Well, yes, that’s why everyone loves car washes.
Oh, and explainxkcd is back up. But they don’t really have a good explanation for the 1500 year trick shot, either.
B+ comic.
A+ alt-text.
Physicists wouldn’t get mad. Dirac came up with the idea of an infinite “sea” of electrons, of which positrons were holes in the sea:
A positron gun is definitely possible. And while the Dirac sea is obsolete, it’s still basically consistent with the universe as we observe it (in not too different than the way that the ether is compatible with observation). We have better explanations now, but it’s not wrong.
At least he didn’t try to suffocate her by flooding the lab with phlogiston
Those are negative-energy electrons, though, which leaves a positron as a positive-mass particle. The holes that act as charge carriers in some semiconductors aren’t really the same thing (and yes, it is the holes that carry the current, not the electrons, as can be proven by a Hall effect experiment).
That said, if semiconductors can have electron holes that act like particles in their own right, then maybe, under the right conditions, air can, too.
That’s not an earthquake. The wire just does that.
You can always make a resistor by zig-zagging your wire enough times.
The diode is cool.
And capacitors and inductors totally do look like that.
What’s the battttttttery? I don’t recognize that symbol (and I think that one’s real).
ExplainXKCD says it’s fictional.
After reading “t as in buffet”, I thought he going for a silent word, where every letter is unpronounced.
We did a thread on that (at least) once, and were able to find an English word for almost every letter.
I feel “Path that minimizes contact with sand because it’s coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere” was a missed opportunity.
I’m not sure “path that maximizes time” is meaningful without additional constraints.