Imagine two balls the same size. e.g. 3 feet in diameter. One is an inflated beach ball weighing about 3 ounces. The other is made of granite and weights (WAG) 1500 lbs.
When you drop them from the proverbial Leaning Tower, which one hits the ground first? Answer: granite. And not by a small margin either. The difference is huge.
In other words, the variable being varied is density. Which critically affects falling in an atmosphere.
What the classic real world experiment was about was two balls of the same material but of different size. So the same density but different weights. The contention of the non-scientific folks was that a 10 lb granite ball would fall twice as fast a 5 lb granite ball. The experiment demonstrated (within their margin of experimental error), that for a given density the size=weight didn’t matter. Heavier objects fell no faster than lighter ones.
The “joke” is that **Xema **(perhaps inadvertently) told the story backwards where the usual conclusion is disproven rather than proven. So he’s asserting that lots of smart people believe something that actually truly really is false. And not just false in the 6th decimal place. But it sounds OK.
My wife explained to me once that he did NOT do that experiment in the tower, in agreement with main thrust of Wikipedia article. But she said that he DID do many experiments with balls rolling down ramps (to slow the fall to make the observations easier).
Yes, after I wrote the initial post in this thread I read up on their birthplaces; apparently countries’ borders were less defined and people would give their nationality based on the ‘tribal area’ they grew up in. That was more detailed than just a country of origin and so I don’t think it’s a thing you know that it never occurred to you others wouldn’t know.
I suspect that back in the day, being a widow was a bigger deal than today; there were all sorts of words used to describe women in various life states- maiden (i.e. virgin), widow, spinster, etc… none of which are really in use anymore.
Widow is the only one that seems to really retain any utility, in that it describes a woman whose husband had died, although originally the connotations of having had your husband die were much more dire than they are in this day and age.
So I’m not surprised that today’s children wouldn’t be aware of the word “widow”- it’s something that’s more in line with a vocabulary word from school than something in common social usage. When was the last time you heard about the old widow, or the Widow So and So, anyway.
I’ve actually never heard those constructions, but it’s not uncommon to hear " So and So’s widow" or a reference to someone being widowed. Although I still wouldn’t expect grade schoolers to know until they happened upon a Bible reading that mentioned a widow.
People think that living in the same time zone means the sunrise and sunset happens at the same time for everyone in the time zone.
No, people. At the eastern end of the time zone, the sunrise and sunset are just about an hour earlier than it is for people on the western end of a given time zone.
The earth’s spin is essentially analogue. Time zones are somewhat digital in concept.
Having grown up in an area known for heavy snowfall, a lot of mine are about dealing with snow.
I was in panic when I saw my neighbors, recently having emigrated from a tropical country, about to pour hot water over the steep stone steps leading up to their house in order to melt the snow. I’m sure they thought I was insane, running over from my house waving my arms shouting Hello! Wait! Don’t do that! Of course from their point of view, using hot water to melt ice probably seemed like a very reasonable idea (for anyone currently living in a tropical country … it will melt the snow, but will freeze again extremely quickly, replacing your snow-covered steps with a thin, often invisible, layer of slick ice).
The hot water one, that makes sense to me that might not know if you were experiencing the joys of home ownership in a snowy area for the very first time.
The other one makes me crazier – if you are from a city with a lot of snow, your mother probably yelled at you if you were sliding down the big piles of snow kicked up by the plow, especially sliding in the direction of the street. Usually the lesson learned was not to do that if your mother was watching, but it’s a fair point … a kid can slide faster and farther than anticipated … right into the path of an oncoming car, and if you are in an urban area where there are cars parked on the street, the view of the driver is blocked by the parked cars so they wouldn’t even realize kids were playing. So I was AMAZED when I was living in a city that usually didn’t see much snow but got hit with an unexpected storm – and parents were out there encouraging their kids to slide down the snow piles into the street.
Neither are the times consistent between the north and south end of a given longitude in a large country. The difference may not be huge, but it’s plenty real and in some cases is enough to make a real difference.
And as to east/west, it’s a bit worse than that. If all time zones were the same size they’d all be an hour wide. For historical reasons the US Eastern time zone is about 50% wider than it ought to be. So all the DST-related whining is extra huge in that time zone. Which happens to contain about 40% of the US population. Which is why the whining here on SDMB can be deafening.
I’ve never slid down plowed piles of snow, but was told not to play in the piles of snow in case another plow comes in and buries me or a car plows through the pile and hits me.
I remember sledding in Schenley Park with a friend when I was maybe 8. I went flying down the hill way too fast and rolled off at the bottom, watching my sled get crunched by a passing car. I’m sure the driver shat his pants, but I was running away so fast I missed seeing his expression when he got out of the car.
Not picking on Legs but surprisingly few people consider that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. In worse case this can help you stay on track hiking out of the wilderness; they’re not just arbitray directions on a map. (or your cellphone GPS :rolleyes:)
But the Sun doesn’t rise in the East nor set in the West. It rises someplace generally more easterly than it is any of the other 3 cardinal directions. Likewise it sets more in the West than it does in the S or N or E.
A naive person trying to hike out of a wood using the Sun angle for reference will walk in more or less a half-circle.
Yes, people can use the Sun for orientation. I certainly do. But people can’t us the Sun for orientation if the only thing they know is some a simplified notion like “sunrise is east.”
I feel like I am kind of pooing on my father’s memory by telling this, but…he believed that when the weather report predicted , say, twenty percent rain probability it meant it would definitely rain…on twenty percent of the area. I knew he was wrong, but after all, he was my father, and who the hell was I to correct him?
Seems most likely that they’re referring to the post on the first page where someone complained about people who hadn’t heard of Pete Seeger when he died (because ‘he was an icon’), and the reply thereto that said they would confuse him with Bob Seger (which was a facepalm moment for me, because…heh…I did).
I’m another person who has right/left issues, though not in the context of my dominant hand (I’m a righty)…which is good, because I have to think about my hands to get it right in other contexts. I also have a problem with East/West due to it.
Returning to pineapples; in many languages the word for pineapple is ananas or similar.
Twice I’ve been in French speaking areas and have seen Americans order Ananas Flambe` after dinner, then complain when their pineapple was served to them.
False almost-cognates are a never ending source of both consternation and fun the world over.
Never having seen pineapple flambé on offer in a native English-speaking area I almost think this dish was created as a way to play a trick on the English-speaking tourists.
