 

Dear Princess Celestia ;J

Today I learned a neat trick to "unzip" nested radicals, which is so easy that I can sometimes do it in my head

For example if I have √( 3 + 2√2 ), I can unpack it into √2 + 1.

Here's how:

 

STEP 1:

Square the second number under the radical and subtract from the square of the first:

3² - 2²×2 = 9 - 8 = 1

take the square root of the result:

√1 = 1

and subtract that from the original expression under the square root:

3 + 2√2 - 1 = 2 + 2√2

 

STEP 2:

Double the first number under the radical:

2×2 = 4

take its square root, too:

√4 = 2

and divide it out from the result from STEP 2:

( 2 + 2√2 ) / 2 = 1 + √2

and this is the answer

 

Works for other nested radicals equally well, try it

 

A dime has 118 ridges around its edge, but a quarter has 119.

Then here you have a bonus:

Those ridges around the coins were there to avoid scratching off some thin layers of metal and then smelting them together to make a completely new coin out of them by the forgers

Edit: Don't know if the number of ridges is meaningful, though.

 

just learned -  the division symbol ÷ actually has a name -  Obelus

Thanks, now I learned that too

 

In return I can tell you that the minus symbol "–" of subtraction came from the fact that it represents a difference between two places, which is a straight line segment. (Side note: "straight line" literally means "stretched rope" in Old English.) The minus sign placed before a number, like in –3, is actually a left-over notation from 0–3 (We just so much used to omit that 0 that we forgot it was once there.)

 

The radical symbol I used above, √, is actually a stylized small letter "r" with one of its lines stretched over a number. It came from the fact that it was once written in words: "radix", which in Latin meant "root". Later it was shortened as "rad.", and then just "r.", until ultimately just the small letter "r" remained.

 

The multiplication symbol "×" (a small cross) came from the fact that when multiplying numbers, one usually needs to "cross-multiply" their constituent parts (for example, the decimal digits). That cross mark is then a graphical reminder of how to do it

 

And the addition symbol "+" came just from putting counting sticks (or bones) one on another when adding them up.

 

The equal sign "=" represents two parallel lines which, according to the guy who invented this symbol, reminded me the most obvious geometrical objects which are equal to each other.

Edited December 16, 2014 by SasQ

[Alia 158]

I’ve made myself a good tradition- every time, before goin’ to sleep, pray to princess Celestia and tell her what’s new I learned yesterday. If I have nothin’ to tell her, I feel embarrassed.

[Ziggy + Angel + Rain 11,302]

Today I learned (while trapped in a waiting room) that "The Talk" is marginally better than "The View."  And that soap operas - while not to my taste - sometimes have inappropriately fun, jazzy intro themes. xD

[Cosmik Vek 764]

I learned that "brony" is actually a polish word that means harrows in english

proof: https://translate.google.ca/#pl/en/brony

[SasQ 1,376]

As a Pole, I confirm That's why there's a problem with using this word in Polish. I prefer using other words instead, such as "poniacze" (pony fans), "patatajce" (from onomatopeic word for galloping) or something similar.

 

Edit:

Today I learned that it is possible to play real-time video with color and sound on an old 8088 CPU, thanks to this excellent hacker. And here's his own proof:

 

 

He described on his blog how did he managed to do what everyone (including himself) thought was impossible, and even more: to improve his last record in this subject by clever low-level optimizations (e.g. when there was too few CPU throughput left due to too many branching and memory reads, he decided to get rid of the branching altogether and put the video data in the code itself which decompresses itself on the fly as video display instructions! )

 

Oh, and I learned from him this wise motto:

 

 

"When you reach the top, keep climbing"

Well said... Edited December 16, 2014 by SasQ

[VictiniStar101 214]

Today I learned It's not wise to play a game that you are only half-decent at if you are depressed.

[Lisa 5,553]

Today I learned that people actually agree with one of my point of views.

[Kel_Grym 1,917]

Something new I learned recently is that English leather is smoother than American leather because they don't use barbwire fences for their cattle.

 

Also, horse leather breathes better than cow leather because cows don't have pores to sweat out of.

[Treble Bolt 1,122]

The spikes on a Stegosaurus’s tail are scientifically named after a Far Side comic, the thagomizer....

 

 

Goes to show you don't need to be a scientist to do Science...

[Guest90210 3,568]

Recently I learned about Grooveshark, a great website that streams tons of music for free. So far, there hasn't a single album I couldn't find on there

[SasQ 1,376]

Today I learned how to put Pinkie Pie into a JAR, with a bucket of coffee from Java and a bit of OpenGL, and then put on my web server for people to download her. In the meantime, she drinks that coffee and becomes very excited so when they open the JAR in their system, she jumps out and starts jumping around with a happy smile (Actually, she apparently can multiply through the Mirror Pool, too ;-J ).

 

If you want to see pink fluffy Pinkie Pies jumping on rainbows, then download this JAR and run it

 

http://sasq.comyr.com/Stuff/Java/JOGL_test/TransparentTextures/TextureQuads.jar

 

Currently only Windows, Linux and MacOS X are supported.

(...only? it's actually more than most game developers usually support! ;-P but oh well...)

 

If it doesn't run on your system by double-clicking on the JAR, you can run it from the command line as well. The spell is really simple:

 

java -jar TextureQuads.jar

In case you had any problems with running it, tell me about it and supply the console log (that is, what errors it prints out).

 

Translation for geeks:

 

I learned how to write a program in Java which uses OpenGL library for hardware-accelerated graphics rendering, and used it to pop up a window with textured quadrilaterals in it, and use them to display some moving semi-transparent Pinkie Pie images from a PNG file. Then I learned how to put it with all the libraries needed into a self-contained JAR file (Java ARchive) which can be run by users who don't have JOGL libraries installed.

 

It is a warm-up before writing some more serious code, perhaps a pony game... We'll see...

 

You can also peek into the source code. It is located in the same directory where the JAR file lays.

 

And for those who cannot run it, here's a screenshot:

 

 

Edited January 15, 2015 by SasQ

[Shanks 10,816]

Abraham Lincoln apparantly didn't care about the slaves and said he could have fought the war without freeing them.

Not entirely, he was against slavery but saw the preservation of the union as the most important thing only freeing the slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation as a war measure against the rebel sates while not using this against the southern states which remained in the union. It was commonly believed at the time and even as far back as the founding fathers that slavery would inevitably fall out of favor and that it wasn't worth risking the union in order to end slavery. Lincoln did have to struggle though between appeasing his base without alienating moderates and those outside his party that were still loyal to the union. With that said though it is indeed true that Lincoln did not walk on water, if anything he did quite a lot of questionable things including suspending Habaes Corpus, shutting down newspapers critical of the government and advocating a war strategy that at times was a bit excessive (especially in the case of General Sherman).

[FancyHorse 1,209]

I had learned that a human life actually has monetary value (not in a literal sense, since slavery isn't a legal practice). Adding in the cost of violence, GDP, and the standard of living: the average human life is worth 7.2.million in USD.

 

Course I've known this knowledge for sometime and the numbers may have changed so I'll.update when I reaffirm.

Edited January 15, 2015 by IllusivePony

[SasQ 1,376]

@, nice Now convert it to millihitlers

 

Edited January 15, 2015 by SasQ

[Neutral 1,185]

I have learned that there is a thread which you can learn new things.
Oh and that the headgear the soldiers use in the American civil war is not actually called a kepi but it's called a forage cap.

[Kel_Grym 1,917]

I recently-ish kinda learned/figured out/theorized that the reason why it always seems like the trip back from the next town over seems shorter than the trip from home, is because new information takes the brain longer to process than old information.

 

If you haven't been to the next town over in a while (or someplace completely new) the brain takes a bit longer to process that information...however, on the trip back, it seems shorter because the brain has an easier time processing the data since you've been that route before.

 

I suppose its a bit subjective, but its the only thing that makes sense whenever I come back home from longer than normal trips.

[Milky Jade 138]

I like the spirit of this thread.

 

Today I learned that (BBC) Dr. Watson's sidearm is actually an army issue SIG Sauer P226 (which is issued to british troops in afghanistan).

 

The more you know.jpg

@,

Heyyy.... you too are a candidate for Tor Norretrander's User Illusion. The mechanics of information processing gets special attention in this book. Amazon it baby

[Scootaloodle 1,622]

Today I learnt that Subaru translated from Japanese into English means 'Unite' and has something to do with stars to.

[VitalSpark 1,830]

I learnt this a while back, but you can learn it today.

 

I learnt why the coldest part of Winter usually comes a month or so after the shortest day of the year, instead of them occurring at around the same time as you might expect.

 

Imagine a room, heated by a heating system which is set to come on at midnight, and switch off at midday, every day.

 

When is the room at its coldest? Not at 6 pm, right in the middle of the period when the heating is switched off! It's coldest right at the moment the heating switches itself back on.

 

Of course when it comes to the sun heating the earth, it's not a simple on/off switch. There's a gradient. But the same principle applies. The coldest time of year happens significantly after the time when we're receiving the lowest amount of energy from the sun.

 

(And of course the same applies to the hottest time of year and the longest day of the year.)

 

 

Today I learned that (BBC) Dr. Watson's sidearm is actually an army issue SIG Sauer P226 (which is issued to british troops in afghanistan).

 

And did you know that in the Arthur Conan Doyle novel, A Study in Scarlet, it is established that Watson served in the Second Anglo-Afghan War, making it a very appropriate weapon for a modernized Watson to carry.

[Milky Jade 138]

@,

What, you mean this beauty?

Yeah. It's kind of what I'm hinting at: love towards detail. Of course it wouldn't be out of line for the props guys to know someone from the british army, and there's also the trouble of doctors being listed as non-combatants, but I'm guessing it was deliberate.