this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2024
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What have you learned recently? Which rabbit hole have you been digging into? (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (4 children)

If you zoom in really hard into how “electricity” works you find it mostly has to do with electromagnetic fields.

If you zoom in on electromagnetic fields you get quantum mechanics.

If you zoom in on quantum mechanics you find a lot of disagreement, basically the best scientists today still don’t fully understand our observations.

So in essence we still don't really understand electricity.

At best you get physics that describes phenomena like vanderwaals forces describes the magnet force but they don’t explain how to phenomena exist, how those forces form.

Or i am just to stupid to understand the current scientific meta. I have always been dissatisfied with how unrevealing physics was and how much questions it never answered while getting a passing grade though.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The best scientists don’t understand the observations whatsoever. They have some theories they cobbled together to fit the observations, but pretty much no real world evidence to back up the basis of those theories (not sure if I worded that one well). Good example is dark matter. That’s not a thing we know of at all. That’s a made up idea they created to make some math work, because they absolutely cannot account for how much matter in the universe the math says we are supposed to have. In other words, the math says things like gravity just don’t work unless there is a LOT more matter in the universe than what we are able to observe (I might be wrong about the gravity example. I have not read up on this in a while.)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Gravity is becoming almost a personal vice for me, and i know i am risking to be seen as ridiculous for even saying so.

Supposedly its one if the fundamental forces, but fundamental in this context means forces not reducable to more “basic” interactions.

But we already know that gravity is caused by curvatures in spacetime. Which we believe are caused by mass.

“Spacetime” is not classified as a fundamental force.

I have personally (internally) started to use the term “gravity effect” because it fits my own model of the universe much better.

My own model of the universe is by all accounts some dumb ape bs, but as i am coming to terms with, so is most of established human knowledge.

I have real fears of one day finding myself on the side of science deniers, but a freaking love science…

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Dude, you can’t lead up to a theory like that and then no payoff!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I thought electricity was just a stream of electrons flowing in one direction like a provoked stampede.

Did Bill Nye lie to me?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Yes he did. Its the holes. The holes move.

But beyond circuits I, the OC is right. It quickly gets into field theory, where electricity in wires is just a special case.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

its 100% in any meaningful sense of the word move the electrons that move, but thanks to ol' benny franks we have an ass-backwards roundabout way of describing the relative motion of stationary proton "holes" compared to electrons which are- well, more teleporting than moving, frequently (if you'll pardon the pun). holes move in the same way that water pressure is analogous to voltage: there may be mathematical and maybe even some physical comparisons to be made, but the conceptual framework is fundamentally an analogy, and in the case of "hole flow" a fudged up cya excuse for not updating the damn convention when the mistake was discovered. hurrumph.

holes flowing... protons with free motion? in a solid wire or semiconductor? you mean a plasma.

is there a physical constraint one could apply to matter to cause "holes" to flow while electrons stay put?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Bill Nye was describing a direct current (DC). But most houses use alternating current. With an alternating current (AC), the electrons are jutting back and forth rapidly rather than flowing in one direction, and the rate of this depends on the Hz (frequency)!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

The real world application fields convert these theories into smaller easier to understand rules that you can hold, touch, taste, and smell. A microchip groups a ton of sub micro scale components working together as a factory to produce a device that is used to make another device , etc. Each one of those sub scale components was meticulously designed to work in a certain way using well understood rules. We likely do not have the understanding of lower level quantum-ish magic that makes it work, but we do know how to build real things with our simpler rules.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

No, you're pretty accurate! As a physics geek I've always joked that electricity is the closest thing we have to real life magic and all of our computers are essentially running on magitech 😂

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Currently programming an NES emulator. This is like the 5th iteration over the last 10 years since it's been an obsession of mine for years. Got kinda motivated to try it again since nintendo is burning all the switch emulators down and I want to get skilled enough to try one of those. So far I've got a near perfect 6502 emulator with BCD support (The NES uses a different version without, but I thought it'd be useful for later projects) written in rust, currently writing out the PPU and losing hair. I'm the most excited about this version because I actually sort of know what I'm doing now, I have horrible dyslexia and dysgraphia so I often failed to actually read technical docs all the way through, but I've improved a lot on that recently. Got the emulated CPU running software within about 6 hours combined effort, so we'll see how the rest goes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Got sound? I hear that's the hard part

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

No, but i sort of have a plan for that when it comes time to implement it

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago

I learned quite a lot yesterday about the creation of Call of Duty licence by the Infinity Ward studio. Quite interesting to see how the story unfold, and how defining to the whole industry a single studio could be

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity_Ward

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

One of my boyfriends is really into (and good at) fighting games. I haven't even played one in decades, and when I did it was just to button mash lol. I wanted to play with him so I've been deep diving into those. Now we play Battle Craze together.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Edit for delete cuz i did not mean for that to be submitted.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

Learning more about Ancient Cahokia.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I just found out that Christopher Columbus was apparently Jewish and Spanish. This was the least interesting fact I have learned in recent memory.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

He was said to have written in his maritime diaries that he saw UFO-reminiscent light formations while travelling to and from America that resembled Jewish iconography.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I was reading legal cases of divorced parents, one who wants to vaccinate their children and the other who doesn't, this weekend. The judge always sides with the parent who wants to vaccinate.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

strange, that. government conspiracy no doubt.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

After this comment got into reading this comic and learning about the élan school. I was gonna search how much of it is true but the comic is so long that the research will have to wait until tomorrow. If you have a lot of time, it's worth a read.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

I started learning Japanese in my spare time as of Oct 1st, and in 2 weeks I've managed to learn both Hiragana and Katakana which means as long as it isn't written in Kanji I can now read Japanese! I have no idea what the words mean, but I can read them!

Shoutout to 'he', 'be' and 'pe' the only sounds with the same symbol in both Hiragana and Katakana.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

I played Adastra and it hit me super hard. Watching a bunch of critical analysis videos of it, I found that "post-Adastra depression" is a thing and I wasn't just losing my mind because I'm a freak.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I've been reading a lot about personal finance. The Millionaire Next Door really opened my eyes.

I also learned about leading and lagging indicators and thought that was cool!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Small advice: take that book with a grain of salt. The author took advantage of a specific market, what he did is not achievable everywhere for everyone

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

You mean it only applies to the US, or something different?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The big issue is the typical issue of survivorship bias. For obvious reasons they can only study the PAWs who are, you know, successful PAWs. So one of their claims is PAWs are willing to take economic risks if the return is high.

But what about the people who took economic risks and had it collapse under them? They'd be UAWs by their nomenclature ... yet they did a PAW thing.

In reality you learn more about what led people to failure than enumerating the things that supposedly led to people's success.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

This, thank you!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

i can scroll around satellite maps of the earth for hours. i cant tell you how much of North America and Europe is just farmland, and how freaky northern Russia/Canada look even just through satellite pixels.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Read in a travel guide about the modern history of Cyprus, and it was not what my super-superficial knowledge made me expect to read. Did not dive into a rabbit hole though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I fell into a depression for a while so nothing, but recently my sense of curiosity is coming back. I've been reading about climate change. I feel like I've been bombarded by all sorts of information over the last few years and want to sort out at least a little of my confusion.

Oh and I got a VR headset and have been learning how to use the 3d paint app.