General Questions

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Use your teeth and hope it's still got its flavour.
 
Ammonia isn't laughing gas. Nitrous oxide is laughing gas. There's a whole one atom in common.
 
I'd be pretty irritated if my someone replaced my laughing gas with ammonia...
 
Famine
Ammonia isn't laughing gas. Nitrous oxide is laughing gas. There's a whole one atom in common.
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Yeah, that is precisely correct. I don't really know where I got that answer from.... :dunce: But yeah, nitrous oxide is really what makes you laugh..... :lol: :confused: (wait, thats the same 🤬 used to make NOS isn't it?)
 
That's so you die happy when you have a NOS leak.
 
As we are on Nitrous Oxide. Dragster's use liquid Nitrogen as part of their fuel, when that is burnt is Nitric Acid released? Because it can make your eyes water when going round the paddocks and isn't Nitric Acid, Tear gas?
 
You'll not find liquid nitrogen anywhere around or in a dragster. Well, Maybe nitrogen tanks for use in tires. (A lot of racers use commercial nitrogen for tire inflation instead of air to eliminate water vapor.)

Their fuel is nitromethane, which basically contains nitrous oxide in its molecules.

Some weirdness: nitromethane is actually less energetic by weight than gasoline, but because its air-fuel ratio uses so much less air, you can pack about 8 times as much of it into the combustion process as you can gasoline. Since nitrous oxide is part of the molecule, nitromethane brings a lot of its own oxygen to the combustion process.

And tear gas does not contain nitric acid.
 
Sureshot
when that is burn is Nitric Acid released?
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Nope.

N2 + 2O2 -> 2NO2 ;)

Nitrogen dioxide forms, not nitric acid.

When nitromethane (top fuel, er, fuel) combusts:
4CH3NO2 + 3O2 → 4CO2 + 6H2O + 2N2

Also, I liked this line on wiki about nitromethane as a fuel:
wiki
A small amount of hydrazine blended in nitromethane can increase the power output even further. With nitromethane, hydrazine forms an explosive salt that is again a monopropellant. This unstable mixture poses a severe safety hazard.
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Hydrazine (N2H4) = rocket fuel :D
 
wfooshee
You'll not find liquid nitrogen anywhere around or in a dragster. Well, Maybe nitrogen tanks for use in tires. (A lot of racers use commercial nitrogen for tire inflation instead of air to eliminate water vapor.)

Their fuel is nitromethane, which basically contains nitrous oxide in its molecules.

Some weirdness: nitromethane is actually less energetic by weight than gasoline, but because its air-fuel ratio uses so much less air, you can pack about 8 times as much of it into the combustion process as you can gasoline. Since nitrous oxide is part of the molecule, nitromethane brings a lot of its own oxygen to the combustion process.

And tear gas does not contain nitric acid.
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Oh, I thought it was Liquid nitrogen and methanol mixed, the latter for stability. But it's different from the nitrous oxide that people put in their cars isn't it? Because that's a gas, and you can't combust a gas in an internal combustion engine can you?
 
Grand Prix
None of this answers why North is "up" and South is "down" though. If the Brits did have a huge influence in mapping the world, why would they make North up? Did they want to be on "up" side of the planet? And all the savages and evil creatures in South America, Africa and Australia on the "down" side? :lol: ("There's an up and down side to every Schwartz")

So what's the deal? Did they acknowledge that the Scandinavian countries were better then they were because they were MORE up?
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Because there's a North Star? We put North as up because the North Star is known to coincide with the North Pole (well, not exactly... since the North Pole isn't exactly at geographic North... blah blah blah)... since it's the North Pole most ancient navigators are familiar with (since it's northern waters they sailed the most), then historically, North is... errh... North.
 
niky
Because there's a North Star? We put North as up because the North Star is known to coincide with the North Pole (well, not exactly... since the North Pole isn't exactly at geographic North... blah blah blah)... since it's the North Pole most ancient navigators are familiar with (since it's northern waters they sailed the most), then historically, North is... errh... North.
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Maybe it has to do with compasses as well?
 
The etymology of "south" can be traced back to the Old English word suth, related to the Old High German word sund, and perhaps sunne in Old English, with sense of "the region of the sun."

The word north is traced to the Old High German nord, and the Proto-Indo-European unit ner-, meaning "left" (or "under"). (Presumably a natural primitive description of its concept is "to the left of the rising sun".)
 
Am I right in saying gravity gets stronger the closer to the centre of mass you get?

I think I heard that somewhere.

If so, as the earth is slightly flattened (not perfectly round), is gravity slightly stronger on the north or south pole than it is at the equator?
 
DQuaN
Am I right in saying gravity gets stronger the closer to the centre of mass you get?

I think I heard that somewhere.
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The farther you are from the object, the more accurate that assumption is. The closer you are to it, the more the lumpy nature of the gravitational field on any body is going to influence you. The assumption is especially untrue if you're inside the gravitational body. For example, if you were at the exact center of the Earth, the Earth's gravity would cancel itself out in all directions (assuming it's a uniform sphere) and you would float.


DQuaN
If so, as the earth is slightly flattened (not perfectly round), is gravity slightly stronger on the north or south pole than it is at the equator?
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No. It's my understanding the the surface gravity at the poles is not particularly stronger than anywhere else on the surface. You have less mass directly under your feet to pull you toward the center. The south pole, of course, would have more mass below you than the north, so the south pole might have slightly more gravity than the north.

There is a science mission on orbit around the Earth called "GRACE" which measures the Earth's gravity field quite accurately and is pointing out lots of areas of mass concentration. The Earth has areas where it is particularly dense due to subsurface materials. These areas experience more gravity than others.

Check the animation here:

http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/gallery/animations/ggm01/index.html
 
Ricochet, apparently. And judging from the cone around him at 19 seconds, it's a 50 cal rifle.
 
Danoff
No. It's my understanding the the surface gravity at the poles is not particularly stronger than anywhere else on the surface. You have less mass directly under your feet to pull you toward the center. The south pole, of course, would have more mass below you than the north, so the south pole might have slightly more gravity than the north.
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However, on the equator, an object rotates along with the earth, slightly lowering the "weight" it displays (obviously mass remains the same). The force needed to move the object in the centripetal motion around the earth would then have to be substracted from the force experienced due to gravity - something that doesn't happen at the poles.

Centripetal Force = Radius * Radial Speed Squared * Mass.

So if:

The earth's radius is 6378135m
The radial speed is 86400s/2*pi = 7.27*10^-5 rad/s
And our object is called Bob and weighs 70kg...

F=6378135*(7.27*10^-5)^2*70=2.36N

So, that's quite a minute number compared to the 686N pulling him, but still a difference. :cheers:

buickgnx88
What happened exactly? Did the gun explode?
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According to the video's description, he shot at a metal plate a distance away, but the bullet ricocheted back and hit his earmuffs. Lucky guy. :eek:
 
Metar
However, on the equator, an object rotates along with the earth, slightly lowering the "weight" it displays (obviously mass remains the same). The force needed to move the object in the centripetal motion around the earth would then have to be substracted from the force experienced due to gravity - something that doesn't happen at the poles.
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I left that off on purpose - I figured I'd keep the answer limited to gravitational pull. As an aside, the velocity at the equator is a big boost depending on what type of orbit you want to launch into. If you want to orbit retrograde (against the rotation of the earth) you have a deficit of twice the velocity of the earth's rotation with respect to launching in the direction of Earth's velocity (if you're stupid enough to launch from the equator into a retrograde orbit that is).
 
I don't get it though... it's strong enough to ricochet all the way back? My dad thinks it's fake.
 
V1P3R
I don't get it though... it's strong enough to ricochet all the way back? My dad thinks it's fake.
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.50 caliber bullets from this gun can penetrate concrete and armor. That's very strong.
 
Sureshot
Oh, I thought it was Liquid nitrogen and methanol mixed, the latter for stability. But it's different from the nitrous oxide that people put in their cars isn't it? Because that's a gas, and you can't combust a gas in an internal combustion engine can you?
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If you look at my post again, you see that part of the molecule chain in nitromethane IS nitrous oxide, which carries oxygen into the combustion.

And all the fuel in an engine is vaporized to be as close to a gas as possible. That's what a carb or an injector does. And there's always natural gas engines. . . .

niky
Because there's a North Star? We put North as up because the North Star is known to coincide with the North Pole (well, not exactly... since the North Pole isn't exactly at geographic North... blah blah blah)... since it's the North Pole most ancient navigators are familiar with (since it's northern waters they sailed the most), then historically, North is... errh... North.
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Backwards. The North Star is so called because the North Pole points to it. As for the North Pole not being geographic North. . . It is EXACTLY geographic north. It is the point through which the Earth's axis passes. It's not magnetic North, which is why you get a compass deviation. If, as a navigator, you use the North Star to find North, you will be a trillion times more accurate than using a compass to find North. (Well, maybe not a trillion, but it'll be more accurate.)
 
I heard him say "No more iron," so maybe they had a cast iron piece for a target, like an engine block. Supposedly that's still no problem for the Barrett, but who knows? never shot one, myself.
 
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