Top 3 facts that would blow the facebook generation away?

[budd]

Top 3 facts that would blow the facebook generation away?

Hi guys, i come on here and read every thread and try to undertand some of it. most of it blows my mind!
so how about a top 3 facts that'l blow the public away.

tx for your time if you participate

i am in awe

tx

 

[Gibby_Canes]

Just three?

1) We have actual pictures of atoms, both from electron microscopes and from an individual barium ion emitting a photon. This one seems to amaze the people I know, especially the nuts that say the existence of atoms isn't proven.

2) A lot of people read about matter waves and assume that matter is a wave, and thus picture an electron as a squiggle orbiting an atom. Most of the people I know were amazed when I explained that what behaves as a wave is the probability of observing that particle there, so an area where a matter wave has high amplitude it just means that particles are more likely to "appear" there.

3) Special relativity, or more specifically, length contractions. Most people know now that time is relative, even if they don't understand what that means. What most non-physics majors don't know is that length can actually contract. So a muon "lives" for about 2.2 microseconds. This isn't enough time for it to be generated at our atmosphere and make it to the Earth's surface, yet we observe them all the time. So what happens?

In the reference frame of an observer on Earth, the muon lives, not just appears to live but physically lives, for about 11 microseconds. In the frame of the muon, it lives for 2.2 microseconds, but the distance from the upper atmosphere to the Earth contracts, so to the muon time does not dilate, rather the distance it has to travel contracts. Many people also think that these are just allusions or how things seem to us, but these things actually physically happen. Someone at one point in spacetime can experience something totally different than what someone at another point in spacetime experiences.

edit: these don't necessarily have the largest wow-factor, but I think they are some of the things that are most difficult to believe/accept

 

[Danger]

Good examples, Gibby.
For me, it's the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. I firmly believe that I'm alive only because of the multiverse. There's no other way to explain it. In almost all branches of reality, I'm dead or never existed in the first place. It also means that I am essentially immortal, because in every instance of my death a new reality branches off, in which I survive. That new branch is the one that I currently inhabit. Trying to explain that to others is almost impossible. Since I'm not well educated, I don't even fully understand it myself. I suppose that it could be considered to be my version of religion.
That's my biggie for everyone in general. Since you specified "Facebook" clients (in the title, although not your original post), I can't really think of anything that wouldn't baffle them. Anyone who would join that site is pretty gullible to start with. Since most of them are young, I would propose the following:
>Someone 30 years old used to be considered a very revered elder of society. The average life expectancy was early to mid 20's.
>While veggies could be kept fairly well for a week or so, meat had to be killed freshly on a daily or bi-daily basis because it would rot if left longer.
>A cut on a finger or foot could be fatal because there were no antibiotics or disinfectants.
>Toilet paper is a new invention. My mother's family of 14 shared a Sears catalogue. (They lived in the house that I currently own and inhabit, but now it has indoor plumbing.) That was pretty recent. Long ago it was tree bark, moss, or nothing.
There is so much more, but I'll back off for now to see whether or not this is the kind of stuff to which you were referring.

 

[Naty1]

One of the founders of facebook is giving up US citizenship and going to Singapore...
with a few other billionaires from the US...and around the world I would guess...to save himself from Obama tax increases coming in 2013.

 

[Office_Shredder]

with a few other billionaires from the US...and around the world I would guess

Like who?

He renounced US citizenship so he could avoid taxes on the value of his share of facebook once it went public

 

[ThomasT]

Like who?

He renounced US citizenship so he could avoid taxes on the value of his share of facebook once it went public

How does simply renouncing his citizenship allow him to avoid taxes? Facebook is a US company, isn't it?

 

[Office_Shredder]

How does simply renouncing his citizenship allow him to avoid taxes? Facebook is a US company, isn't it?

No it's actually based in ireland, presumably for the lower corporate tax rate. After you renounce citizenship you can still be liable for taxes but the details are complicated, especially if he's being raced on the value of facebook before the ipo, which is difficult to calculate and leaves a lot of room for interpretation

 

[Curious3141]

One of the founders of facebook is giving up US citizenship and going to Singapore...
with a few other billionaires from the US...and around the world I would guess...to save himself from Obama tax increases coming in 2013.

Yes, Eduardo Saverin is now a citizen of my country. I'd prefer it if he'd done it for a more noble reason than tax-dodging, but, whatever.

 

[Drakkith]

I don't see any reason why any facts listed herein, other than possibly Dangers, would need to be restricted to purely my generation and younger. MOST people would be amazed at anything to do with science. Assuming they believed it of course, which is another problem altogether.

I'm reminded of a story my buddy told me. He was doing a funeral for a veteran as part of the base Honor Guard when he overheard an old man saying something along the lines of "Maybe we wouldn't be having so many problems with the ozone layer if those spaceships weren't punching holes through it".

 

[Jobrag]

The first fax machine was patented in 1843
Lyon's Corner House (a chain of coffee shops) was at the cutting edge of commercial computing in 1951
The first coin operated vending machine was invented in the first century AD

 

[mfb]

Some big and some small numbers:
- It is possible to detect particles with a lifetime of 0.00000000000000000000001 (10^(-24)) seconds - and scientists can measure their average lifetime.
- It is possible to detect light which was emitted 13700000000 (13.7 billions) years ago
- Atomic clocks are so precise, they can measure that time passes quicker 1 meter above them (due to General Relativity). This difference is about 1 second in 300 million years.
- It is possible to measure the distance of the moon (more precise: the distance of retroreflectors installed during the Apollo missions) with an accuracy of some centimeters.
- In labs, temperatures from 10^(-10) to 10^18 K can be achieved.
- Gravitational wave detectors can measure length differences with a precision of 10^(-18)m, this is 0.001 of the diameter of a proton and about 0.00000001 of the diameter of an atom.
- about 10^15 proton-proton collisions were analyzed by the LHC detectors in 2011. If a human could do this within 1 second, you would need 30 million scientists non-stop to keep up with data-taking.
- it is possible to predict the relation between electron spin and energy with a relative uncertainty of ~0.0000000004 (4*10^(-10)), and measurements determined it with a relative uncertainty of 3*10^(-13), with agreement between both value. In other words: The theory prediction is 2,002319304 - and all 10 digits are correct.
- each second, about 10 billion neutrinos per cm^2 from the sun cross everything on earth. Everything, including you.
- about 100-1000 radioactive decays per second happen in every human


Random other interesting stuff:
- without quantum mechanics, you cannot (properly) explain why solid objects are solid
- effects from special relativity are responsible for ~99% of the mass of all everyday objects
- most cells in a human body are not human cells
- CERN in switzerland can measure the tides - check where it is, if that does not look surprising ;). In fact, it is necessary to adjust the accelerators accordingly.

In almost all branches of reality, I'm dead or never existed in the first place.

But only in branches where you exist, you can think about this.

While it is true that life expectancy was quite low some centuries or millenia ago, the main reason was the high mortality during the first years. A human which survived up to 20 had a good probability to survive up to 40, too.

 

[Brainguy]

1 AD vending machine!? Link? Explanation?

 

[Evo]

1 AD vending machine!? Link? Explanation?

Please quote what you are referring to so the rest of us know what you're talking about. Thanks.

 

[Office_Shredder]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vending_machine#History

 

[jbmiller]

Facebook generation? Be nice, we are your future!

In all seriousness, not all of us teenagers intering our prime years of high school live and breathe facebook.

This summer I'm going to live and breathe Alg II, pre-calc/calc, programming in C, and wrestling. Not Facebook (:

 

[Curious3141]

The first coin operated vending machine was invented in the first century AD

And the second century AD was the first time someone got trapped under it trying to tip it to get a freebie.

 

[Curious3141]

- effects from special relativity are responsible for ~99% of the mass of all everyday objects

Could you explain this, please?

 

[Danger]

And the second century AD was the first time someone got trapped under it trying to tip it to get a freebie.

 

[Jobrag]

"1 AD vending machine!? Link? Explanation?"
Hero or Heron of Alexandria invented a machine for dispensing holy water in 1 AD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_of_Alexandria

 

[mfb]

- effects from special relativity are responsible for ~99% of the mass of all everyday objects

Could you explain this, please?

Could you try the most obvious way to find an explanation first, please?
Proton and mass @ Wikipedia
If you have specific questions, ask them (in a different thread).

 

[Gokul43201]

Good examples, Gibby.
For me, it's the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. I firmly believe that I'm alive only because of the multiverse.

Danger, those are two different interpretations. The Copenhagen Interpretation does not involve a multiverse - what you are looking for is called the Many Worlds Interpretation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics#Many_worlds

Facebook generation? Be nice, we are your future!

In all seriousness, not all of us teenagers intering our prime years of high school live and breathe facebook.

Typo of the day! =D

 

[Curious3141]

Could you try the most obvious way to find an explanation first, please?
Proton and mass @ Wikipedia
If you have specific questions, ask them (in a different thread).

Wow, you're a snarky one aren't you? Pray tell, was it so obvious in your assertion that I could immediately have deduced that you're referring to the mass of nucleons as described in the theory of Quantum Chromodynamics? I HAD searched for the answer with the usual keywords, and failed to find one. So I thought I'd ask - and I believe I asked in a perfectly civil and polite fashion, yet you respond with acerbity. Believe me, if it was reasonable to have known where to look without prior knowledge, I wouldn't have troubled you with the question but then again, if I'd known, I needn't have asked, right?

In relevance to the thread topic, I certainly hope you're not going to be responding to the questions of youngsters in this vein, because you're going to be turning them off, rather than interesting them in making further inquiry.

 

[Pythagorean]

Heron of Alexandria:
first vending machine
first rocket engine
first steam engine
first wind machine

really?

 

[mfb]

Wow, you're a snarky one aren't you? Pray tell, was it so obvious in your assertion that I could immediately have deduced that you're referring to the mass of nucleons as described in the theory of Quantum Chromodynamics? I HAD searched for the answer with the usual keywords, and failed to find one. So I thought I'd ask - and I believe I asked in a perfectly civil and polite fashion, yet you respond with acerbity. Believe me, if it was reasonable to have known where to look without prior knowledge, I wouldn't have troubled you with the question but then again, if I'd known, I needn't have asked, right?

In relevance to the thread topic, I certainly hope you're not going to be responding to the questions of youngsters in this vein, because you're going to be turning them off, rather than interesting them in making further inquiry.

Easy ways to find this:
- It should be common knowledge that matter is composed of atoms (if not: Wikipedia knows it), a search for "mass" there gives "Over 99.94% of an atom's mass is concentrated in the nucleus, with protons and neutrons having roughly equal mass". This leads to the proton article (and the neutron article), where you can find the linked section.
- You can look up the composition of matter and find out that the individual parts have a mass which is significantly lower than the total mass.
- Using "special relativity" and something like "origin of mass" as keywords in a search engine, you can find sites like this blog post:

The potential and kinetic energy of the quark orbits account for 99% of the mass of protons and neutrons; only the last 1% is due to the mass of the quarks themselves. This is relativistic mass in an extreme case— we are made, almost entirely, out of the attraction of quarks.

You have 1840 posts in this forum and you are indicated as "Homework Helper", so I assumed that you know how to find things like this yourself. Do you want to compare yourself with the youngsters you mentioned? I see differences, therefore you got a different response from me.On topic:
- modern cars possesses more computing power (in terms of operations per second) than the computers used for the Apollo missions
- there are about 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 (10^86) (massive) elementary particles in the observable part of the universe.
- only 3 different matter particles are permanent parts of all the everyday matter, but 24 matter particles are known. Note: both numbers do not include bosons, only fermions and their antiparticles. Virtual particles are not counted as "permanent parts".

 

[phoenix:\\]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daQT_Y_gsUg​

What more needs to be said? /thread

 

[Curious3141]

You have 1840 posts in this forum and you are indicated as "Homework Helper", so I assumed that you know how to find things like this yourself. Do you want to compare yourself with the youngsters you mentioned? I see differences, therefore you got a different response from me.

And judging from your reply to me, I seriously doubt youngsters would've got a more congenial response from you. If you're averse to explaining, abstain from informing.

 

[mfb]

And judging from your reply to me, I seriously doubt youngsters would've got a more congenial response from you. If you're averse to explaining, abstain from informing.

I'm glad that you are wrong. Feel free to see my other posts to get an idea. In addition, I don't think this is the right place to discuss it.


On topic:
Time travel to the future is just a question of engineering, the required physics is known for more than 100 years. In fact, astronauts in the ISS travel some milliseconds to the future every year.

 

[ThomasT]

Time travel to the future is just a question of engineering, the required physics is known for more than 100 years. In fact, astronauts in the ISS travel some milliseconds to the future every year.

There's a difference between traveling to the future and aging at a slower rate due to relative speed. For example, wrt the SR twin scenario, the returning traveller will note on landing that he has aged less than the earthbound twin, and that his onboard clock has recorded less time than the earthbound twin's. But they both will have recorded the same number of Earth-Sun revolutions wrt the traveller's trip.

 

[mfb]

There's a difference between traveling to the future and aging at a slower rate due to relative speed. For example, wrt the SR twin scenario, the returning traveller will note on landing that he has aged less than the earthbound twin, and that his onboard clock has recorded less time than the earthbound twin's. But they both will have recorded the same number of Earth-Sun revolutions wrt the traveller's trip.

The same is true for the astronauts on the ISS. They recorded the same number of earth-sun-revolutions (1), but while people on Earth aged for ~3*10^7 seconds, the astronauts aged some milliseconds less.
The effect is tiny, and it is not a practical source for "time travel", but it is the same mechanism.

 

[ThomasT]

The effect is tiny, and it is not a practical source for "time travel", but it is the same mechanism.

My point was that differential aging isn't time travel -- any more than freezing somebody and waking them in the future is time travel.

We are, all of us, of course, time-travelling into the future. But, of course, that's not what's meant by time travel. As far as physics is concerned, time travel, either into the future or into the past, is impossible. At least as far as I know. If one refers to the possibility of time travel wrt the interpretation of certain solutions of certain equations in certain theoretical constructions, then that's neither physics nor science.

 

[mfb]

What is required for time travel then?
You enter a black box, wait for time t, and leave the box, the time in the world has advanced by t+x with x>0. Is that time travel?
In science fiction stories, t is something like seconds to hours and x can be several years. With the ISS, t is something like one year and x is some milliseconds.Freezing something does not change time - it slows down chemical processes (but not nuclear decays and other stuff), but not the time itself.

 

[ThomasT]

What is required for time travel then?

I don't know. As far as I know time travel is just a nonsensical grouping of agile terms.

You enter a black box, wait for time t, and leave the box, the time in the world has advanced by t+x with x>0. Is that time travel?

No.

 

[Redbelly98]

Top 3 facts that would blow the facebook generation away?

1. I remember being blown away when I learned that magnetic forces can be explained as a modification of electric forces due to relativistic effects. (See E. Purcell's text on Electricity and Magnetism.)

2. Now I am blown away that a good quantitative theory of magnetism was developed before people knew anything about relativity.

3. Likewise, that thermodynamics was developed before the existence of atoms and molecules was established.

 

[Borg]

Top 3 facts that would blow the facebook generation away?

1. Not everything on Wikipedia is true.

2. Before GPS when it was possible to get lost.

3. There was a time before Al Gore when the internet didn't exist.

 

[TheOtherDave]

1. Not everything on Wikipedia is true.

2. Before GPS when it was possible to get lost.

3. There was a time before Al Gore when the internet didn't exist.

Minor point... It's still possible to get lost with GPS. For instance, my car is thoroughly convinced that I drive through a cornfield on my way to work ("Recalculating... Don't forget the butter..."), but the reality is that I drive over an ex-cornfield that's been turned into a tollway and the maps haven't been updated.

 

[larrybud]

I think a few people are missing the point of the OPs question. The "Facebook" generation don't have a clue about Einstein, or relativity, or muons... Need simpler facts that they can understand.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I think a few people are missing the point of the OPs question. The "Facebook" generation don't have a clue about Einstein, or relativity, or muons... Need simpler facts that they can understand.

I am one of the facebook generation (it became popular in my mid-teens but before that myspace and MSN were ubiquitous) and the suggestion that we need simpler facts or that there are 3 things that would specifically blow us away over any other demographic is both foolish and insulting.

 

[Opus_723]

I humbly defer to Neil deGrasse Tyson.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D05ej8u-gU

 

[D H]

I think a few people are missing the point of the OPs question. The "Facebook" generation don't have a clue about Einstein, or relativity, or muons... Need simpler facts that they can understand.

The text of your tweet is too long.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

The text of your tweet is too long.

Actually the younger generation (25 years and below) only make up 17% of Twitter's demographic and only 30% of Facebook's.

http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/infographic-facebook-vs-twitter-demographics-2010-2011/

I've got to reiterate my previous post here, the idea that the "facebook generation" is somehow intellectually inferior to their predecessors I would say is bunk.