To be fair, the result of this calculation only depends on the area/volume ratio of the human. I used the specific cylinder, because humans are roughly cylindrical, and have a volume of roughly 100 L. The surface area of a regular human is probably a bit larger than that of a cylindrical one though.
I’m actually a chemist, thankyouverymuch
#Chemistry Is When There’s Too Many Electrons For The Physicists
;)
The math actually says that we might quite possibly get nuclear stuff. I checked because at first I intuitively thought the same thing as you.
Assuming
Volume of displaced air: ≈ 100L = 0.1m^3 At atmospheric conditions: ≈ 4 mol
Surface area of cylindrical human: ≈ 1.58 m^2 Diameter of nitrogen molecule (which is roughly the same as for an oxygen molecule) : ≈ 3 Å Volume of monolayer: ≈ 4.7e-10 m^3
Treating the air as an ideal gas (terrible approximation for this process) gives us a post-compression pressure of ≈ 45 PPa (you read that right: Peta-pascal) or 450 Gbar, and a temperature of roughly 650 000 K.
These conditions are definitely in the range where fusion might be possible (see: solar conditions). So to the people saying you are only “trying to science”, I would say I agree with your initial assessment.
I’m on my phone now, but I can run the numbers using something more accurate than ideal gas when I get my computer. However, this is so extreme that I don’t really think it will change anything.
Edit: We’ll just look at how densely packed the monolayer is. Our cylindrical person has an area of 1.58 m^2, which, assuming an optimally packed monolayer gives us about 48 micro Å^2 per particle, or an average inter-particle distance of about 3.9 milli Å. For reference, that means the average distance between molecules is about 0.1 % of the diameter of the molecules (roughly 3 Å) I think we can safely say that fusion is a possible or even likely outcome of this procedure.
I am now sitting on the wing of a plane that is about to take off. Gonna try to Tom Cruise it. Will post updates soon.
This put words to thoughts and feelings I have had for a long time, but have not been able to express accurately. Thank you, well written.
Some languages - specifically Norwegian that I know of, don’t have separate words for “boyfriend” and “girlfriend”. In Norwegian we have the word “kjæreste” which can be directly translated to “dearest”. To me it always feels a little weird to use “boyfriend” or “girlfriend”, i guess the same could be true for other non-native english speakers.
Doomscrolling has now become an Olympic sport
And if I have that page, I’ll be a viable competitor
Wait till I show you…
int *ptr[]
In Norway we have the stereotypical Norwegians “Ola Nordmann” and “Kari Nordmann”. Ola and Kari were quite common names a couple generations ago (not so common now). “Nordmann” literally translates to “Norwegian [person]”, but is also a not-too-uncommon last name.
We typically talk about them if we’re describing something or some situation and what the stereotypical Norwegian would do/think.
Don’t know about Saturday, but “lørdag” comes from the Norse word for “washing day” because the vikings were surprisingly hygienic for their time, and bathed/washed themselves once a week.
I definitely agree that breaking best practices in a way that could lead to UB or hard-to-find bugs should give point deduction. The sole requirement shouldn’t be “write standard compliant code”.
However, a test does not simulate a real-world development environment, where you will have time to look through your code with fresh eyes the next day, and maybe even have someone review your code. The only thing a test reasonably simulates is your ability to solve the “thinking” part of the problem on your own. Thus, deducting points for trivial stuff that would 10/10 times be caught, either by the compiler, the developer or the reviewer, but isn’t “strictly correct” just seems pedantic to me.
To be fair, other than the example by OP I have a hard time coming up with things that wouldn’t be either caught by the compiler or are very bad practice (which should give point deduction).
I have to admit it sounds stupid to deduct points for that anyway, a test should measure your ability to reason, not your ability to remember trivial formalities.
I have a masters degree in materials chemistry and engineering. When people find that out they often say stuff like “I could never understand that” or similar.
I am of the firm belief that I could teach anyone everything I know given enough time and motivation. The thing is, I don’t think there’s anything special about me that makes me capable of doing what I do, other than thinking chemistry is extremely interesting. I don’t have a more capable brain or anything. I’m just a bit of a nerd.
I absolutely agree that way too many people have the misconception that you have to be “special” to do a lot of the things many people find hard. It’s all about being interested enough to spend time learning it.
Maybe not your generic “discussions”, but at c/askscience we can discuss interesting (and more or less absurd) scientific questions and hypotheticals, if you’re into that kind of thing ;)
Great answer! I’m just commenting because I think this would be a question that would be nice to post on c/askscience where I regularly lurk and look for cool questions to answer, but where there aren’t too many questions being asked yet :)
I’m one of the people that thinks the world is probably going to shit (mass migration from uninhabitable land, wars over water / farmland etc.) but I don’t use that as an excuse to not do anything. My reasoning is that even though I honestly think everything is going to shit, I might be wrong, so the best I can do is plan to go down fighting to make the world better. Either the world burns, and I can say with integrity that I tried my best, or we somehow pull through and prevent the worst prognosis from becoming reality. Either way, slacking is a bad idea.
I do what I can to prevent the worst case scenario, but when anyone asks how I think this is going to go, I always answer “I objectively think we are all going to burn and die, but I’m not going down without a fight.” That’s all it is. I don’t think we are going to save the world, but I want to go down swinging.
I’m currently close to an uninhabited mountain region: Imma run and hide!
I’ve been missing an alternative to Facebook that I can use for non-anonymous planning of events and communication in hobby groups etc. and I had never heard of any of the “Facebook-type” federated stuff before!
Now I just need to convince a bunch of people that this is viable to use without being the annoying guy…