Ask any question you want about Physics

Wow you have an interesting job. Maybe we should meet one day.
a reply to: ErosA433

I got a physics question. can any of you guys explain this?

for some background: so I've been trying to loose weight lately and succeeding. 25lbs down and still going whoohoo! however I've noticed something interesting that occurs on occasion with the scales i use to weigh myself.

the scales I use are at work. there are two side by side in the breakroom. like a spazz I weigh may self several times a day. I also don't eat while at work. essentially fasting for the 8 hours while there.

so heres the physics question. today I weighed myself when I got in. did not consume any water, liquids or food. nothing that would add weight to me. weigh myself a few hours later after going to the restroom several times (I presume stuff going out but nothing at all coming in would make you lighter.) and i weigh two pounds more! on both scales! nothing in my pockets and again did not consume anything not even water. i understand "water retention, glycogen" blah blah, but how does it explain this!

so next i thought hey it got a lot colder outside today as the day passed (20 degrees cooler.) barometric pressure is the culprit! but i work in a high rise tower thats temp controlled. it was the same temp inside all day.

then I figured the scales must be going on the Fritz! but both at the same time? the scales are both pretty accurate, say close to the same weight when measured, and are accurate to the ounce.

any ideas? is my body an overunity device? should I submit myself to los Alamos as a spontaneous mass generator for them to study? how does one gain weight over few hours but actually have a drop of anything, at all, enter their body while simultaneous expelling matter. where's the new weight coming from?

a reply to: BASSPLYR

I would recommend to repeat the experiment a couple of times before calling Los Alamos.

a reply to: moebius

too late! already made the call, I'm selling my body to science! bet they pay more than my usual customers.

anyway Los Alamos said they sent a special car to pick me up. said I'll be able to recognize it because it is boxy and has a cross on the side and the driver will be wearing a white smock but to not worry because they have a similar white shirt for me to wear...said it had really long sleeves with some stylish buckles n straps.

anyhoo, so I'm out side waiting for their car. should be here any moment now.

a reply to: BASSPLYR

are you sure there wasn't a prankster standing behind you? they can be sneaky....

a reply to: howmuch4another

yep was all by myself when I measured.

a reply to: BASSPLYR

in that case your body is definitely an over unity devise...we need to conduct some tests

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
so next i thought hey it got a lot colder outside today as the day passed (20 degrees cooler.) barometric pressure is the culprit!

While you're correct that there is a relationship between temperature and barometric pressure, temperature isn't the only thing that affects barometric pressure. However, even so, we are talking ounces of buoyancy, not pounds, so even the barometric change from a storm system passing over wouldn't explain a difference of 2 pounds for a person of typical weight.

but i work in a high rise tower thats temp controlled. it was the same temp inside all day.

I don't know if your building does this, but the temperature-controlled buildings I've worked in have an energy-saving mode at night. So the interior gets cool in the fall/winter at 3am. If people start coming in at 7am, the air handling system starts warming the air maybe an hour earlier. However, this warmer air doesn't immediately warm up the interior of all the machines; that takes time. However on a scale I wouldn't expect it to take very long, but I wouldn't automatically rule out temperature as a possible contributing factor because you work in a high rise. The temperature inside the scale could still be cooler very early in the morning, even if you don't notice any air temperature change outside the scale.

then I figured the scales must be going on the Fritz! but both at the same time? the scales are both pretty accurate, say close to the same weight when measured, and are accurate to the ounce.

I've seen something similar with my digital weigh scale and always assumed the scale wasn't that accurate, but maybe yours are more accurate; then again, maybe not. But if two are changing in unison, it's not random variation but then you look for common influences like temperature or if the scales are plugged in, voltage.

Are the scales operating on AC power? If so they might be subject to power fluctuations. For example I see the brightness of incandescent lights change when the microwave oven is operated because power is not perfectly regulated. I'd expect a good scale to have decent accuracy within the normal voltage range of the grid, but that accuracy can vary quite a bit, if you look at different accuracy specifications of different scales.

I always assumed that breathing out carries moisture out of the body, however I suppose it's possible in extremely high humidity conditions moisture transfer could be reversed, though that seems very unlikely, since I wouldn't expect humidity to be that high inside your controlled building.

I'd suggest bringing in some barbell weights to check the scale accuracy. They should be reasonably stable. Weigh yourself and the barbell weights on both scales. Then when you weigh yourself again and see an increase, also weigh the barbell weights on both scales, and see if they show an increase. I'd use at least 60 pounds given the level of variation you're looking for, maybe 100 pounds. If the barbell weights also show an increase then you know the variability can be attributed to the scales and not to your mass or weight.

any ideas? is my body an overunity device? should I submit myself to los Alamos as a spontaneous mass generator for them to study? how does one gain weight over few hours but actually have a drop of anything, at all, enter their body while simultaneous expelling matter. where's the new weight coming from?

If you didn't drink any water, maybe your dehydrated brain wasn't processing the input from your eyes well and you mis-read the scale? Just kidding, as I'm sure you are about the over-unity thing. To joke some more, maybe you're like Prahlad Jani who said he hasn't eaten since 1940 and gets his nourishment from the goddess Amba, so you might want to ask Amba to stop giving you invisible nourishment when you're on a diet.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

now I'm really confused. in despair of my weight loss efforts last night I consumed a 40oz of malt liquor. I now weigh 5 pounds less than yesterday!

imma just gunna do that from now on as my diet.

fiber ha! protien ha! free of their chains at last!

you bring up a good point. I didn't consider voltage issues. the tower I work in is currently under heavy heavy construction as they remodel the lobby. every now and tgen a worker will accidentally trip the building wide alarm. so it's possible they are screwing up the voltage running through the building.

just checked the scales they are battery powered so I guess voktage in the building isntvan issue. would say batteries were the problem but both scales? and although right next to each other one is used much less frequently.

so it's a mystery I guess.

Lol dude this is all quantum sheites going on. Bet los Alamos will buy you a body bag, Lol.
a reply to: BASSPLYR

We have a couple "atomic clocks" on earth. None of which, keeps "time" with the other. ..I know, "altitude and location". But when "physical" force is used on another person, properly. Said person, seems to be dealing with reality not "theory". In a "time and space" beyond science which is? Thier pain, outside the boundary of "Education"? I'm just assuming that billions of dollars on trying to find water on Mars or elsewhere, could have fed the "liberal" democratic, poor in the U.S.A. for some, actual "physical" time. ... But to my question. Which wieght is greater, in bulk? A ton of feathers or rock?

a reply to: murphy22

structure sentences much sir?

originally posted by: ErosA433
a reply to: murphy22

structure sentences much sir?

"Flight of ideas" doesn't give you a lot of time to, I suppose.

a reply to: BASSPLYR

If you sit at a desk during the hours between weighing;? Could it be that the lack of movement, under gravity, densified some of your bodily material, or stuff with gasses? Also, maybe the lighting of the environment, potentially computer screen, radiation/heat, adding energy/mass to your body?

Have you done this again, and any interesting results?

The question that I have, board, is this.

It is about an atom. Say, hydrogen.
If an atom gets hit, will it 'feel' the shock?
More important to me is will there be brief misalignment between overall composure of an atom?
To further clarify, will an electron shell move in a direction of hit force applied?

If yes, then would the nuclei respond by relocating itself to a new shell position to assume stable atom composure? Is there a delay in a moment the shell moves and nuclei following to assume center position?

thanks

The question might sound very silly but do your best to answer.


cheers folks)

originally posted by: greenreflections
The question that I have, board, is this.

It is about an atom. Say, hydrogen.
If an atom gets hit, will it 'feel' the shock?
More important to me is will there be brief misalignment between overall composure of an atom?
To further clarify, will an electron shell move in a direction of hit force applied?

If yes, then would the nuclei respond by relocating itself to a new shell position to assume stable atom composure? Is there a delay in a moment the shell moves and nuclei following to assume center position?

thanks

The question might sound very silly but do your best to answer.


cheers folks)

Simple answer is the electron forms a cloud around the nucleus. Just like a magnet another atom comes along and its electron will repel so our two atoms go bouncing off in fifteen directuons. Use enough force and our electrons can't repel each other you get energy just like a nuclear blast.

Internally the electron creates a a field that moves the nucleus with it so there is no delay they always move together. Imagine if they didn't what problems that would cause.

This question made me think of this video it's an electron in motion thought you might want to see it.

originally posted by: dragonridr
Simple answer is the electron forms a cloud around the nucleus. Just like a magnet another atom comes along and its electron will repel so our two atoms go bouncing off in fifteen directuons. Use enough force and our electrons can't repel each other you get energy just like a nuclear blast.

That's correct and most of the time the two atoms go bouncing off each other, say in space, where the temperatures are too low for fusion. The nuclear fusion occurs only in cores of stars or man-made devices like fusion reactors or fusion bombs.

There's also a third option that occurs if the two atoms have neither extremely high energy needed for fusion, nor the moderate energy that causes them to bounce apart, and that's if the collision energy is very low, or if there's something available to absorb some of the excess energy that would make them bounce apart, as might happen if a hydrogen atom was on a piece of space dust. In that case most of the energy of the incoming hydrogen atom can be transferred to the space dust, and instead of bouncing apart, the two hydrogen atoms can stick together and form an H2 molecule.

The reason we talk about this happening in space is that individual hydrogen atoms in the environment around us on Earth are extremely rare and thus hydrogen atoms colliding with other hydrogen atoms would be even more rare. When this H2 molecule forms, the electron orbitals are changed which results in a binding energy that holds the two hydrogen atoms together. Once this happens it's hard to break them apart so it's a fairly significant change in the electron orbitals.

In this illustration you can see the distortion of the electron orbitals as two hydrogen atoms approach each other, though I'm not sure how accurate the illustration is, but the concept is correct that there is some distortion:

www2.estrellamountain.edu...

originally posted by: greenreflections
More important to me is will there be brief misalignment between overall composure of an atom?
To further clarify, will an electron shell move in a direction of hit force applied?

For the same reason that the electron orbitals are permanently distorted or changed when hydrogen atoms form diatomic hydrogen molecules (see illustration above), I'd also expect to see temporary distortion of the orbitals during a collision.

If yes, then would the nuclei respond by relocating itself to a new shell position to assume stable atom composure?

Nucleii don't have "shell positions".

Is there a delay in a moment the shell moves and nuclei following to assume center position?

Recall what the Heisenberg uncertainty principle says about our inability to simultaneously know the position and momentum of subatomic particles with great precision. This might prevent you from knowing about small delays, thus I doubt you'll find any measurements to disagree with dragonridr's "no delay" statement.

a reply to: greenreflections

What would a 'shock' be exactly?

If you mean a passing electromagnetic wave, then yes, while it goes by (assuming it's long wavelength compared to the size of the atom, like for instance visible light, and not an X-ray), the electron 'cloud' will moved in one direction and the nucleus (which is also a probability distribution but much less spatially extended as it's much heavier) will be moved in the other, because they're oppositely charged. Electrons are negative and nuclei are positive.

This effect physically is known as the dielectric response, and is why eyeglasses and lenses work among other things.

And yes, this can set up an oscillation as the cloud is reattracted back to the nuclei and it bounces and sloshes around. That's called Rayleigh scattering and is the reason the sky looks blue from the surface unless you are looking close to the direction of Sun at sunrise or sunset, in which case the same physics makes it look red.

a reply to: BASSPLYR

The most likely explanation is that you didn't fully center yourself on the morning weigh-in and it read low as a result.

Other ones are that you forgot the morning number exactly or you forgot a drink break that you took.

Or you stepped in a very robust canine scatological artifact.

Myself, I'm nonfunctional without fresh caffeine.