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 Post subject: And now for something completely different...
PostPosted: Thu May 01, 2003 12:40 pm 
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...a purely academic debate, dealing entirely with uncontroversial and occasionally downright silly situations.

Basically, my physics prof tried this a while ago: He challanged us to a game of, as he called it, "Stump the Chump." He presented the following hypothesis, and defied us to come up with a single experiance that we had had firsthand which could contradict it:

In the beginning, everything was in equilibrium. The earth was a perfect, solid sphere, covered completely in a perfect, hollow sphere of water. That water was surrounded by a blanket of air, also a hollow sphere, which eventually ended and was in turn surrounded by a sphere of fire. Then everything went to hell, and in an as-yet inexplicable catyclysm, the four spheres were jumbled up. Now, a vast diversity of elemental compounds exists, creating the matter we know. However, the elementals wish to return to their original state, and this is the cause of the dual phenomenons of gravity and levity. Fire wants to be higher than air wants to be higher than water wants to be higher than earth. This is demonstrated by such examples as water running downhill (trying to return to sea level, or below air's original sphere, as well as wearing down earth to bring it back beneath sea level), smoke rising from a fire and leaving ash (the fire escaping wood and leaving only its earth element behind), and so forth.

In trying to disprove this theory of gravity and levity, remember a few things:

1. There are phenomena we do not understand which are not related to the elemental spheres, such as light and sound.

2. All matter is made up of elemental combinations, but it is not always, or even often, possible to determine what elements are present in a given object or in what quantities.

3. First-hand experiances only!!! Don't give me anything about outer space or the depths of the sea if you haven't been there.

4. Have fun. It's a bit silly, a bit pointless, and a bit of a nice break from the usual flame wars.


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PostPosted: Thu May 01, 2003 3:24 pm 
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I'd argue that volcanic eruption works against the principles. It is earth rising above water.. seems simple enough if I understand the oddly-termed problem.

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PostPosted: Thu May 01, 2003 3:41 pm 
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Nope, 'cause it's earth being pushed by fire which is trying to get back to its original spot.

On the other hand, mountain creation by tectonic-plate impact works against the theory. It's earth pushing upwards, without another driving force.


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 Post subject: Forgot one of the criteria.
PostPosted: Thu May 01, 2003 5:28 pm 
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But then, have you ever witnessed a mountain growing out of the impact of two of these "tectonic plates" of which you speak?

No?

Then obviously it doesn't happen, and any mountains are either volcanic (which, as you pointed out, is in keeping with the theory) or arose during the cataclysm which jumbled up the elements so long ago.

::the Chronomancer dons a little 'Devil's Advocate' hat and cracks his knuckles, getting ready to champion this theory:: ;-)

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PostPosted: Thu May 01, 2003 5:32 pm 
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Look at the fault lines sometimes, they actually do raise/fall several feet during an earthquake.

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 Post subject: One of these days the San Andreas is gonna blow chunks. :-(
PostPosted: Thu May 01, 2003 5:39 pm 
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Right, but earthquakes are right up there with volcanoes as further proof of how screwed up the world has become; there's so much fire down below the earth these days that the latter jumps and rumbles sometimes! Because I don't see any reason why earth, in and of itself, would start a nasty bump-and-grind routine.

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PostPosted: Thu May 01, 2003 5:48 pm 
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dirt = worthless
hippies = worthless
dirt = hippies

Hippies climb trees. Eureka! :P :P


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PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2003 6:18 am 
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revolutio wrote:
dirt = worthless
hippies = worthless
dirt = hippies

Hippies climb trees. Eureka! :P :P


Hippys hav uses, growing pot, smokin pot, getting laid.

Theyre doinq a comunity service

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PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2003 6:57 am 
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Wait, going back to the original topic:

Where does that leave humans? I assume that we were created in this unexplained cataclysm a while back, but we're still screwing stuff up. I've carried stuff (including rocks) up hills, and I've done the same with water bottles; I am furher upsetting the equilibriunm. So it in fact is not true that the elements are only going back where they started, living beings are still screwing that up.

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PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2003 7:05 am 
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Sure, you can carry a rock uphill, but if you let go it'll fall and maybe roll back down, right? We're looking at the phenomena of gravity and levity here, and gravity is what makes carrying that rock uphill harder.

Out of idle curiosity, is revolutio always this off-topic, or is this just a special treat for me? I haven't gotten around to reading the other threads yet, so I don't know who is and isn't a troll these days...


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PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2003 1:16 pm 
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Here's a thought: make a boat out of clay, let it dry till it hardens, put it on water. The boat floats. If earth wanted to get below water, it'd sink, but it floats. (this assumes you don't do something stupid like poke holes in it).

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PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2003 8:06 pm 
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But the clay needs heat to dry it, thus infusing it with fire. Since it is both fire and earth, it of course straddles the line between water and air by floating on water.


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PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2003 11:35 pm 
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I was thinking along the lines of letting it "air dry" for a day in a dark room, taking away the infusal of fire thing.

And if you shaped the clay boat wrong and "infused it with fire", then put it in water, it'd sink. Like if you made a clay ball and fired it up. No straddling of lines there. Straight to earth, despite the fire.

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PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2003 8:56 am 
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Right, well, letting it air dry also means there was water in the clay before. You let it air dry, then. So, supposedly, it'd only sink halfway down in the water if this balance idea holds true.



....wait, shit, it DOES sink halfway, because usually only about half is above the surface. I think the clay boat idea doesn't hold up.



Unless you heat-dry it with "fire". The it should float perfectly above the water if what you say is true, it should float there JUST right. It doesn't. "But, but, the balance..."...does not hold up, and so, we can assume this would disprove the idea of fire, air, water, and earth layering thing.



EDIT: Disreguard all that, the original point I made holds up. With the air-drying thing, technically, your boat should sink halfway to the bottom of the water. With heat drying, it should be half in and half out. Took me a minute to straighten that out.

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PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2003 11:43 am 
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Remember the reminder about how we can't really tell what the proportions of elements in any given compound would be? I think that sort of applies to the drying thing, too--it's hard to say how much fire, air, etc. you add by using it to change the condition of the clay. It's a neat idea, but I'm honestly not sure we know enough about elemental distribution to say it's sure-fire refutation.


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PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2003 11:45 am 
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I'd argue that living things, moblie non-elementals exist, and continue to rind the earth into an impersonal state.

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Which came first, the Egg of the Frying Pan?

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PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2003 6:12 pm 
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Hrm. Well, think of phase changes.

Water changing into ice would be the simplest one; by freezing water it is turned into a form of "rock" (I'm informed that some people used to think of quartz as ice which had frozen so hard it could never be unfrozen) but now rises above liquid water. On the other hand, if you melt rock (or most other substances), it becomes less dense than solid rock, thus proving that something other than elemental forces are at work.

If you want to stick with a single temperature state, you could float some light metal or rock (aluminum would probably work) in a bath of mercury. This is probably the lowest-energy solution I can think of, but mercury can be hard to come by in the necessary quantities.

If you wanted to get more exotic, you could fire a rocket directly into the ground. If you fire one up, it's clearly being driven by the levity of the fire underneath it, but that's hard to swallow when it's accelerating towards the center of the earty at a rate considerably higher than <i>g</i>. Or you could drop a large jar into a swimming pool, evacuate the air from it (this is fairly easy to do if you have access to a vacuum pump, and I do), drop a droplet of water and a chunk of earth inside it at the same time, and measure the accelerations. You could cap a beaker of water , upend it in a pool, and uncap it; the interior column of water would rise above the surrounding water (this might be covered by "nature abhors a vacuum", though).

Interesting question.

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 Post subject: Backtracking a bit here...
PostPosted: Sun May 04, 2003 6:17 pm 
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P51mus wrote:
And if you shaped the clay boat wrong and "infused it with fire", then put it in water, it'd sink. Like if you made a clay ball and fired it up. No straddling of lines there. Straight to earth, despite the fire.

One way of explaining this away within the elemental paradigm would be to realize that a boat is really a container of sorts, and that the contents of the container will influence the natural height/depth which it attempts to attain. Since a ball isn't a container but rather a solid piece of Earth, obviously it would sink.

To elaborate on the "boats as containers" idea:
When boats (and most other containers) are full of air, they naturally tend toward higher elevations than water, and float upon it. However, if a boat springs a leak and fills with water, then it will sink, since it has lost the added levity of the air which was influencing it previously.

Possible objection:
Okay, you mention a boat "springing a leak," but what's happening when a boat springs a leak? A hole has opened in its bottom, water and air are meeting, and the water is moving to become higher than the air which was there previously. What's up with that, huh?

Hmm. Well, what you have to realize is that actually, when you're putting the boat-container into the water with the air in it, you're taking some of that air further down than it would go naturally. (c.f. Crashman's post; if only half of the boat is above the surface, the other half must be below the surface of the water, which is lower than air is normally willing to go.) At the same time, you're forcing a like amount of water to go elsewhere, but as can be proved by the smooth surfaces of puddles, left to itself water tries to maintain a perfectly smooth face where it meets with air. So when the boat-container is ruptured, the water happily rises back to the height it had before being displaced by the boat-container and its air, and the air happily rises and allows the water to take its place. Of course, this upsets the balance of elements within the boat-container; less air and more water means it now has a greater tendency to sink, and sink it does.

Pyromancer, not sure what to say to your ideas yet. If I think of anything, I'll let you know. :-)

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PostPosted: Sun May 04, 2003 8:41 pm 
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Wait...define "air". Because there are obviously some elements which exist in the air and the ground, and don't "try" to go either way. Basically, that theory would contradict all of chemistry.

Continuing on that thread, what about a fire? It burns, combining, say, C with O, making CO2, which floats just as high as the "air" does, except that it contains "earth".

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PostPosted: Sun May 04, 2003 9:05 pm 
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Question: what would trees and things like wood count as? Earth?

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