# Stuff you just can't grok for long... **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 1, 2012, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775 "2012-06-01T14:33:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2012, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775/81 "2012-06-03T05:30:02Z")
Relative distance from earth to moon: ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• |•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••| 240,000 miles ---
**Author:** ![CanvasShoes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@CanvasShoes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CanvasShoes)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2012, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775/82 "2012-06-03T07:06:50Z")
> [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](#): > > But how do you tell where the measures are, if you’re listening to it? You just have to feel it. Sometimes it’s the percussion that keeps the time, sometimes it’s the notes in the melody. For instance, in the waltz, you kind of “feel” the rise and fall, the ONEtwothree, FOURfivesix. Or the quickquick sloooow sloooow of a two-step or foxtrot. I have no idea how to explain just \*how \* one feels it though. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2012, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775/83 "2012-06-03T07:31:16Z")
> [@cmyk](#): > > Relative distance from earth to moon: > > ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• > |•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••| > 240,000 miles I once drove 6,000 miles round trip from home to California, and back. Took about a week. The moon is 40 times as far. So the moon is 40 weeks away, by car. Not too hard to understand. The sun is 48x the moon’s distance. By car, the sun is 1,920 weeks away. 1,920 / 52 = 36.92 years. In other words at freeway speeds you could drive from the earth to the sun, leaving at your birth, and you would arrive middle aged. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2012, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775/84 "2012-06-03T12:37:43Z")
> [@The\_Vorlon](#): > > Err, the same side is facing the **EARTH** at all times. Easier to think it rotates just fast enough that the “day” is the same as the orbit. That is, in fact, what I meant to say. Does that mean different people from different parts of the world see a different part of the moon? ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2012, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775/85 "2012-06-03T15:00:38Z")
> [@olivesmarch4th](#): > > That is, in fact, what I meant to say. > > Does that mean different people from different parts of the world see a different part of the moon? No, quite the reverse - we all see the same face of the moon, all the time. But because, as it goes around the Earth, it is sometimes face-on to the Sun, sometimes side-on, and sometimes back-on, the side we can see is not all in sunlight, all the time. (The Sun sees half the Moon, so do we, but not necessarily the same half - they overlap progressively more for two weeks, then progressively less for two more, and then so on around the cycle forever). Different people in different parts of the world, though, see the Moon in different parts of the sky relative to their own horizon at the same time - but in the same place as far as the starry background goes. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Girlfriend](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.girlfriend/32/193_2.png) [@Dr.Girlfriend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Girlfriend)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2012, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775/86 "2012-06-03T15:53:29Z")
> [@Hello\_Again](#): > > “Offsides” in hockey. My husband has explained it a million times, and each time his explanation totally makes sense, but then it just disappears from my brain entirely, and I’m left as I was before, wondering what “offsides” means. Offsides I get, it’s icing I can never get a grip on. Why it’s waved off sometimes, why sometimes it looks like icing but it’s not called… and don’t get me started on “no-touch” icing. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2012, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775/87 "2012-06-03T16:49:27Z")
> [@Malacandra](#): > > No, quite the reverse - we all see the same face of the moon, all the time. But because, as it goes around the Earth, it is sometimes face-on to the Sun, sometimes side-on, and sometimes back-on, the side we can see is not all in sunlight, all the time. (The Sun sees half the Moon, so do we, but not necessarily the same half - they overlap progressively more for two weeks, then progressively less for two more, and then so on around the cycle forever). > > Different people in different parts of the world, though, see the Moon in different parts of the sky relative to their own horizon at the same time - but in the same place as far as the starry background goes. Yep. In fact I made this little animation a few years ago to easily visualize this for some other thread on this topic here. ETA: the only thing that’s not shown is the earth would be rotating about 29.5 times, as the moon makes its circuit. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2012, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775/88 "2012-06-03T17:00:42Z")
Huh, well I’m not sure what’s wrong with YouTube, but it doesn’t seem to play the entire 10 seconds on my end. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2012, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775/89 "2012-06-03T17:19:48Z")
> [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](#): > > I once drove 6,000 miles round trip from home to California, and back. Took about a week. > > The moon is 40 times as far. So the moon is 40 weeks away, by car. Not too hard to understand. The sun is 48x the moon’s distance. By car, the sun is 1,920 weeks away. 1,920 / 52 = 36.92 years. > > In other words at freeway speeds you could drive from the earth to the sun, leaving at your birth, and you would arrive middle aged. Heh, anytime I notice someone’s odometer, and if it’s over 100,000 miles, sometimes I’ll remark that _“hey, you’re almost halfway to the moon!”_ Of course, this comes as such a non-sequitur, that the look I’ll get is usually bemused. On a trip up-north with my friend, in his old Jetta, I was watching the odometer as it approached 240,000 miles. And as soon as it did I exclaimed that we just made it to the moon. He was at first baffled, then quite pleased as he reflected on every drive he’s ever taken since taking it off the lot, be it a trip to the corner store, back and forth on his commute to work, or trips like going up-north; all those years and years to accumulate that distance. I told him though, now he’s gotta drive back to earth. But we didn’t think his engine was up for it. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2012, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775/90 "2012-06-03T20:51:11Z")
In no particular order: “offsides” is one of those things like “carrying” or even worse, “balk”: as far as I can tell, entirely in the eye of the beholder. Relativity Made Stupid: Space and Time are not two separate things; there’s one thing called Spacetime, and in some situations time gets traded for space or vice-versa. Key I understand- it’s basically how “high” or “low” a tune is. Time measures I’m still working on. Shorting a stock: You get someone to pay you up front for stock you promise to deliver later, no matter what it costs you. You pocket the money and if the price of the stock goes down below what you were advanced, you buy it, give the guy his stock, and keep the change. Tensegrity: highly counter-intuitive, I’m still working on that myself. If it’s any help, here is the simplest possible 3D tensegrity structure: [File:Tensegrity simple 3.gif - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tensegrity_simple_3.gif) ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2012, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775/91 "2012-06-03T22:43:29Z")
> [@olivesmarch4th](#): > > That is, in fact, what I meant to say. > > Does that mean different people from different parts of the world see a different part of the moon? > [@Malacandra](#): > > No, quite the reverse - we all see the same face of the moon, all the time. But because, as it goes around the Earth, it is sometimes face-on to the Sun, sometimes side-on, and sometimes back-on, the side we can see is not all in sunlight, all the time. (The Sun sees half the Moon, so do we, but not necessarily the same half - they overlap progressively more for two weeks, then progressively less for two more, and then so on around the cycle forever). > > Different people in different parts of the world, though, see the Moon in different parts of the sky relative to their own horizon at the same time - but in the same place as far as the starry background goes. Actually, **olives** is correct. Imagine two people, standing about six feet apart, looking at a basketball on the far side of the room. One person can seen a little bit more of the right side of the ball, the other can see a little bit more of the left. There are other effects, too, resulting from the eccentricity of the moon’s orbit and the tilt of its axis of rotation. The general term is [libration](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libration). (Nice animation at that link.) The overall result is that 59% of the moon is visible from the earth at some point. > [@Lumpy](#): > > Tensegrity: highly counter-intuitive, I’m still working on that myself. If it’s any help, here is the simplest possible 3D tensegrity structure: [File:Tensegrity simple 3.gif - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tensegrity_simple_3.gif) I’ve got a pretty good handle on it now. I bought a [toy](http://tensegrity.wikispaces.com/file/view/30_strut_tensegritoy_icosa.jpg/131881431/400x299/30_strut_tensegritoy_icosa.jpg) that can build tensegrity structures and the instructions explain the patterns and such. I even got the bulk kit so I can build some pretty huge spheres with it. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2012, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775/92 "2012-06-03T23:11:10Z")
> [@cmyk](#): > > I told him though, now he’s gotta drive back to earth. But we didn’t think his engine was up for it. But all he really has to do is drive out of the Moon’s gravity well. Then he can put it in neutral and coast downhill all the way back to Earth. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2012, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775/93 "2012-06-03T23:27:45Z")
Something I don’t grok about the way poker works: You have a royal flush, your opponent has a pair of twos; but because he has more money/chips than you do, you can’t match his raise, so you lose. wtf? ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2012, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775/94 "2012-06-03T23:36:06Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Something I don’t grok about the way poker works: You have a royal flush, your opponent has a pair of twos; but because he has more money/chips than you do, you can’t match his raise, so you lose. wtf? In all variations I’ve played, you don’t lose. Your winnings are simply limited to the amount that you _are_ able to match. The rest of it starts what’s called a “side pot” that everyone else that is in the hand that still has money can then bet on. You don’t win any of that money: if everyone else had less than a pair of twos, your opponent would win whatever _extra_ the other opponents put in beyond what you were able to wager. You’d win the rest of the money. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t some variations that don’t allow side pots, but if so, they are very very rare. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2012, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775/95 "2012-06-04T02:28:15Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > But all he really has to do is drive out of the Moon’s gravity well. Then he can put it in neutral and coast downhill all the way back to Earth. True, but re-entry’s gonna be a bitch, and hell on his brakes. Plus, I hope he gets his AC fixed. ---
**Author:** ![VanillaGorilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f9ae1b/32.png) [@VanillaGorilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VanillaGorilla)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2012, 8:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775/96 "2012-06-04T08:14:36Z")
> [@kushiel](#): > > Well, um, going to simpler concepts…24 hour time. I just can’t remember anything after 14:00. I use this one website for events and it only uses 24 hour time, and every time I use it I have to refer to a chart. For me it is the opposite, I can never remember which is which of AM and PM. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2012, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775/97 "2012-06-04T08:17:46Z")
> [@Prelude\_to\_Fascination](#): > > Thanks. That helps, but I think one problem I have is the concept of electrons flying around. I mean, I think of electrons spinning around the nucleus of an atom, not flying around on their own. Does it help if you think of them as jumping over to another nucleus’ orbits? Because that’s how electricity works in most media. A long copper cable is a chorus line that would make Ziegfield green with envy, a loooot of electrons jumping over to the next atom at the same time (not quite at the same time, really, but for practical and human-perception purposes, yes). ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2012, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775/98 "2012-06-04T12:30:59Z")
> [@Prelude\_to\_Fascination](#): > > Thanks. That helps, but I think one problem I have is the concept of electrons flying around. I mean, I think of electrons spinning around the nucleus of an atom, not flying around on their own. I can’t think of a good first-grade-level explanation to deal with that. I think the only solution is that you have to change your mental model of electrons to allow for the fact that they can exist independently of atoms. Electrons can indeed flow freely through some materials, and can even leap from objects to pass across an air gap (e.g. static electricity sparks, spark plugs, lightning, welding), or even through a vacuum all by themselves. [Cathode ray tubes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_beam) - the technology behind television displays for the past 75 years or so - are a good example of the latter. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2012, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775/99 "2012-06-04T16:17:07Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > Actually, **olives** is correct. Imagine two people, standing about six feet apart, looking at a basketball on the far side of the room. One person can seen a little bit more of the right side of the ball, the other can see a little bit more of the left. Actually, you’re technically right, but at risk of confusing the student with that particular nitpick. Given that no two observers on Earth can simultaneously see the Moon from more than 8000 miles apart, and the Moon is thirty times as far away, the “little bit more” amounts to just a few miles of Moon surface right at the edge, and I’d defy anyone to spot the difference without a detailed photograph and a fair bit of work with a magnifying glass. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2012, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775/100 "2012-06-04T16:24:09Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Something I don’t grok about the way poker works: You have a royal flush, your opponent has a pair of twos; but because he has more money/chips than you do, you can’t match his raise, so you lose. wtf? That’s not how poker works. If you don’t have enough chips to match his raise, you call with the chips you have. If there are only two of you in the game, he takes back the portion that’s more than what you called with. If there are more than two, a side pot is started. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stuff-you-just-cant-grok-for-long/623775.md?page=6)