[Weekly Discussion Thread] Scientists, what are the biggest misconceptions in your field?

fastparticles · 2012-05-25T15:46:08.525558+00:00

Nice response.

fastparticles · 2012-05-25T15:45:19.028277+00:00

Yea right. It looks like my color belongs in physics and your in engineering. It seems the moderators don't know how to classify us, which I guess is tough. I do a lot of electronic materials, i.e. solid state physics. You probably do a lot of wet synthesis, i.e. chemistry.

fastparticles · 2012-05-25T15:37:22.878407+00:00

I didn't realize that there were a wide variety of GM strains used for the same type of crops. Thanks.

fastparticles · 1 day

It's not a misconception, but when I tell people that I'm a materials scientist, they look at me with blank faces. The layman doesn't know what it is.

fastparticles · 1 day

What about GMO crops leading to monostrains (i.e. only one genetic type of crop being used), and the associated risks? For example, blights associated with that one variant. As the old saying goes, "don't put all your eggs in one basket". This is not my field, but I always thought that was the scariest part of GMO crops.

TheYeIIowDucK · 29 days

For binary, pseudo-binary, and above the ASM phase diagram page is good. I'm not sure where a good online resource is for single component, P-T diagrams, but there's probably one around... ah try wolfram alpha.

Edit: Wolfram has some P-T diagrams, but it's not comprehensive. Here's the diagram for ethanol.

Tio76 · 1 month

How does temperature factor in? It seems that when I come in from cold weather to the warmth inside the house, I have to pee. This happens often.

KenjaminFranklin · 1 month

Nice. I hear some Amon Tobin in there.

jrwst36 · 1 month

Cool. Thanks.

plasmaquestion · 1 month

If I were you I would be concerned about the sputter yields of your cathode material. I don't have my sputtering reference on my right now, but the sputtering yield is inversely proportional to the difference between the atomic masses of the sputtering atom and the target atom (i.e. the plasma ion and the cathode atoms), and also inversely proportional to the binding energy of the target atoms.

So if you don't want to sputter your cathode materials all over your chamber, then pick something with a heavy atomic mass (heavy since you are using H2 which is light), and something with a high binding energy. You probably shouldn't have to worry about it too much because the hydrogen ion isn't a good sputtering ion. It's too light.

Aurora92 · 1 month

Steel is an interesting material. There are many things you can do to it to change its mechanical properties. Even with out changing the carbon content or adding other elements you can drastically change its strength (yield strength). For example, you can heat it and then quench it to put it in a metastable phase. You can can beat it to make in stronger (cold working). Then adding small amounts of additional atoms can drastically change the material further.

So are they same material? I would say they are both iron/iron alloys. Stainless steel can have a lot of chromium as nejikaze stated. But in my book they are all iron.

Whatzamatta · 1 month

Nope. Nope.

Most of the Wired article stated that there was no clear evidence to support this claim. You quote Brownridge's work, so I checked him out. He has some work that is not peer reviewed like this arXiv article. I did find a peer reviewed work here. In this work he states.

the cold water must supercool [for this to happen]... If the cold water does not supercool, it will freeze before the hot water because it always cools to 0 °C first regardless of the initial temperatures.

Long story short, there is no thermodynamic reason that hot water will freeze before cold water. If you consider special cases where you deliberately play with the kinetics to supercool one sample set and not the other, then you may get weird results.

In general, no. Hot water does not freeze faster than cold water.

Capn_Of_Rum · 1 month

I'm waiting for RW, and I just bought a Virgin Mobile basic phone ($15) to use till I can sign up for RW. I looked at MetroPCS, but if you want minimal price Virgin Mobile seems the cheapest.

jrwst36 · 1 month

That makes sense. I had no idea is was doing that.

jrwst36 · 1 month

The question then is how do they link the MAC addresses to the physical coordinates? There must be a massive database stored on the iPod because it's not updating in real time.

jrwst36 · 1 month

Thanks. The articles says

The Touch can also take advantage of a slew of location-aware apps that can draw on Wifi connectivity to locate you and your friends (if they're using location-aware apps) and show you views and reviews of businesses and services around you.

But it doesn't give specifics. Especially when not connected. Although it might allude to it.

jrwst36 · 1 month

So, does my offline iPod have a comprehensive database relating SSIDs or MACs to physical coordinates?

jrwst36 · 1 month

For my iPod touch, there is no GPS, and no cellular information. So the information must solely come from the wifi SSIDs or MACs. In that case, is the database on the phone, as GrouchyMcSurly asked?

jrwst36 · 2 months

Wow, thaks's for the long answer. I tried to give you three upvotes, but it only ended up giving you one. I'm going to read more on loop corrections, but it's so far out of my field I'll probably be just scratching my head.

jrwst36 · 2 months

Thanks for all your answers so far. I've been wondering about this for a while. If you don't mind I have a few more follow up questions. They may be harder... or more philosophical.

What makes gravity so special that it's the only interaction that can dilate time? Also, are there counter part phenomena for other interaction forces? For example, can the high intensity of a different fundamental interaction dilate or alter some other parameter which is counter to our intuition (or what we might think is totally crazy)? Are you following me?

jrwst36

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