Need help with physics question

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Duke
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Post by Duke » Sat Apr 30, 2005 11:54 am

If anyone is intrested we couldnt settle this at all, me and the Hull guy. Last mail I sent him was over a week ago and he hasnt replied yet so I guess he lost intrest.

The last question we discussed is if an ambulance comes towards you with the sirens on the pitch of the sound is high. When it passes you the pitch changes to a lower sound. I understand that it probably has to do with how fast the sound travels but I cant see why the pitch would change just because it takes the sound more time to reach me.

I also think I pissed him off in a discussion about if sound could travel through a tree. He claimed that it couldnt and I asked him if nobody knocks on doors in Hull.

Oh, and one thing we diskussed were if we had a stick that you theoretically could manage to hold in one hand and the stick was long enough to reach another galaxy and another civilization where someone held the stick in his hand. Could we communicate instantly through Morse-code by pulling and pushing the stick? If so, it would be vastly superior to any other type of communication which would take a lot of years to reach them depending on how many lightyears away the other galaxy were.

And I almost forgot the colour thing. If someone created an entirely new colour. Not a shade of another colour or a mix but a brand new one. Would you react to this or would you simply just consider it to be yet another colour?
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Post by korexus » Sat Apr 30, 2005 12:33 pm

Duke wrote:If anyone is intrested we couldnt settle this at all, me and the Hull guy. Last mail I sent him was over a week ago and he hasnt replied yet so I guess he lost intrest.
Surely not! :wink:

Duke wrote: The last question we discussed is if an ambulance comes towards you with the sirens on the pitch of the sound is high. When it passes you the pitch changes to a lower sound. I understand that it probably has to do with how fast the sound travels but I cant see why the pitch would change just because it takes the sound more time to reach me.
This is Doppler Shift, it's a well known effect in physics that lots of science teacher's get excited about but is, in fact, incredibly boring. It's not the speed which changes but the wavelength of the sound and hence the pitch. The explanation they always give is that the wave gets 'squashed up' as the ambulance comes towards you and 'stretched out' as it goes away. It's one of those truely brilliant explanations which doesn't actually explain anything, how I love physics!

Duke wrote: I also think I pissed him off in a discussion about if sound could travel through a tree. He claimed that it couldnt and I asked him if nobody knocks on doors in Hull.
Sound can travel through pretty much anything made of matter, trees included. However the tree will be made of lots of different materials (bark, wood, sap, probably some other stuff) so the sound wouldn't travel very well and unless it was a big sound you probably wouldn't be able to detect it...
Duke wrote: Oh, and one thing we diskussed were if we had a stick that you theoretically could manage to hold in one hand and the stick was long enough to reach another galaxy and another civilization where someone held the stick in his hand. Could we communicate instantly through Morse-code by pulling and pushing the stick? If so, it would be vastly superior to any other type of communication which would take a lot of years to reach them depending on how many lightyears away the other galaxy were.
No. Even ignoring the possibility of a passing sun snapping your stick in half and the fact that the two planets have a pretty much 0 chance of staying the same distance apart, the stick would bend when you pushed it. If you could overcome that I'd have to stick with no because you've basically put a wave into the stick and that wave will take some time to get to the other galaxy. I have no way of prooving that though.

Duke wrote: And I almost forgot the colour thing. If someone created an entirely new colour. Not a shade of another colour or a mix but a brand new one. Would you react to this or would you simply just consider it to be yet another colour?
I'm a guy, I only know six colours anyway. Women and Bill Gates may have 32 million colours in their worlds an probably wouldn't mind another one. Personally, I imagine I'd just ignore it.


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Post by trewqh » Sat Apr 30, 2005 12:51 pm

Duke wrote:And I almost forgot the colour thing. If someone created an entirely new colour. Not a shade of another colour or a mix but a brand new one. Would you react to this or would you simply just consider it to be yet another colour?
Light is a wave (or at least has features of waves, but let's not got into that). The colours we see depend on the frequency of the wave. Some colours might have not been seen yet, but you cannot 'create' a new colour, because you cannot 'invent' a new frequency no one has ever thought of earlier. We know all of the colours even if we haven't seen them (ie. infrared and ultraviolet).

But that does remind of a story by H.P. Lovecraft named "The Colour Out Of Space", anyone else read it?

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Post by korexus » Sat Apr 30, 2005 1:08 pm

Now just because it's impossible doesn't mean you can't ask 'what if'... I thought you were meant to be doing philosophy! :P

And it reminded me more of The Colour of Magic by Pratchett to be honest...
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Post by trewqh » Sat Apr 30, 2005 2:26 pm

Well, what can I say....

You were wrong! :D

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Post by Duke » Sat Apr 30, 2005 2:47 pm

korexus wrote:Now just because it's impossible doesn't mean you can't ask 'what if'... I thought you were meant to be doing philosophy! :P

And it reminded me more of The Colour of Magic by Pratchett to be honest...
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Post by Hannibal » Fri May 13, 2005 12:38 pm

Hannibal wrote:As for the bees versus ants question ...... it obviously, as usual, depends on diplomacy ....... who makes the best deal with the neighbouring human and spiny-ant-eater players ..... 8)

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Post by Duke » Fri May 13, 2005 12:56 pm

lol The Elephant man strikes back
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