On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 10:11 PM, Tim <ignored_mailbox@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Thu, 2010-08-12 at 10:30 -0400, Robert Myers wrote: >> For computers, the color of the case is probably not an important >> consideration with respect to thermal management. For spacecraft and >> even for the roof of a house, it is. For the understanding of >> physics, labeling something so fundamental as Kirchoff's Law as a >> "theoretical absurdity" is unhelpful. > > No, it's this thread about computer casing colouring that I was > labelling. > > We used to have these sorts of arguments in college (studying > electronics), many many years ago. The theorists would intricately > calculate the inefficiency of the transformer, to work out which ones > they should put in a power supply. The rest of us would have a quick > look at the specs sheet, and pick one that could handle the current and > a few volts more. > > ... the absurdity of getting bogged down in theory for insignificant > gain. > I guess we all have our hot-buttons. Being able to sort out quickly what's important and what's not is an important qualification for success in almost any discipline. When the physics are crisp, though, and the discussion makes a muddle of the physics, it always seems worthwhile at least to point out that the physics are well-understood, especially if the discussion has headed in the direction of confusion instead of clarity. A really clear explanation of the basic physics would require an extensive journey through lots of non-trivial material, and there is no way you can explain to a ninth-grader things that puzzled the world's best physicists at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. The history of unraveling those mysteries was a not insignificant chapter in seeing that classical mechanics had profound problems that ultimately would be fixed by quantum mechanics. This isn't a physics forum, and I don't want to turn it into one, but, with sufficient curiosity and Google, a proper answer to the question that was raised would make an interesting journey through big slices of modern physics (and mathematics, for that matter). If I have succeeded in making just one person productively curious, I think the off-topic bandwidth is justified. Robert. -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
