Recent content by venton

Thanks for the tips everyone, I am going to have to abandon my intuition and start reading some basic physics books.

I was trying to avoid the crash scenario and just imagine the car 'pushing' slowly against me, other car, or wall. If it was a rocket pushing against the wall, I see that the rotational energy of the planet is resisting (because the rocket is not connected to the ground). But regarding the car...

I am turning this on it's side to get away from gravity (so vertical = horizontal), and I think I am at the root of my question... Imagine a car driving very slowly forward. I put my hands on it to try to stop it, but can't, even though I burn energy trying. The powered car meets a stationery...

I see, that makes sense about the cells doing work. I am still having trouble with the idea that the wall does no work. It just seems that it should take some energy from somewhere to resist the clock dropping for all those years. I initially wondered if this energy was coming from the gravity...

Informative answers, thanks. So it seems there has to be movement for energy to be used. For example, if the nail which held the clock on the wall was too thin, it may bend and in doing so generate heat. But it is only because the nail moves when it bends that energy as heat is output?

I think I am right in saying there is no universal state of rest. So imagine a treadmill a mile long. If you sat down, then you could be said to be at a state of rest (after all we are traveling around the sun at thousands of miles an hour but I am at a state of rest on my armchair). If I got up...

Very basic question, I am almost embarrased to ask it... If I had to hold say a clock or a wall unit above the ground it would take energy for me to do so. I would need to eat food to get energy to support the clock in my arms, and if I ran out of energy I would drop it. If I put a nail in...

Say we have a detector switched on which shows which slit it went through. We have no interference pattern. We leave the detector switched on, but then we cut the wire to the display which shows which one it went through. Does the interference pattern reappear again - as we have no way of...

I guess someone needs to go out on a cold day dressed in nothing but a thin layer of cellophane and see if it feels colder when the wind starts blowing. Intuition makes me think one would feel colder, even though the cellophane would stop evaporation, but could be wrong.

I really don't think so no. If you think about it, we start off as a single cell which contains DNA. The cells splits and unfolds and by a near miracle the embryo becomes a small human. Genetic engineers can look at the DNA and identify certain traits like skin colour which they can tinker...

Feel free to delete the whole post, it should never have been moved here. I posted it in General Discussion - "Topics outside the realm of science and tech" No harm done, I found it quite interesting. Thanks.

As soon as you get a 'replicator' - something that can reproduce itself - there becomes a competition for resources (resources in this case would be the required chemicals needed to create another copy). If then by chance a slightly different arrangement of chemicals occurs which is better at...

Ygggdrasil - You have got my point exactly. I was perhaps feeling smug that I knew that my business (or computer code) had evolved over the years, so it should be very 'fit for purpose' - because hey - that's what life did. BUT it isn't necessariliy a good thing. A new 'species' of business can...

Oh well, while I am here in Biology section I am up for a discussion on those lines. How is anything I said wrong in a Biological sense?

I should point out that I posted this in 'general discussion' - it has been moved to Biology. Of course, this is NOT a biology question, it was more to do with business processes. Sorry to biologists, I'm not knocking evolution of life.