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Child Item

I bet you didnt know that

Cartouche

As people here work in various jobs / professions they might know things from work or study no one here knows yet. this is what this topic is about.

what do you know that we have never heard of?

Eg: you don't need to be great at maths to be an architect

this is obvious to me but everyone says to me "i wanted to be an architect but i was bad at math,i can barely add"

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mzungu

In January 1992 a cargo ship going from Hong Kong to America overturned and 28,000 plastic ducks ended up being lost at sea. Although, strictly speaking not all were lost, as a good few have been found washed up on shores throughout the world and have helped to teach us about ocean currents. Likewise, the ones still floating in the sea have given a deeper understanding of ocean currents. The ducks have washed up along the shores of Hawaii, Alaska, South America, Australia and the Pacific Northwest, Newfoundland, Scotland whilst others have been found frozen in Arctic ice.

Quite a number of the ducks have been spotted in the North Pacific Gyre (see image below) - thus helping to identify a vortex of currents stretching between Japan to Alaska Kodiak and the Aleutian Islands. Roughly, it takes the three years for the ducks to do a full loop in the current.

Friendly-Floatees.jpg.838x0_q80.jpg

KevRossi

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

^^^^

Nope, they are not recognised as jurisdictions, just territorial claims with no legal international standing. Along with this, the South Pole and a distance around it is an international space, so they do not theoretically meet in a point.

Article IV of the Antarctic Treaty, which preserves the status quo:

No acts or activities taking place while the present Treaty is in force shall constitute a basis for asserting, supporting or denying a claim to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica or create any rights of sovereignty in Antarctica. No new claim, or enlargement of an existing claim to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica shall be asserted while the present Treaty is in forceternational standing.

Realt Dearg Sec

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

^^^^

Jaysus, with the amount of random countries laying claim to the place, we might as well just declare a chunk of it to be Irish. Sure why not? I don't see any good reason why Britain would have a better claim than we would.

Wibbs

JRant wrote: »

As late as the mid 1940's radioactive products were still being sold to the general public.

They do mention clocks, but radium dialled watches were going well into the 1960's. Then for luminous dials they went to Tritium. Far less "hot", but still radioactive. That went on into the 90's in standard form, with a foray into promethium in the 80's(very short half life to drive the glow, two years IIRC). Today you can buy Tritium dialled watches where the tritium is encapsulated in vials to reduce the exposure by a large amount(down to basically nothing).

With all these "luminous" dials, the radioactive substance itself doesn't luminess, it charges the phosphorescent material mixed with it. You know your usual luminous watch these days that glows after exposure to the sun? Well the old style radium/promethium/tritium takes the place of the sun. Radium was so active it burnt out the phosphorescent material within a couple of years(early wiristwatch adverts guaranteed two years glowing). However, even though the old dials don't glow anymore, the radium, with (IIRC) a half life of over 1500 years is still as active and potentially deadly today.

Here's one of my personal hoard of World War One "trench" watches. Avec radium dial.

Almost certainly painted by hand by a "Radium Girl". No longer glows, but is hot as fook. The flip top lid is of all things a "shrapnel guard". Like that would help... The radiation is cut quite appreciably when the lid is down. The case and lid is silver so maybe that's it? Silver is quite dense a metal. I'd expect the much rarer gold cases would cut the radiation even more.

milli milli

Wibbs wrote: »

The radiation is cut quite appreciably when the lid is down. The case and lid is silver so maybe that's it? Silver is quite dense a metal. I'd expect the much rarer gold cases would cut the radiation even more.

Alpha & beta radiation would be stopped by the silver but something stronger like lead would stop gamma & x-rays. I’m not sure what type of radiation is emitted by those compounds you mentioned, maybe they don’t emit the higher energy radiation?

https://www.mirion.com/introduction-to-radiation-safety/types-of-ionizing-radiation/#

Carry

The Radium Girls, who painted watches and clocks with the radium-infused fluorescent colour, started themselves to glow in the dark, when they went home after work.

Each girl mixed her own colour, a mixture of water, gummi arabicum, zinc sulphide and of course Radium.
The paint contained only little radium, but the particles set everywhere, on work desks, hair and clothing. Passers-by saw a golden glow around the girls.

Some girls reported that when they cleaned their noses, the stuff that came out was glowing at night. Some even rubbed reportedly their teeth with the stuff to have a "radiant smile".

However, the Radium girls paid a high price. The Radium stored itself like Calcium into the bones. Eventually the bones became brittle like glass and broke at the lightest touch. A horrible death for the sake of luminous clock-faces.

Wibbs

IIRC Radium is a bugger because its a heavy gamma producer. Tritium's output would be stopped by the case and glass of the watch. The only real risk would have been to watchmakers who had to open the case to service the movement. The radium mixes also broke down like a bugger. Extremely hygroscopic, so suck up the damp from the atmosphere, which makes them break down even more. into dust that permeates everything. Dust you really would not want to breathe in. Would make a 60 a day ciggie habit look healthy.

Years back in the 90's a watch of mine from the 1930's was tested by a lass I knew who was writing up a paper on radioactive sources in the home and was described as "low level nuclear waste"(she got quite panicked. And she wasn't the type). I got the dial cleaned and reprinted, but the movement also needed to be stripped right down and cleaned as it was emitting radiation of its own from the accumulated dust. As a kid I regularly used to wear that watch to bed as the loud ticking calmed me....

Me. Earlier.

:eek:

Wibbs

Carry wrote: »

A horrible death for the sake of luminous clock-faces.

The watches were much worse C. Because the numerals were so small, they were instructed to point their brushes by first wetting them with their lips and the ingested crazy levels of radium this way. So may died, but they fought hard in the courts until they did. A landmark case in worker's health. In the face of the 19th century attitude towards workers as glorified slaves. Never mind women workers. Those "radium girls" were true heroines of humanity, the lot of them. Most died and died appallingly, but for me personally what fascinates is quite a few didn't die at the time and a couple lived normal length lives. People differ I suppose.

Tom Mann Centuria

On a vaguely similar theme (equally depressing anyway), workers, women and children particularly, who worked in match factories in the late 19th early 20th century, were prone to phosphorus poisoning.

It could lead to multiple problems, one of the worst being phosphorus necrosis of the jaw, as the name suggests, it disintegrated the bottom jaw. They also glowed in the dark.

BaZmO*

Realt Dearg Sec wrote: »

Jaysus, with the amount of random countries laying claim to the place, we might as well just declare a chunk of it to be Irish. Sure why not? I don't see any good reason why Britain would have a better claim than we would.

Well the first person to discover it was an Irish man from Cork.

“Edward Bransfield was an Irish sailor who rose to become an officer in the British Royal Navy, serving as a master on several ships, after being impressed into service at the age of 18 in Ireland. He is noted for exploring parts of Antarctica, sighting the Trinity Peninsula in January 1820.”

Water John

An Outpost of the Peoples Republic of Cork.

mzungu

The only non-human or puppet to testify before Congress was Elmo in 2002. He was making an appeal for increased funding for new music education programmes.

Elmo-Washington.jpg?resize=777%2C437&ssl=1

Elmo-Washington.jpg?resize=777%2C437&ssl=1

[Deleted User]

Realt Dearg Sec wrote: »

Jaysus, with the amount of random countries laying claim to the place, we might as well just declare a chunk of it to be Irish. Sure why not? I don't see any good reason why Britain would have a better claim than we would.

Uk have the most exciting and easy to reach bit for the ordinary Joe Soap. Stunning place! Ukraine were given a tiny outpost on an island, where they make salty vodka and the only souvenirs actually made in Antarctica.

Cookie_Monster

mzungu wrote: »

The only non-human or puppet to testify before Congress was Elmo in 2002. He was making an appeal for increased funding for new music education programmes.

far from the only muppet to testify though :pac:

Realt Dearg Sec

Water John wrote: »

An Outpost of the Peoples Republic of Cork.

Maybe we can move them down there!

[Deleted User]

Wibbs wrote: »

IIRC Radium is a bugger because its a heavy gamma producer. Tritium's output would be stopped by the case and glass of the watch. The only real risk would have been to watchmakers who had to open the case to service the movement. The radium mixes also broke down like a bugger. Extremely hygroscopic, so suck up the damp from the atmosphere, which makes them break down even more. into dust that permeates everything. Dust you really would not want to breathe in. Would make a 60 a day ciggie habit look healthy.

Years back in the 90's a watch of mine from the 1930's was tested by a lass I knew who was writing up a paper on radioactive sources in the home and was described as "low level nuclear waste"(she got quite panicked. And she wasn't the type). I got the dial cleaned and reprinted, but the movement also needed to be stripped right down and cleaned as it was emitting radiation of its own from the accumulated dust. As a kid I regularly used to wear that watch to bed as the loud ticking calmed me....

Me. Earlier.

:eek:

Ah, the auld phosphorous numerals on clocks. My parents refused to have any in our house as they said it had radiation which could possibly cause cancer. My friend down the road had one in her house, and I told her what my parents had told me. She looked up horrified at the thing glowing down at us from the mantelpiece. She thought of turning the clock face to the wall, but knew her father would quickly notice that. She said “we children shouldn’t be exposed to that as we are only growing. Maybe if I turned the clock to face Aunty’s chair it would be best as it would be facing away from Dad’s chair, and it wouldn’t matter as much if she gets cancer as she has no children”. Her Mum was always in the kitchen, never time to sit down on the settee in front the cancer-giving clock.

Water John

We're not going. If you insist you can come down and say it to Roy Keane next Tues at Liam Miller match.

Ten of Swords

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

There have been 11 children born in the Antarctic territories, the first birth occurring in 1978.

Between 1978 and 1983 there were 8 births in Esperanza Base (Argentine Sector) and between 1984 and 1985 there were 3 births at Presidente Eduardo Frei Montalva Base (Chilean Sector)

The precedent for treating citizenship issues was set at the birth of the first baby Emilio Marcos Palma in 1978. As the Argentine claim zone is not officially recognized internationally, and partially overlaps the British claim zone, his place of birth is inside the disputed zone. He has the right to British Overseas Territory citizenship under the terms of British Antarctic nationality law - but his parents never made any attempt to claim it so instead he is legally a citizen of Argentina by right of the legal concept jus sanguinis (right of blood) as the legal concept of jus soli (right of soil) does not apply to Antarctica.

MikeyTaylor

Vince Clarke (Erasure/Depeche Mode/Yazoo) does his songwriting on an acoustic guitar!
http://www.musicradar.com/news/vince-clarke-im-not-a-good-enough-keyboard-player-to-write-on-the-synth

RIGOLO

Wibbs wrote: »

They do mention clocks, but radium dialled watches were going well into the 1960's. Then for luminous dials they went to Tritium. Far less "hot", but still radioactive. That went on into the 90's in standard form, with a foray into promethium in the 80's(very short half life to drive the glow, two years IIRC). Today you can buy Tritium dialled watches where the tritium is encapsulated in vials to reduce the exposure by a large amount(down to basically nothing).

With all these "luminous" dials, the radioactive substance itself doesn't luminess, it charges the phosphorescent material mixed with it. You know your usual luminous watch these days that glows after exposure to the sun? Well the old style radium/promethium/tritium takes the place of the sun. Radium was so active it burnt out the phosphorescent material within a couple of years(early wiristwatch adverts guaranteed two years glowing). However, even though the old dials don't glow anymore, the radium, with (IIRC) a half life of over 1500 years is still as active and potentially deadly today.

Here's one of my personal hoard of World War One "trench" watches. Avec radium dial.
.

Is that a German or British 'Trench' watch ? Just curious , who were they given too.

NIMAN

MikeyTaylor wrote: »

Vince Clarke (Erasure/Depeche Mode/Yazoo) does his songwriting on an acoustic guitar!
http://www.musicradar.com/news/vince-clarke-im-not-a-good-enough-keyboard-player-to-write-on-the-synth

When did he write his last hit single?

lan

RiderOnTheStorm wrote: »

when I worked in IT we discovered a bug in one of the financial packages. After hours and hours of investigations we narrowed it down to the addition of two variables. One contains a value of 4, the other contained a value of 3, and when they were added together the sum was 6.999 ..... We fixed it, but never figured out why.

Computers can be a right pain!

Problems like this aren't actually that unusual, it's to do with how computers store 'decimal' numbers.

Most commonly, floating point numbers are stored in two parts, similar to scientific notation (e.g. x * 10^y), but in binary. Each part only has a limited number of bits (the exact numbers depends on the programming language and precision you use, but most follow the IEEE 754 standard).

Now think about how we represent 1/3 in decimal: 0.333333... You would need infinite digits. The same happens in binary too when trying to represent certain fractions, but the stored numbers have a very finite number of digits.

If you could only store 1/3 in 6 decimal digits, it would look like 3.33333 * 10^-1. Due to the loss of precision, if you then multiple it by 3, you get 9.99999 * 10^-1, not 1. Similar losses of precision can happen when you divide then multiply floating point numbers on a computer. This is a bit of a simplification, but I hope it gets the point across.

The values that they are off by are really tiny, but it can still cause problems, the most common are generally when converting them to a whole number (by default, a lot of programming languages will truncate a decimal instead of rounding) or when comparing them to numbers (0.999999 does not equal 1).

I can't speak to your exact problem, but it sounds like it was probably caused by something similar.

Fourier

lan wrote: »

The values that they are off by are really tiny, but it can still cause problems, the most common are generally when converting them to a whole number (by default, a lot of programming languages will truncate a decimal instead of rounding) or when comparing them to numbers (0.999999 does not equal 1).

The part in bold is true, but as a strange fact 0.9999... (9 repeating endlessly) does equal 1.

Wibbs

RIGOLO wrote: »

Is that a German or British 'Trench' watch ? Just curious , who were they given too.

That one is British. At that stage they were rarely bought by and issued from army stores in WW1(the Americans sometimes issued them. The US Signal Corp for example). They were almost all private purchases, mostly by the officer class as they were an expensive item. About the equivalent of ten weeks wages for the average worker. Some have engravings that show they were bought by groups of family and friends, or coworkers, for men going to war. Some were bought by groups of soldiers for sergeants and the like who they respected.

Generally at the start of the 20th century wristwatches were a very rare item for men. They were seen as a "woman's watch". Most men, if they had a watch had a pocket watch. By World War 2 militaries started to issue wristwatches to the average soldier as their tactical advantages were clear. Since many if not most ordinary enlisted men came from less well off backgrounds they didn't have a watch of their own, or they had a more dressy affair not suitable for military use. Most armies, allied and axis had such programmes. Some like the German examples were paid off as a deduction from the soldiers pay. The German issued time only watches cost about the equivalent of 7-800 euro today. US forces got them essentially free as part of their kit.

These days watches are rarely issued as a Casio costing a tenner will do the job and military time is ever present across radios and satnavs and the like.

gozunda

bodhrandude wrote: »

I bet you knew that its not hens that smell but their poo.

Birds excrete 'urine' in the form of urates (uric acids) - which are semi-solid and white in colour and a clear liquid.

Birds kidneys extract nitrogenous wastes from the bloodstream like other animals do. However instead of releasing it as urea dissolved in urine, birds excrete it in the form of uric acid. It comes out as a white sort of goo along with the faeces because of the biochemical reactions that happen to process the waste so it can be safely excreted with minimal water loss.

sbsquarepants

Fourier wrote: »

The part in bold is true, but as a strange fact 0.9999... (9 repeating endlessly) does equal 1.

Even though I know this to be the case, it still feels like it should be just a tiny bit less!

FishOnABike

Fourier wrote: »

The part in bold is true, but as a strange fact 0.9999... (9 repeating endlessly) does equal 1.

I would said it is more correct to say it approaches 1 rather than it equals 1.

Sabre0001

IvyTheTerrific wrote: »

And that's not a new trick to catch out fraudsters.
Dictionary makers put fake words in dictionaries and map makers put false features on their maps so they can tell when they've been copied.

On a related note, there was a town in upstate New York that was a "paper town." Agloe was created by a mapmaker (Otto G. Lindberg, director of the General Drafting Co., and his assistant, Ernest Alpers) to catch anyone who copied their map.

When Rand McNally produced its own map of New York, this town was included. They defended its inclusion by stating that they had traveled there and found a general store. Turns out the owners of the store had purchased the original map and named their store after what Lindberg and Alpers called the area, and essentially created a town in the process.

https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/03/18/290236647/an-imaginary-town-becomes-real-then-not-true-story

Fourier

FishOnABike wrote: »

I would said it is more correct to say it approaches 1 rather than it equals 1.

Trust me I get the intuition, but bizarrely it exactly equals 1.

Skylinehead

I find the easiest, if reductive, explanation is that we all generally accept 0.333... = 1/3. Multiply both sides by 3 and you have 0.999... = 1.