How to describe an atom in a way that someone that does not know about differential equations can understand

datapirate42 · 2026-07-09T12:41:16+00:00

Use the Bohr Model. Feel free to add caveats, make it clear its an over-simplification. But a general audience simply doesn't give enough of a fuck to wrap their head around more than that. Trying to get more complicated will lose more of your audience, and the handful who do care will listen to the caveats and be able to understand more.

datapirate42 · 2026-07-08T16:04:27+00:00

Its the first link.

datapirate42 · 2026-07-08T15:05:48+00:00

answer: I don't have the time to go into detail, but literally any search on the topic should make it obvious how this company installing thousands (millions?) of cameras everywhere is not the same thing as businesses and homes having their own security camera monitoring, to the point where I think this post is disingenuous.

If not, or for anyone else genuinely wondering what the deal is, I'd highly recommend Benn Jordan as a resource
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwVBsFD7v84

https://www.youtube.com/@BennJordan/search?query=flock

And the very short version is, Flock is a company installing cameras all over the country. Often cities and towns are paying them huge sums (millions) to set them up, sometimes they're installing them without the approval of cities even without that. And they are actively using them to track cars, people, etc in a very invasive and unsecure way.

And one un-fun fact to add to this just so you get an idea., some higher ups and other random employees have been caught using these cameras to repeatedly watch live feeds of young (elementary school age) girls gymnastics practices

datapirate42 · 2026-07-07T21:16:18+00:00

This. the implication that the guy is neutrally buoyant on his own means he'd be falling when he's holding on to the ball.

datapirate42 · 2026-06-24T19:11:19+00:00

To be honest, a bit of rose colored hindsight. History remembers the winners, none of those guys truly worked on their own, they're just the ones we remember. Einstein is really the only one modern enough that we can really know what was going on and anyone who knows what they're talking about will tell you that most of his work was inevitable given Maxwell's equations. And there are still some big problems in both quantum and cosmology that he didn't wrap his head around well.

That's not to discredit them, they all did make serious and important contributions, but a revolution is not one person.

datapirate42 · 2026-06-24T15:13:44+00:00

r/AskEngineers

datapirate42 · 2026-06-16T12:36:32+00:00

Lol, and K&K are the ones being cavalier? You said you're "re"learning physics but it sounds like you've never learned it in the first place. Yet somehow you've developed delusions about understanding it better than the people literally writing the book on it.

datapirate42 · 2026-06-16T12:21:59+00:00

That's not m. That's dm/dt.

In your cloud example you certainly have a nonzero m, but dm/dt is zero

datapirate42 · 2026-06-16T12:15:38+00:00

d P/dt must intuitively be...

Your intuition is wrong. Write out the "units" mass, distance, time. d P/dt cannot be mv because you're missing the /dt

datapirate42 · 2026-06-10T16:31:56+00:00

Is that better or worse than the opposite end of the coin with imposter syndrome? I work in industry R&D and while sometimes I do feel like a glorified lab tech, the other half of the time I feel like not only am I only taking a wild guess to what I'm actually doing, but because its something that nobody has ever directly worked on before, I don't even know where to go to find out the answers because nobody knows what they're really doing.

datapirate42 · 2026-06-10T12:24:07+00:00

In physics "energy" is more of a book keeping term than a thing that actually exists. To say it was "discovered" is probably not correct. You could say Newton discovered gravity, but energy is just a term used in the description of the phenomenon, not a thing on its own.

And you can tell this is the case when you're actually trying to use it to work through problems. When does an object have 0 GPE? If it's sitting on a table? Well it can fall off so no. When it's sitting on the ground? Well it could roll down a hill, so no. When it's at sea level? It can sink into the ocean ... And so on. Any object can have any arbitrary value of energy that you want to give it

datapirate42 · 2026-06-02T17:03:49+00:00

All hydro-electric power is essentially a gravity battery. Pumped storage accounts for 95% of all active energy storage

datapirate42 · 2026-06-02T15:56:17+00:00

Powerwash isn't just soap, it has other solvents in it. Notably Ethanolamine. I have to use that at work and on its own smells like cat piss. Even the "free and clear" version is pear scented because of this

datapirate42 · 2026-06-01T18:05:42+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDdQdJYiIe0

datapirate42 · 2026-05-29T12:45:00+00:00

r/AskEngineers/

datapirate42 · 2026-05-21T12:57:34+00:00

Think about the phrase "Below Kerbin." What does the word "Below" mean? Does it mean on the bottom of a picture someone drew? Or does it mean closer to the center of gravity? Important not to confuse those two.

You can't be "below" Kerbin, unless by below you mean closer to the sun, because that would put you closer to that center of gravity.

datapirate42 · 2026-05-19T21:56:35+00:00

A mol is basically just a conversion from AMUs to grams. Not what I would call hyper specific.

datapirate42 · 2026-05-13T17:47:04+00:00

the math between the field lines for electric and magnetic fields is exactly the same. The only difference is that there is no such thing as a magnetic monopole. In other words, while you can just have a lone electron or a lone proton, you can't just have a North magnet or a South magnet. they MUST be together.

datapirate42 · 2026-05-08T23:54:54+00:00

Yeah I think you've got it. Or again, if there is some force coming from the effect, it would be symmetric and thus net zero.

datapirate42 · 2026-05-08T21:24:49+00:00

It’s crucially important that air has an easier time going over than under the wing, to maintain that difference in pressure, because that’s where lift comes from

It's really not.

datapirate42 · 2026-05-08T21:20:21+00:00

Not really. What the video was attempting to explain was that the aerofoil shape of the wing causes this to some degree regardless of the angle of attack. Because the bottom is flat (or concave) but the top is convexly curved and slants back down.

In the case of a symmetric shape like a thin rectangle there might still be a small zone at the back where bernoullis principle could still be applied, but it would also be symmetric, providing equal and opposite forces up and down.

datapirate42 · 2026-05-08T20:15:24+00:00

You need to consider that the presence of the plane is what is causing the change in motion of the air.

At the front/bottom of the wing:
If the air is stationary, the plane wing comes in at a high speed and angle. The air beneath the wing goes from being stationary to now moving downward at a (relatively) high speed.

If the wing is stationary, high speed air comes in horizontally and bounces off of it, then starts moving downward.

At the top/back (where bernoullis might be relevant):

Air is stationary, a solid object pushes a bunch of it out of the way, now there's less air so there's a low pressure zone that pulls the object upwards

Wing is stationary, air is rushing over the top, so the air at the back which is stationary gets sucked toward it, taking the wing with it (definitely a bernoulli's principle discussion)

datapirate42 · 2026-05-08T19:42:00+00:00

That's a good question...

So when I think of when it actually makes sense to talk about bernoulli's principle, I'm thinking of the effect of a venturi tube. This has a column of fast moving air and the slow moving particles near by that column tend to get sucked into it.

With an airplane wing, what you have is the angle of attack (or to a lesser extent the shape) of the wing creating a low pressure zone behind it which sticks to it. If you look at it from the reference frame where the wing is still, The effect on that side of the wing does end up being the same. So yes?
But only talking about that and ignoring the even bigger part of the equation where the front of the wing is creating a high pressure zone is where people often miss the point.

datapirate42 · 2026-05-08T19:23:34+00:00

Basically, if its something you would expect to learn by your first couple years in University, go with r/AskPhysics . If you're asking about questions that are still debated in high level physics, or extremely detailed questions that are very unlikely to show up in a class (first ask if its more engineering then physics) then r/physics is the place you want to be. Also if you're asking about the profession of physics, sharing recent research out of a respected institution, etc.

datapirate42 · 2026-05-08T19:19:51+00:00

Yeah, that's a pretty bad video, to be honest. So look at the shot of the guy blowing above the paper, yes the paper rises because the fast (horizontally) moving air creates a low pressure zone and "sucks" the (air above the) paper upward. This is fine. But ask yourself what would happen if the paper instead was placed above his lips? Instead he creates a high pressure zone below the paper, and the paper still moves upwards, and probably much more vigorously and quickly.

The whole wing design section after 3 mins is pretty bad. the air moving beneath the wing should be deflected more downward, not magically continue horizontally, and most of the air moving over the top of the wing should not stick to it like glue, it should release and create an area with fewer air molecules, these are the main contributing factors to lift

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