Talk:Feynman sprinkler

message: So if Feynman did not come up with this thought experiment, who did?  It would be nice if the article could mention this. -Verdatum (talk) 15:17, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Originator 

message: In the article it says the problem appeared in "Science of Mechanics" by Earnest Mach in 1893, but seeing as Feynman was BORN in 1918, that would be impossible. Did Mach publish a similar article or is this just incorrect?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.121.208.184 (talk) 02:37, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It fits when you consider that Feynman "did not come up with the problem or ever publish a solution to it, only help popularize it". Mike Peel (talk) 08:12, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dates wrong? 

message: Even though I have physics qualifications, I'm kinda tired at the moment, and somehow this is the first time I've come across this one.
Can anyone tell me why the automatic assumption isn't that it would spin backwards? A fluid dispensing/sucking-up nozzle is still a nozzle regardless of what media it is or has going through it and will still concentrate and have reaction forces, surely? there's still a partial vacuum created by the pump that will have an uneven effect, same as the overpressure of forcing fluid through it. And if it's operating in the reverse direction to normal, why wouldn't the incident forces (which make it spin forwards normally) be reversed also?
Maybe i'm just being thick, but then i am also semiconcuoo... conciuo...... consciou... goddamn it... half-asleep by medical and legal standards. 77.102.101.220 (talk) 22:17, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Huh? 

message: Why is that name most correct? --anon  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.167.96.25 (talk) 22:19, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Most correctly"? 

message: I have a physics degree, and I am confused as to why it isn't obvious that the sprinkler would rotate in the "reverse" direction (i.e. advancing toward the nozzle openings).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.138.132.28 (talk) 21:08, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  I agree with "Huh?" 

message: This article has a "Solution" section, but it lacks a "statement of the question" section!  The question is never stated in detail.  The introductory paragraph says a few things about the problem, and includes such false statements as "A regular sprinkler has nozzles arranged at angles on a freely rotating wheel such that when water is pumped out of them, the resulting jets cause the wheel to rotate".  (This is hardly a "regular sprinkler" -- less than 1% of all sprinklers in the world contain any moving parts.)  
If this sprinkler has ports that suck in fluid, then one of the following must also be true:  (1) It also has ports that expel liquid and which therefore create a force and/or torque;  (2) It has a "hose" that expels liquid somewhere beyond the field of the problem -- this would be analogous to the hose that feeds a rotating sprinker;  (3) it has a magic teleportation device that causes the liquid to disappear from its interior instead of accumulating;  (4) liquid accumulates inside this device, causing the volume of the sprinkler's shell to expand;  (5) liquid accumulates inside this device, but the device's volume is constant, and therefore the density of the enclosed liquid increases constantly.  You need to tell us which of the assumptions is part of the problem, or else you haven't told us the problem at all. — Lawrence King (talk) 20:40, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Split off and bolded. Someone please fix this rather crippling problem with the current page, pref. by blockquoting Feynman's specific formulation of the question. — LlywelynII 02:00, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: You're forgetting something...

message: The book "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman" was written by Ralph Leighton, so it is misleading to call it an autobiography. Fixed this but because the book was written in the first person, I understand if this is a controversial change.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.194.41.148 (talk) 01:19, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: In the preface, Leighton explains that he prepared the text from recordings of Feynman talking about his life.  In the introduction, Hibbs writes of the book as Feynman's "memoirs".  I don't see anything wrong about using the term "autobiography", but I'll stick with "memoirs" since the term appears in the book itself.  - Eb.hoop (talk) 05:12, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biography/autobiography