How to photograph science... - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: daqq
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2019, 05:19:38 pm
content: As an engineer I can occasionally relate...https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/how-to-photograph-science

author: bob91343
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2019, 07:28:02 pm
content: I must keep reminding myself that, by definition, the IQ of the average person is 100. That implies that half the population has a lower IQ than that.Therefore, a simpllistic approach to defining a scientist is probably as good as most people need.I once tried to convince a woman that science is good stuff. She said she didn't trust scientists, that they have an agenda she finds unpleasant. I replied that a true scientist does his best to discover truth. She never spoke to me again.

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 13, 2019, 01:04:38 am
content: Quote from: bob91343 on May 12, 2019, 07:28:02 pmConsidering that IQ tests find out whether you think like a 1900s Psychology Professor, the science involved has a fairly shaky basis to work with.They also have a fairly soiled history, being associated with the discredited Eugenics movement.It's nice to think that ignorant people are inherently stupid.It allows you to blame them for any problems that their lack of knowledge brings their way, whilst basking in the warm feeling that, not only do you know more, but you are somehow genetically programmed to do so.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 13, 2019, 05:03:13 am
content: Well its hard to quantify how smart someone is in the first place since its very difficult to agree on a definition of what "being smart" actually is. Let alone express it as a number.But yeah the general public tends to have a very low understanding of science. You will commonly come across people that don't know how SI prefixes work and have no clue about the basic scientific concepts such as conservation of energy.Due to that you get people choosing between different electric space heaters and arguing witch one heats the room up faster even tho they are all 1500W. Or you get people putting watercooling into there PC so that there room wouldn't get so hot in the summer. It goes all the way to one country having a law that requires desk fans to have a timer on them because supposedly running a fan for too long in a closed room would "use up all the oxygen" and make people die.Yeah a lot of people are genuinely stupid (And will usually get most offended by anyone calling them that) but also quite a lot of people are just simply not interested in the topic. I had this very problem in school, when i found something interesting i got great grades without even opening the book, but when i found something uninteresting i could read trough the whole thing many times and get a pretty meh grade on the test next day, then a week later i forgot like 95% of it. This made things like geography or history pretty difficult for me (Tho i quite liked history before WW1 where politics was mostly left out of the history books).I do admit i feel like a lot of people in the world are just plain stupid, but there are still a lot of smart people that have no clue about science just because it doesn't interest them. They don't need science to go about there daily life, working a day shift as a cashier in a store and then going home and doing whatever they find enjoyable.It doesn't really bother me, we don't need everyone to be a scientist. What does bother me is that the world is often made to cater to the stupid. Hence why the internet was a much better place 15 years ago when only people who are into computers actually used it.

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 13, 2019, 06:46:36 am
content: Quote from: vk6zgo on May 13, 2019, 01:04:38 amI don't think IQ testing is bs. But IQ is overrated because people somehow assume that high intelligence implies one will know better or make better decisions, which simply isn't true if one doesn't maintain situational awareness and makes wrong assumptions. There is actually a lot of high IQ idiots.Quote from: vk6zgo on May 13, 2019, 01:04:38 amWishful thinking, many people talk about eugenics, genetic engineering, transhumanism and similar things. Many actually intelligent people, who IMO apparently have been raised as robots and don't know life.Myself, I would rather not consider any of that seriously. I expect to enjoy huge schadenfreude if somebody actually triesQuote from: vk6zgo on May 13, 2019, 01:04:38 amYeah, that's high IQ idiots. But they would still blow you out of the water in a maths competition if they wanted to and there is little you can do about it. I don't consider it a serious possibility that intelligence is a "social construct" and not determined at birth to a significant extent.

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 13, 2019, 02:35:08 pm
content: Meanwhile, in 'other news', I learned today that the Jeremy Kyle Show "is the most popular show on ITV's daytime schedule, with an average of one million viewers and a 22% audience share".Source:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-48253358

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 13, 2019, 03:30:26 pm
content: Quote from: Berni on May 13, 2019, 05:03:13 amExcept there actually is a big difference between a radiator type heater that takes minutes just to warm up itself and an infrared heat lamp that turns on almost instantly.

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 13, 2019, 09:43:21 pm
content: IR is supposedly better when some stuff needs to be kept warm because it heats the stuff rather than the air around it. The air stays cooler and losses are lower.As for home heating, I'm not sure which is more efficient and evaluation is harder because the criteria are more subjective, but I wouldn't dismiss the possibility that there may be a difference.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2019, 05:03:15 am
content: Well yeah there are differences between types of heaters, but if you run them for 2 hours in a room all of them will get the air inside to roughly the same temperature (But how warm it feels is certainly not the same). What i meant was arguing about the differences of different space heaters of the same type and power.Same thing when people put watercooling on a PC with a massive radiator, so that it would keep there room cooler in the summer. If you put your hand in front of it then does feel like the air coming out is not as hot, but that's just because the same heat is spread across more air volume. Yet you will see PC enthusiasts argue about it all over forums, Reddit... etc. Quite a few PC Yourubers had to make videos about it to explain why its wrong.There are also lots of people complaining when people benchmark CPU coolers. They often subtract away the ambient temperature for the final result. Yet lots of people claim this is wrong, there augment being that if you reduce the ambient temperature by 5°C that would not reduce the CPU temperature by 5°C (When running at the same speed and load). They agree that lower ambient temp would also reduce the CPU temp, but they claim it wouldn't be a 1:1 reduction. That's of course bullshit.We wouldn't have these kinds of discussions if the general public knew a bit more about science.