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I have a lot of love for Bill Nye, but it's not fair to put him against Newton. Bill's a smart guy, but Newton's a freaking genius.

There are 'scientists' who think Newton's laws of gravitation are wrong. Does that mean those few are right and the overwhelming majority of scientists are wrong? This example exists for any scientific theory that has been about as proven as gravity. There are and always will be detractors. That doesn't mean in any way that they are right.

I don't feel gravity is ever a good comparison because gravity always points out the opposite of anyone trying to say something is settled.

I'm sure you know this, but for those that don't.

When the Newtonian model of gravity was postulated it answered some unexplained phenomena. Even though it was mainly right, it wasn't totally right.

Along comes Einstein and he proposes a couple of neat new hypothesis that when verified answered some of the shortcomings people had found after a while in Newton's hypothesis.

We moved a little closer to the truth.

At this point in time we haven't actually observed a graviton. It remains elusive. And more to the point, our model (theory if you like) of gravity may change and things like the graviton may not exist at all.

In summary, science points to what is the most correct explanation of what we observe at a given point in time. It is rarely settled and almost never "right" or "true", just "more right" or "more true" than what has passed before.

For anyone that hasn't followed what this is about...

For the problems itemized in this video.
Loss of :
- power brake assist
- airbags
- power steering.

This affair was actually about 1 specific issue :
The detent in the key socket rotator was not as strong as it should have been.

What that specifically meant was that :
IF you had a large heavy keychain on your key, and you jerked it, or knocked it such that it swings hard, the keychain could pull on the key hard enough to turn the key to the OFF position.

So when the car would turn off, you'd lose the power brakes, power steering, and airbags would be inactive.

Under "normal" circumstances, this wasn't a problem.
But for the folks with a christmas tree hanging off of their key, it was a chance to turn off their car while driving.

(side note : Crying about the power steering and power brakes really misses the big issue : The steering lock can kick in while moving... which apparently no one gave enough of a crap about to think for the 2 seconds it takes to notice that elephant in the room)



In this case, the contention over whether or not the core problem with the key socket was negligence boils down to semantics.

Car companies buy their parts from sub contractors.
They spec out the parts, and sub contractors manufacture the parts 'to spec'.

The spec isn't a 'hard' requirement.
If you say "5 Newtons of force", that doesn't mean that 4.999999999999123 Newtons is unacceptable.

Actually, it's standard for ~all parts to not be exactly the spec. They just have to be 'close enough to work right'.

And for that matter, many of the numbers in various specs are 'off the cuff' values that are 'generally known to work fine'. Getting hung up on a specific number isn't salient - what matters is 'does it work right?'.

So the question becomes, what is "good enough to work right?".
In practice, that ends up being a judgment call. Often made by engineers that try out the parts.


Here's where congress and GM differed.

Congress said : The ignition socket wasn't 100% exactly what GM had in the spec that they sent to the subcontractors, so it was wrong from day 1, and they knew it wasn't 100% the spec since pre-production. Hence, GM was negligent.

GM said : Of course it wasn't 100% exactly the spec. That was to be expected. At the time, we had no indication that the actual provided part was so far out of spec that it would not work right.


My personal take :
If this was something as simple as 'actual malfunctions/breakages of parts', then it would be black and white.
But in these cases, nothing was actually broken or malfunctioning.
So you had to rely on statistics and analysis to identify the issue.
Statistics require data, data requires evidence, evidence requires time to collect.
Seeing as how the vast majority of cars had no problem, this isn't the kind of thing that just leaps out at you.

Since any given car, when made in massive quantities, will have all kinds of multiple complaints about multiple systems, you can't just go back and point at incident(s) X and Y and say that it was the smoking gun - because if it was, then you'd have a pile of smoking guns for every other part out there.
Every instance of every part has a small chance of going bad, and with enough cars, you'll have a lot of 'item A went bad' reports to sift through.
You can't jump to the conclusion after the first couple reports that the part is improper, and it's unrealistic to expect anyone to immediately make that conclusion.
In order to make an informed determination, you simply need a pattern to emerge.

(I listened to the CSPAN coverage of the hearings while driving.)

-scheherazade

Ya know what, @Trancecoach is right. I could rebut all your points, but you've taken an ideological position that is unsupported by evidence, so clearly this is a waste of my time.

You probably genuinely believe what you've written, despite it being obvious nonsense.

One thing I can't let slide is your last little fantasy about the lone scientist against the establishment. That hasn't been true for a long time, and even then, it was generally religion or business (cf. Edison and Tesla) and not scientific consensus that impeded progress. Most major advances in science have come about by people working together, sharing results and bouncing ideas off each other. In fact, most of the time, the people we credit with great ideas (Newton, Einstein, etc) were only a step ahead of other scientists working toward the same ideas.

Yes, evidence trumps consensus, but scientists are not idiots, and there isn't some lone genius who has understood climate change when everyone else hasn't. If there was, the scientific community would recognise it.

There simply isn't any evidence to support your position that isn't easily dismissed in a few paragraphs. Read http://skepticalscience.com

The whole climate change denial (and no, I won't dignify it by calling it scepticism, that's an insult to scepticism) is marketing.

So I'll leave you, trance and the republicans in your little fantasy world where scientists and environmental campaigners have engaged in a massively profitable (please explain how, still not clear on this one) scheme to fuck up the world economy (because??? reasons, I guess) and the heroic oil companies are going to rescue us from a fate worse than a clean planet.

Meanwhile, I, the scientific community and the other humans that don't believe the earth is flat will accept the reality of climate change and move on.

No need to go through the whole Newtons things... easier to keep it all in kg since that's how we think anyway. So on the moon, astronaut + suit = 100/6 = 17 kg. Only about 40 lbs... So an astronaut should have no problem doing a pushup there.

As I said, probably more to due with the awkward, pressurized suits.

However, the jumping part... well, that's a puzzle to me why they aren't able to jump higher since I don't see any mechanical disadvantage. It's one of the arguments for the 'fake moon landing' thing.

However, if the moon surface were 'spongy' then it would be like trying to jump out of a barrel of mud.

Re: conspiracy thing... Alternative 3 claims that Apollo astronauts went to the moon, but discovered the bases that had already been there and were threatened/sworn to silence. Curiously, Neil Armstrong became a public recluse after his career as an astronaut, rarely giving interviews or talking about his experience.

However, if you believe the 'we never went to the moon at all' version, the claim is that NASA hired Stanley Kubrick to film the fake moon landing thing based on his realistic looking 2001.

In this case, it is. Lift a 1 kg(mass) on earth 2 metres and drop it. If will hit the earth with a force of 9.8 Newtons. (F=m x a) That's its weight though we tend to use the kg instead of Newtons to express weight. To lift that mass, you would have to exert 9.8 newtons of force.

On the moon where acceleration due to gravity is 1/6 that of earth, that 1 kg mass would only weigh about 1.8 (9.8/6) Newtons. So it would take correspondingly less force to lift it.

So our astronaut should be able to easily push himself upright in theory.

The real reason he can't do it probably has more to do with the design of the suit (top heavy, not very flexible) and the loosely packed surface composition of the moon. Like trying to right yourself while wearing an inflatable sumo outfit in a McDonald's ballpit.

The high jump answer... when a high jumper clears 7 feet he is really just lifting his centre of gravity about 3-4 feet. He just twists his body horizontal to get his legs and feet over.

On the moon then, he would only lift his CofG about 18-24 feet (plus say 3 feet for his legs). So his record jump would be less impressive than you might intuitively think.

Actually I'm about as English as they come but crucially I spent my advanced academic career studying Philosophy and rhetoric (lamentably only to Hons. due to laziness) and consequently have an ingrained habit of arguing around a problem rather than relying on established parameters (not always entirely helpful when discussing more day to day matters as I'm sure you've by now gathered but it is essential to working with advanced epistemological problems and so serves me well none the less). I'm also prone to poor punctuation and odd patterns of grammar when I'm not going back over everything I write with a fine tooth comb which has likely not helped. (A consequence of learning to describe tangent after tangent when trying to thoroughly encapsulate some conceptual problems with language alone)

That said, while I may have gone around the houses so to speak I think my conclusion is entirely compatible with what I now understand your own to be.

I didn't want to describe my original counter-point by simply working with the idea that weight is lower on the moon relative to the earth (though I did not try to refute this either) because that would not illustrate why a 2-300kg man in a space suit still takes some shifting (relatively speaking) even if there were no gravity at all. (Would have been faster to just crunch some numbers but that's not what I specialise in)

Sure you could move anything with any force in 0G (which I do understand is technically relative as every object in the universe with mass exerts gravitational forces proportionately (and inversely proportional to the distance between)) but the resulting velocity is directly proportional to mass vs force applied. Weight here then, can be seen as another competing force in the equation rather than the whole thing which it can be convenient to treat it as for a simple calculation (which is what I think you are doing).

To put that another way I was applying a different/deeper linguistic/descriptive paradigm to the same objective facts because that's what we philosophers do. Single paradigm approaches to any subject have a dangerous habit of making one believe one possess such a thing as truly objective facts rather than interpretations only (which are all that truly exist).


In other terms weight alone isn't the whole story (as I assume you well know). Overcoming inertia due to mass scales up all by itself, then gravity comes along and complicates matters. This is why rocket scientists measure potential thrust in DeltaV rather than Watts, Joules etc. right? The mass of the object dictates how much velocity a given input/output of energy would equal.

Gravity and thus the force in newtons it induces (weight) in these terms is an additional force which depending upon the direction in which it is acting multiplies the required DeltaV to achieve the same effect. Moreover when concerning a force of inconstant nature (such as pushing up/jumping or a brief burn of an engine) brings duration into play also. (the foundations of why rocket science gets its fearsome reputation for complexity in its calculations)


Man on the moon lies on the ground and pushes off to try and stand back up.
This push must impart enough DeltaV to his body to produce a sufficient velocity and duration to travel the 2 meters or so needed to get upright so he can then balance the downward gravitational force with his legs&back and successfully convert the chemical/kinetic energy from his arms into potential energy as weight (the energy he uses to stand up is the same energy that would drag him down again right?).

One could practically speaking reduce this to a simple calculation of weight and thrust if all one wanted was a number. Weight would be the only number we need here as it incorporates the mass in it's own calculation (weight = mass x gravity)

But where's the fun in that? My way let's one go round all the houses see how the other bits of the paradigm that support this basic isolated equation function and inter-relate.

Plus (and probably more accurately) I've been playing loads of Kerbal Space Programme lately and have ended up conditioning myself to think in terms of rocketry and thus massively overcomplicated everything here for basically my own amusement/fascination.


Basically few things are more verbose and self indulgent than a bored Philosopher, sorry .


Re: Your challenge. (And I'm just guessing here) something to do with your leg muscles not being able to deliver the energy fast/efficiently enough? (as your feet would leave the ground faster/at a lower level of force?). This is the only thing I can think of as it's easier to push away from things underwater and it certainly looks difficult to push away hard from things when people are floating in 0g.

So lower resistance from gravity = less force to push against the floor with?

Warm? Even in the Ballpark? (Regardless I'm really pleased to discover you weren't the nut I originally thought you to be! (though I imagine you now have some idea what a nut I am))


If I got any of that wrong I'd be happy for you to explain to me why and where (assuming you can keep up with my slightly mad approach to syntax in the 1st place). I'm an armchair physicist (not that I haven't studied it in my time but I'm far from PHD) I'm always happy to learn and improve.

I found out through two incidents in as many days (back-to-back) which happened while working on a contract job on a state highway outside of Newton, Kansas back in the summer of 2002 of an imprinted and innate capacity to "switch-on" in the most dire of circumstances while others on the crew either went into pre-shock or became completely functionless.

Two accidents. two days inna row during our road closures on a dangerous highway fulla truckers trying to beat tolls on the interstate and take the short cut:...both days, 18-wheelers in cruise control blew thorough the closures and caused major fatalities. I was one of 4 people on the crew to switch into rescue and control-mode, when the rest of the world nutted-up. Had state police thinking I was EMS already on the scene...(in my flagman uniform)....Did not know I had it in me, it simply happened. Exhausted me but I had no post-traumatic inabilities the next days, went back to work after the first accident when a couple of guys burned to death with no jaws of life there to save them...did all i could for the victims and my fellow crewmen after.

Next day, assumed flagman position (after having worked on on the main crew having handed my fagging position over to a greenhorn) and another accident, fully-loaded gravel truck was struck by a another 18-wheeler hauling two butane trucks...commanded the scene and kept a woman form going into shock by taking control...5 fatalities when the truck simply compacted two car-fulls of peeps into the back of a fully-loaded gravel truck in the front of the flag line.

I was one of the only people there with my wits about me-Guess I was there for a reason.

I have been in a lot of accidents i simply walked-away from-God works in mysterious ways with the damnedest of sorts.

You want a guy like me around for any potential shit-storm maybe??

Newton's First Law is a bitch.

The problem we have now is that science has advanced so far that the average person just doesn't understand it. Science is progressing faster than our education of science, so we're running into Arthur C. Clark's third law that any science sufficiently advanced enough is indistinguishable from magic.

There is a scientific pathway that takes you from Newton's apple all the way to the most advanced computers and medical knowledge. The problem is, you can't fit that pathway into one easy to read book. You can't explain complex things in sound bites. We're talking the cumulative efforts and trial and error of human beings over the course of thousands of years that takes us from the discovery of fire to the interwebs.

You can't summarize that shit into a few simplistic parables and stories.

It's hard to understand. It takes time to understand. Not everyone *will* understand it. Not everyone wants to understand it. More XKCD goodness: http://xkcd.com/154/

but it happens whether or not you believe in it or understand it. Because someone else DID do the work.

It's a bit simplistic and hyperbolic, don't you think @bobknight33.
Life - like cooking - is more complex than it seems

Google's Buzz sucked. So they developed something new that worked -- g+.
Apple's Newton sucked. So they developed something new that worked -- ipad.
Why people demand to get rid of the government when something goes wrong?

I'm sure schools run by local communities would work well in most cases. But then there would be another problems: comparability of degrees, curriculum (e.g. Creationism vs. Evolutionism etc.)

Tags for this video have been changed from 'light, wave, particle, newton, young, street science' to 'light, wave, particle, newton, young, street science, double slit experiment' - edited by xxovercastxx

I especially liked the point where camera-person went from, "OOoooo gonna be an awesome shot!" to "hey... what was Newton's Third Law again?"