Bud's Calendar Machine toss

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Dave11
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Bud's Calendar Machine toss

Post by Dave11 »

I'm doing an archive trawl, and just got to http://wapsisquare.com/comic/sonic-boom/. Given that the Earth is about eight light-minutes from the sun, and Bud said "about 24 minutes"...She threw the machine at roughly 1/3 light-speed!

That kind of force - she should have had to pick herself out of a knee-deep hole in the ground, and may have altered the planet's orbit.
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Dave
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Re: Bud's Calendar Machine toss

Post by Dave »

Dave11 wrote:That kind of force - she should have had to pick herself out of a knee-deep hole in the ground, and may have altered the planet's orbit.
There are a couple of other incidents which suggest that Bud's golem chassis may be equipped with some sort of "inertial damper". She hurled a massive anchor a long distance without the reaction shoving her waist-deep into the sandbar, and she threw a golf-ball downwards through the planet's crust and all the way to Venice without having been kicked upwards into the stratosphere. Somehow, she either plays merry hob with the concept of conservation of momentum, or she manages to draw/distribute the necessary delta-M from something other than her body. "Reactionless thrusters" anybody?

Not an unreasonable thing for a tech/magic designer to build into a weapons-golem. There's little sense to designing incredible power into a weapon, if it blasts itself backwards into the next state every time you fire it (like the "Noisy Cricket" problem, but much worse). As Archimedes pointed out, having a long lever is only half of the problem; you also need a very firm fulcrum!
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Re: Bud's Calendar Machine toss

Post by Jabberwonky »

Dave wrote:
Dave11 wrote:That kind of force - she should have had to pick herself out of a knee-deep hole in the ground, and may have altered the planet's orbit.
There are a couple of other incidents which suggest that Bud's golem chassis may be equipped with some sort of "inertial damper". She hurled a massive anchor a long distance without the reaction shoving her waist-deep into the sandbar, and she threw a golf-ball downwards through the planet's crust and all the way to Venice without having been kicked upwards into the stratosphere. Somehow, she either plays merry hob with the concept of conservation of momentum, or she manages to draw/distribute the necessary delta-M from something other than her body. "Reactionless thrusters" anybody?

Not an unreasonable thing for a tech/magic designer to build into a weapons-golem. There's little sense to designing incredible power into a weapon, if it blasts itself backwards into the next state every time you fire it (like the "Noisy Cricket" problem, but much worse). As Archimedes pointed out, having a long lever is only half of the problem; you also need a very firm fulcrum!
The magic in the Wapsiverse has always shown a great deal of 'fuzzy logic'. Which is fine by me. How many stories have you read about someone getting gigged because the didn't think through what they told a 'magic' being what they wanted?
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Re: Bud's Calendar Machine toss

Post by shadowinthelight »

I'm pretty sure Paul stated in the comments that Bud pulled the 24 minute number out of her ass. It likely took a much longer time to get there.
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Re: Bud's Calendar Machine toss

Post by Fairportfan »

shadowinthelight wrote:I'm pretty sure Paul stated in the comments that Bud pulled the 24 minute number out of her ass. It likely took a much longer time to get there.
The kickback on accelerating what would be, for all practical purposes, a marble-size chunk of neutronium even to "merely" escape velocity, effectively instantaneously, would still be pretty darned impressive.

And it was obviously traveling a LOT faster than V-sub-e...
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Re: Bud's Calendar Machine toss

Post by Dave »

Fairportfan wrote: The kickback on accelerating what would be, for all practical purposes, a marble-size chunk of neutronium even to "merely" escape velocity, effectively instantaneously, would still be pretty darned impressive.

And it was obviously traveling a LOT faster than V-sub-e...
Not to mention the fact that if Bud's energy-generation-and-creation system were, say, 99.9999% efficient, the small residual waste energy would have caused her to glow white-hot for quite some time ;)
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Re: Bud's Calendar Machine toss

Post by jwhouk »

I personally think it was Joel's Law in effect. Or possibly Bellisario's Maxim.
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Re: Bud's Calendar Machine toss

Post by Mark N »

jwhouk wrote:I personally think it was Joel's Law in effect. Or possibly Bellisario's Maxim.

I just stick with the good old "Rule of Funny"

But that's just me. :mrgreen:
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Re: Bud's Calendar Machine toss

Post by Atomic »

Warning! Warning!

This thread is in danger of invoking a Spherical Balrog!

Remember the thing about Godwin's Law? Fan geek physics arguments run the risk of Spherical Balrog encounters. Explanation at the link.

You have been warned!
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Re: Bud's Calendar Machine toss

Post by Fairportfan »

Oddly enough, from time to time when reading Wapsi, i've thought about some books that are sort of favourites of mine.

There are four in the series (though, as i recall, it was obviously meant to run to more), collectively titled "The Journeys of Mcgill Feighan".

Feighan is what, in his universe, is called a "flinger"; he poits. Large or small masses, over interstellar distances, if need be. Flingers are the basis of interstellar commerce. Kevin O'Donnell, the author, obviously considered the question of the wide differences in proper motion between stars (and other, lesser, velocity/potential energy differences); he postulated another universe ... dimension ... whatever, where flingers can dump excess kinetic energy, or draw it from, if necessary. (Feighan uses this to make rather deadly weapons out of random pebbles, at one point.)

So there we go - poiters are doing the same thing (unconsciously, apparently), and whether Bud realised it or not, that's where the real impetus for her throws came from. Though, if it were the explanation, one suspects she knew what she was doing, since she apparently did it to Monica's bullets...
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Re: Bud's Calendar Machine toss

Post by bmonk »

Atomic wrote:Warning! Warning!

This thread is in danger of invoking a Spherical Balrog!

Remember the thing about Godwin's Law? Fan geek physics arguments run the risk of Spherical Balrog encounters. Explanation at the link.

You have been warned!
Just avoid the Purple giraffes, please.
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Fairportfan
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Re: Bud's Calendar Machine toss

Post by Fairportfan »

Atomic wrote:This thread is in danger of invoking a Spherical Balrog!
"Assuming a spherical cow of uniform density..."
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Julie
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Re: Bud's Calendar Machine toss

Post by Julie »

Fairportfan wrote:So there we go - poiters are doing the same thing (unconsciously, apparently), and whether Bud realised it or not, that's where the real impetus for her throws came from. Though, if it were the explanation, one suspects she knew what she was doing, since she apparently did it to Monica's bullets...
I thought it was Monica who poited the bullets instinctively...
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Re: Bud's Calendar Machine toss

Post by Jabberwonky »

Fairportfan wrote:
Atomic wrote:This thread is in danger of invoking a Spherical Balrog!
"Assuming a spherical cow of uniform density..."
Well, if the Balrog has eaten enough tasty hobbitses...
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Re: Bud's Calendar Machine toss

Post by Fairportfan »

Julie wrote:
Fairportfan wrote:So there we go - poiters are doing the same thing (unconsciously, apparently), and whether Bud realised it or not, that's where the real impetus for her throws came from. Though, if it were the explanation, one suspects she knew what she was doing, since she apparently did it to Monica's bullets...
I thought it was Monica who poited the bullets instinctively...
No - i meant when they were out in the desert and Bud was hopping up the bullets as Monica blasted away at standing rocks with G'Pa Sullivan's hogleg.
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Boxilar
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Re: Bud's Calendar Machine toss

Post by Boxilar »

Dave's inertial damper theory is on track, but I think its more than that. From Jin's reboot, we see that the GGs are nothing more than clay when powered down. We know that most Lanthian tech operates by being connected to a wormhole network that gives access to the " energy potential of a rotating galaxy".

Buds "body" when active is is a force field that simulates what she looked like in life down to the feel of her skin and the texture of her hair. She uses that force field to interact with the world around her.

Bud had access to effectively unlimited power for her toss from the wormhole network. She would have used the same to dump the excess energy back into the network using the same quantum mechanics she uses to POIT.

(All conjecture based on what we've seen so far of course.)
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Re: Bud's Calendar Machine toss

Post by Fairportfan »

Boxilar wrote:Dave's inertial damper theory is on track, but I think its more than that. From Jin's reboot, we see that the GGs are nothing more than clay when powered down. We know that most Lanthian tech operates by being connected to a wormhole network that gives access to the " energy potential of a rotating galaxy".

Buds "body" when active is is a force field that simulates what she looked like in life down to the feel of her skin and the texture of her hair. She uses that force field to interact with the world around her.

Bud had access to effectively unlimited power for her toss from the wormhole network. She would have used the same to dump the excess energy back into the network using the same quantum mechanics she uses to POIT.

(All conjecture based on what we've seen so far of course.)
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Re: Bud's Calendar Machine toss

Post by NOTDilbert »

Dave wrote:
Dave11 wrote:That kind of force - she should have had to pick herself out of a knee-deep hole in the ground, and may have altered the planet's orbit.
There are a couple of other incidents which suggest that Bud's golem chassis may be equipped with some sort of "inertial damper". She hurled a massive anchor a long distance without the reaction shoving her waist-deep into the sandbar, and she threw a golf-ball downwards through the planet's crust and all the way to Venice without having been kicked upwards into the stratosphere. Somehow, she either plays merry hob with the concept of conservation of momentum, or she manages to draw/distribute the necessary delta-M from something other than her body. "Reactionless thrusters" anybody?
Reactionless thrusters? Sure! Check this paper by a professor Woodward - he built a working desktop model of a Mach's Principle propellantless thruster. WORKING. The math was a little heavy for me.....http://physics.fullerton.edu/~jimw/nasa-pap/
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Re: Bud's Calendar Machine toss

Post by MerchManDan »

Fairportfan wrote:
Atomic wrote:This thread is in danger of invoking a Spherical Balrog!
"Assuming a spherical cow of uniform density..."
This reminds me of a Facebook status from one of my friends: "A cow is just a sphere in a vacuum." Apparently her physics professor said that; at the moment, I forget precisely the main point of that discussion.
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Re: Bud's Calendar Machine toss

Post by Fairportfan »

Speaking of hypothetical cows - there is a book titled Murphy's Rules, about poorly-thought-out rules in various games.

For instance, there was the Incredibly Deadly Weapon that, due to the game's system of calculating damage, was completely ineffectual against groups of eleven or more enemies.

The one i remember best (along with the accompanying cartoon) is that the game "Rail Baron" listed "cattle" as a cargo type that could be loaded aboard flatcars.
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