Ask a Nerd. Or Ask a Puddle of Water. I'm Not Picky.

[Duality 10,738]

8 hours ago, Frostgage said:

What math homework problem gave you the most trouble, even if it wasn't necessarily the most difficult?

I don't actually recall any maths problems that ever gave me trouble. That is not to say that I never found any troublesome, of course, but that I only dwell on (and thus remember) maths problems that I find enjoyable. There was an outstanding calculus problem I once did (in fact, I may have mentioned it before; it's one of my favourites) that consisted only of the premise "Cut a pizza slice of angle theta from a disc. Curl the resultant part-disc into a cone, connecting sliced edges. Find the angle theta that maximises the volume of the resultant cone." Took me hours to work out, and I still remember it years later. 

EDIT: Actually, in retrospect, I do remember one problem that really confused me, because it was a complicated question and my answer consistently failed to line up with what the maths textbook said was the answer. I emailed it to my Cambridge-mathematician uncle with a plea for illumination, and he verified the accuracy of my answer plus worked out the exact error that the textbook manufacturers had made to give that particular wrong answer in the back of the book.

Edited February 3, 2019 by Duality

[Frostgage 7,972]

How much of the periodic table do you know?

[Duality 10,738]

Just now, Frostgage said:

How much of the periodic table do you know?

I know all of it.

It is trivial to sequentially add 1 to the atomic number of each element to determine the next one, so all that is left are the period patterning rules, namely:

1. The table, as of 2019, has been completed up to the end of the seventh period,
2. The beginning of each period corresponds to the beginning of a new electron shell being filled in the neutral elements' electron configurations,
3. The inner shell of electrons in atoms contains a maximum of two electrons, the second shell of electrons contains a maximum of eight, the third shell contains a maximum of eight, the fourth shell contains a maximum of 18, the fifth contains a maximum of 18, the sixth contains a maximum of 32, and the seventh contains a maximum of 32.

Simple double-check for the third point: 2 + 8 + 8 + 18 + 18 + 32 + 32 = 118, which is the atomic number of the last element in the table.

Following these rules to arrange the periods and columns of the table, the entire periodic table to date may be obtained. 

 

 

 

If you mean the names of each element in connection with their atomic number, though, I probably know less than I can count on my hands. 

[TigerGeekGuy 4,659]

On 1/26/2019 at 2:59 AM, Duality said:

Says the one who watched Guardians of the Galaxy II after I did. 

 

On 1/26/2019 at 2:59 AM, Duality said:

Business must have been terrible; it's in the middle of nowhere.

Exactly.

 

On 1/26/2019 at 2:59 AM, Duality said:

As with several unfortunate dichotomies that people argue about as if they're incompatible, it's a balance between the two. About 50% of one's personality is determined by genetics, from the statistics I've heard, so by application of fancy mathmatics one can determine that this leaves 50% to be determined by upbringing. Even the Wikipedia page on it states outright that the debate was considered an outdated viewpoint by the early 2000s. 

yesh gud, vury gud

 

Interrogatives:

1. Just how well-dressed is Slendermane?

2. Thoughts on petrifying wells?

3. Who would win in an epic fight to the death, Tom or Bloomberg?

4. How many times can you skip a stone?

5. What proposed method to clean up the space junk in orbit around Earth do you think is most viable?

6. RIP the Opportunity? 

[Duality 10,738]

22 hours ago, TigerGeekGuy said:

Just how well-dressed is Slendermane?

Almost as much so as me. *flaunts*

22 hours ago, TigerGeekGuy said:

Thoughts on petrifying wells?

Poor innocent wells. Why would anyone want to scare them that much?

22 hours ago, TigerGeekGuy said:

Who would win in an epic fight to the death, Tom or Bloomberg?

Tom is made out of literal solidified lava. Bloomberg is made out of squishy plantflesh. It doesn't even matter how low Tom's ATK modifiers are; Bloomberg would be hard-pressed to scrape so much as a single health point off him.

22 hours ago, TigerGeekGuy said:

How many times can you skip a stone?

I think my record was something like ten skips when my rock broke in three pieces after its second skip and each piece skipped another couple of times. 

22 hours ago, TigerGeekGuy said:

What proposed method to clean up the space junk in orbit around Earth do you think is most viable?

They seem to think the harpoon method is the most feasible. My pick, however, would be a scattering of high-powered (and sufficiently shielded) electromagnets with a few months worth of charge throughout orbit so they'd just accumulate as much junk as possible and then fall back into the atmosphere.

22 hours ago, TigerGeekGuy said:

RIP the Opportunity? 

[TigerGeekGuy 4,659]

Interrogatives:

1. Is our universe a simulation?

2. What do you think of Dyson Spheres?

3. What happened to the Roanoke Colony?

4. What do you think happened to Elisa Lam?

5. Personal favorite SCP?

[Duality 10,738]

21 minutes ago, TigerGeekGuy said:

Is our universe a simulation?

Nah. It'd have more glitches if it was.

22 minutes ago, TigerGeekGuy said:

What do you think of Dyson Spheres?

From a physics standpoint, they look like perfectly reasonable constructs. From an engineering standpoint, they're a ludicrously-hard-to-construct array of machines such that if any one of them malfunctioned and/or exploded, they could take out a whole swathe of other ones with their orbiting debris, much like what happens in Earth's orbit with space junk and satellites. In fact, I suspect there isn't enough economically harvestable material in the entire solar system to create so much as a tenth of one, let alone to create a system to channel the collected energy anywhere useful on top of that. Plus, you'd have to get our entire civilisation in on the idea for it to get off the ground (and potentially relocate our entire civilisation to the surface of the sphere so we can actually use its energy), which is definitely never going to happen.

30 minutes ago, TigerGeekGuy said:

What happened to the Roanoke Colony?

They probably joined and integrated with nearby Native American tribes due to a period of severe famine. A fair bit of DNA evidence, most written accounts from the time and a smattering of archaeological links all seem to back up that theory.

40 minutes ago, TigerGeekGuy said:

What do you think happened to Elisa Lam?

Now that one's unsettling. I doubt anyone could say for sure; my guesses would be either a psychotic episode of some description or someone actually murdering her in a way that the autopsy couldn't pick up.

50 minutes ago, TigerGeekGuy said:

Personal favorite SCP?

Oh, that one's easy. SCP-609, the Ontological 6-Ball(TM). Can't beat something that possesses the highest and most fundamental form of reality. 

[ZethaPonderer 2,196]

Do you bubble, drip or splash?

[Duality 10,738]

6 hours ago, ZethaPonderer said:

Do you bubble, drip or splash?

I drip and occasionally splash, but I don't bubble. I do ripple and moisten quite often, however. 

[TigerGeekGuy 4,659]

On 3/27/2019 at 2:17 AM, Duality said:

Now that one's unsettling. I doubt anyone could say for sure; my guesses would be either a psychotic episode of some description or someone actually murdering her in a way that the autopsy couldn't pick up.

IKR.

 

Inquiries:

1. Who is your favorite background pony?

2. What, to you, makes FIM so special?

3. How much damage do you estimate would happen should the entirely of the Earth experience reversed gravity for five seconds?

4. Thoughts on the Island of Dolls?

5. If you and Maud were to participate in competitive geology trivia against one another, who would win?

[Duality 10,738]

18 hours ago, TigerGeekGuy said:

Who is your favorite background pony?

Derpy may be a cliche response, but there's just something about her bubbliness that hits me right in the heart. 

18 hours ago, TigerGeekGuy said:

What, to you, makes FIM so special?

Adorable innocence coupled with down-to-earth personalities and morals.

18 hours ago, TigerGeekGuy said:

How much damage do you estimate would happen should the entirely of the Earth experience reversed gravity for five seconds?

Potential consequences in the order I thought of them:

Gravity at the ISS is something like 90% Earth surface gravity - the only thing keeping things in orbit is the sheer speed at which they move horizontally, which in the case of the ISS is on the order of kilometers per second. So, for a start, everything we've got in orbit will start flying away from Earth very quickly indeed. I don't know if they'd continue flying away or deorbit and crash once normal gravity resumed, but it'd certainly destroy/decommission all our satellites, especially GPS ones where precise positioning in orbit is crucial.

Buildings and their foundations are designed exclusively with downwards/sideways forces in mind, so all our houses and apartments and so on would either uproot themselves entirely out of the ground (especially those with pile or slab foundations) or suffer fatal structural damage and probably collapse once normal gravity resumed. Powerful earthquakes can level entire cities by causing the ground to move up and down a mere few meters, and this is vastly more drastic.

Finally, and by far most destructively, in the span of five seconds, the oceans of the world (and, I suspect, vast swathes of dirt and loose rock across the planet, not to mention large volumes of magma beneath the Earth's crust) will collectively fall 125 meters upwards. Once normal gravity resumes, this will all fall back down again, releasing octillions of joules of energy and absolutely vaporising what used to be the surface of Earth. At this scale of energy release, I suspect that the vast majority of water in the oceans would instantaneously turn into steam as it hit the ground and expand quickly enough to blast our entire atmosphere into space.

18 hours ago, TigerGeekGuy said:

Thoughts on the Island of Dolls?

The guy who placed all those dolls around the place was definitely not doing his paranoia any favours. 

19 hours ago, TigerGeekGuy said:

If you and Maud were to participate in competitive geology trivia against one another, who would win?

Definitely her. I'm a geotechnical engineer, not a geologist. I could set her up against one of my engineering geologist colleagues, though. 

[Frostgage 7,972]

What is one of your favorite songs? You've been holding out on me but I know you have one

[ZethaPonderer 2,196]

WARNING: Retarded SJW Questions Incoming, disclaimer, I’m not an SJW. Just doing this to be funny. No need to get triggerred. 

Is Oxygen promoting polygamy towards them 2 hydrogens in order to form the water we know? Is the water that is formed from the binding of 1 Oxygen Atom and 2 Hydrogen Atoms inherently based on the foundation of sexism? Is this not polygamy, therefore sexism?

[Duality 10,738]

6 hours ago, Frostgage said:

What is one of your favorite songs? You've been holding out on me but I know you have one

I fear that no description I could give it would do it justice, but here you go.

5 hours ago, ZethaPonderer said:

Is Oxygen promoting polygamy towards them 2 hydrogens in order to form the water we know? Is the water that is formed from the binding of 1 Oxygen Atom and 2 Hydrogen Atoms inherently based on the foundation of sexism? Is this not polygamy, therefore sexism?

Objection: Atoms are too smol and adorable to be dragged into political debacles. Leave my quantum waifus out of this.

[Frostgage 7,972]

25 minutes ago, Duality said:

I fear that no description I could give it would do it justice, but here you go.

I really need to memorize this URL

[Frostgage 7,972]

what is the last eatery you visited?

[Duality 10,738]

On 6/7/2019 at 3:18 PM, Frostgage said:

what is the last eatery you visited?

I visited it just yesterday, in fact! It was the classiest place I've ever visited - a skyline-views award-winning buffet (yes, buffet) restaurant with twenty different types of cheese and over fifty cuts of meat available, not to mention all the salads, seafood, salamis, sushi, and platters of pretty much any cuisine you could ask for. My work really pulls out all the stops for their biannual events. 

[Sparklefan1234 161,907]

"How can water be nerdy?" 

[Duality 10,738]

On 6/9/2019 at 6:29 PM, Sparklefan1234 said:

"How can water be nerdy?" 

Actually, water is the only entity with the ability to be nerdy. Nerdy humans (and nerdy horses, for that matter) get their nerdiness solely from the roughly-73%-of-total-composition worth of water in their brain. Truly you mortals owe much to my power. 

[Widdershins 9,955]

@Duality 

 Oh! Before I forget again! I wanted to ask!

 If you knew any Smol Books!

 I keep running into the issue of not being within arm's reach of a book at every moment of the day. Like, work slogs slow sometimes of course & reading does make me feel notably better. But, natch, one cannot carry a book into all situations and not risk aforesaid tome to not get stained or otherwise besmirched. I do, however, tend to wear some nifty cargo pants! With some handy-dandy durable pockets that are about, oh roughly six inch by sick inch square. An odd shape, to be sure, but...

 You know any small books, oft referred to as "Pocketbooks" that I may carry about on my person that fit aforesaid size of a human palm?

 Sadly, this means I cannot choose topic since I am favoring portability. But that hardly detracts from the joys of reading!

[Duality 10,738]

22 minutes ago, Widdershins said:

Oh! Before I forget again! I wanted to ask!

 If you knew any Smol Books!

 I keep running into the issue of not being within arm's reach of a book at every moment of the day. Like, work slogs slow sometimes of course & reading does make me feel notably better. But, natch, one cannot carry a book into all situations and not risk aforesaid tome to not get stained or otherwise besmirched. I do, however, tend to wear some nifty cargo pants! With some handy-dandy durable pockets that are about, oh roughly six inch by sick inch square. An odd shape, to be sure, but...

 You know any small books, oft referred to as "Pocketbooks" that I may carry about on my person that fit aforesaid size of a human palm?

 Sadly, this means I cannot choose topic since I am favoring portability. But that hardly detracts from the joys of reading!

I have a few pocket dictionaries that would most likely fit into such a pocket, but it seems that the actual size of any book depends on the printing specifications of its publication edition far more than any principles of consistency or content. You could trawl the shelves of the local library that you're a self-attested patron of for the smallest of their stock - or if you're a self-unattested being of the smartphone there's a fabulous app that you can download and log into any moderately progressive library with which you hold a library card to obtain e-books for reading on the spot, although such a solution, despite its convenience, is clearly inferior in terms of tactile pleasure. If you miss the stock of whatever library you employed the services of back in America, though, you could potentially use the app to acquire their books directly in virtual form. Other than that, I don't know of many ways to fit a book into your pocket, unfortunately; effectively all the books I read are of somewhat voluminous girth.

[TigerGeekGuy 4,659]

On 4/24/2019 at 9:13 PM, Duality said:

Potential consequences in the order I thought of them:

Gravity at the ISS is something like 90% Earth surface gravity - the only thing keeping things in orbit is the sheer speed at which they move horizontally, which in the case of the ISS is on the order of kilometers per second. So, for a start, everything we've got in orbit will start flying away from Earth very quickly indeed. I don't know if they'd continue flying away or deorbit and crash once normal gravity resumed, but it'd certainly destroy/decommission all our satellites, especially GPS ones where precise positioning in orbit is crucial.

Buildings and their foundations are designed exclusively with downwards/sideways forces in mind, so all our houses and apartments and so on would either uproot themselves entirely out of the ground (especially those with pile or slab foundations) or suffer fatal structural damage and probably collapse once normal gravity resumed. Powerful earthquakes can level entire cities by causing the ground to move up and down a mere few meters, and this is vastly more drastic.

Finally, and by far most destructively, in the span of five seconds, the oceans of the world (and, I suspect, vast swathes of dirt and loose rock across the planet, not to mention large volumes of magma beneath the Earth's crust) will collectively fall 125 meters upwards. Once normal gravity resumes, this will all fall back down again, releasing octillions of joules of energy and absolutely vaporising what used to be the surface of Earth. At this scale of energy release, I suspect that the vast majority of water in the oceans would instantaneously turn into steam as it hit the ground and expand quickly enough to blast our entire atmosphere into space.

...That's so cool.

 

Interrogatives:

1. What do you plan on doing after FIM ends? Will you continue with Gen 5?

2. Have you ever had a lucid dream?

3. In what situation would a doctor having taken the Hippocratic Oath not be a good thing?

4. Imagine a pony is visiting Earth for the first time, how would you go about explaining human civilization to him/her? (Bonus: Can you sum it up in one sentence?)

5. Who delivers the stronger roundhouse kick: Applejack or Chuck Norris?

Edited June 23, 2019 by TigerGeekGuy

[Widdershins 9,955]

 So, as no doubt you may have already assumed, my Draconequusona is based primarily on the logical consequences of being magical. For one, as he's propped up almost wholly by inexplicable magics I cannot explic, his corporealness is called into question. Which of course, is justification to give him Cartoon Physics. He's detachable and semi-ghostly at inopportune times. But this calls into question two other factors I'd like to get your scientific opinion on.

 Firstly, the apparition of matter. Any who wishes for magic also, in turn,wishes to just poof things into existence around them. They've dodged this little illogical inconsistency (in the episode where Rarity was asking for a replacement mane) by excuse that they don't simply create things out of nothingness, but just teleport them over to where they are now. For example, poofing in some crystal pony's mane from a city miles & miles away. Actually CREATING MATTER, I've heard is supremely dangerous. Something a draconequus need not heed. For one drawback, in creating matter by using no energy or deriving matter from no other, preexisting source such as a chemical reaction, you displace an awful lot of the air or otherwise preexisting matter that was there, causing a sudden shockwave as matter is forced into place. As such producing the telltale "Poof!" so known to portrayal of magic. This could, in theory, be expanded upon greatly. Poof in something dense enough, you create a shockwave that actually deals damage or indeed summon a black hole.

 What, would you say are the biggest, most notable hazards to spontaneous matter creation?

Secondly, (or thirdly... already lost count.) Widdershins does have access to a pocket dimension where Time doesn't apply. Therefore when he rejoins the main timeline of the dimension where he left (or say, when he creates a room in a house where previously there was not special dimensions for aforesaid room) its entirely possible that he arrives earlier or much later than when he left. So, in theory, any time Widdershins is "Off Screen" he might very well not exist in an interactable plane of existence to those ponies he was just with. Or as equally theoretically, he could go into a house to spend some weeks inside, then leave to go back to the very same day he went inside. 

 This way! I can pull off shtick where he's talking to somepony about a party she's planning and he can idly mull how great the party they threw went, despite it having not actually happened yet! Schnanigenanery Expounds! 

 Though I feel there's unforeseen consequences I'm not seeing to Relativistic Time Travel that you can likely help me explore.

 

Also, Boop!

 What'd be your text color?

[Frostgage 7,972]

What is the coolest animal, the most adorable animal, and your favorite overall animal? (you may answer with the same animal more than once if appropriate)

[Duality 10,738]

On 6/23/2019 at 7:54 PM, TigerGeekGuy said:

That's so cool.

s c i e n c e

On 6/23/2019 at 7:54 PM, TigerGeekGuy said:

What do you plan on doing after FIM ends? Will you continue with Gen 5?

I haven't watched anything except premieres and finales for the past three or four seasons, so I'm set for years to come. 

On 6/23/2019 at 7:54 PM, TigerGeekGuy said:

Have you ever had a lucid dream?

No, but I had one about shining beings bestowing upon me the sword of a Biblical character that I'd never heard of before having the dream ('The Blade of Barzillai' was their nifty alliterative term for it).

On 6/23/2019 at 7:54 PM, TigerGeekGuy said:

In what situation would a doctor having taken the Hippocratic Oath not be a good thing?

When they only took it to make people trust them as part of am elaborate pretense to infiltrate the Pentagon's medical wing and destroy the civilised world.

On 6/23/2019 at 7:54 PM, TigerGeekGuy said:

Imagine a pony is visiting Earth for the first time, how would you go about explaining human civilization to him/her? (Bonus: Can you sum it up in one sentence?)

'Run.' *bass drop*

On 6/23/2019 at 7:54 PM, TigerGeekGuy said:

Who delivers the stronger roundhouse kick: Applejack or Chuck Norris?

Bold of you to assume that they're different entities.

 

 

 

On 7/9/2019 at 2:25 AM, Widdershins said:

What, would you say are the biggest, most notable hazards to spontaneous matter creation?

If you create it gradually enough the shockwave wouldn't be a problem, but I doubt that's his modus operandi. To actually create a black hole you'd have to intentionally summon matter of black hole density, since black-hole levels of compactification can fit more Empire State Buildings than you can shake a stick at into a space smaller than your thumbnail, and you certainly don't summon that much matter in that little space without giving it a second thought. In any case, you'd most likely be looking at a few blown eardrums (they're sensitive things), whatever the magical consequences of breaking physics at will might be, and possibly some mild radiation exposure from air atoms being violated by your summoned matter (although there's a ludicrous amount of free space between atoms for your matter to fit into). Air is quite flexible when it comes to having things forced into its personal space, although the same can't quite be said of individual atoms.

On 7/9/2019 at 2:25 AM, Widdershins said:

Though I feel there's unforeseen consequences I'm not seeing to Relativistic Time Travel that you can likely help me explore.

Well, if he's nipping off to alternate universes he's not really breaking physics so much as exempting himself from local-universe physics, so there's not much in the way of possible reality retaliations. It's pretty much just your generic TV-show time paradoxicality to deal with.

On 7/9/2019 at 2:25 AM, Widdershins said:

Also, Boop!

 What'd be your text color?

I already have one, in fact! I use it for special occasions, although I can't remember if you inspired me or if it was more 'weird minds think alike'.

 

 

 

 

4 hours ago, Frostgage said:

What is the coolest animal, the most adorable animal, and your favorite overall animal? (you may answer with the same animal more than once if appropriate)

u, u, & u

Coolest has gotta be cats 'cause they're chill at a level that only Tony Stark can rival, most adorable is bunnies because optimal fluffchildren, and most favourite is ducks because  q u a c k y   b o i s .