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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sdgla who wrote (901701)	11/18/2015 1:51:29 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575844

An engineer, a theoretical physicist, and a paleoclimatologist are at a wedding. There is a ice large sculpture of a swan on a flat topped table, for decoration. The three start a betting pool on how long it will take for the entire swan, which has already started to melt, to end up on the floor. The engineer notices some of the meltwater dribbling off the back of the table. She places a set of beer mugs under the streams of water, and records how long it takes for a measured amount of liquid to accumulate. She uses this to generate a graph showing melting over time, estimating the volume of the swan by looking it up in his manual on Ice Sculpture Specifications, and suggests that it will take eleven hours. The theoretical physicist estimates the volume of ice by assuming a spherical swan, measures the air temperature, and calculates the rate of conversion from ice to water using thermodynamics. He comes up with a different estimate, because the engineer forgot to account for density differences in ice vs water. He estimates that the swan will be entirely the floor in eight and a half hours. The paleoclimatologist disagrees, and says, “It will take between one and three hours for that swan to be on the floor.” “Why do you think that, you are clearly an idiot, and I am clearly a physicist, so I must be right!” says the theoretical physicist. Just as the paleoclimatologist is about to answer, the already melting neck of the swan breaks, and the upper part of the neck and head fall backwards, knocking off one of the large wings. All of those pieces slide off the table and crash on the floor. The stress of the impact causes the second wing to break off, but it stays on the table, but it begins to slowly slide toward the edge, clearly about to fall off as well. “Because,” the paleoclimatologist says. “Last wedding I went to, that happened.” New Antarctic Glacial Melt Study Slightly Increases IPCC Rate Estimate