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Post by c64 on Jan 13, 2014 19:21:45 GMT
Or what any of this has to do with measuring the height of a building using (or not using) a barometer. Looks like nobody comes up with more ideas… |
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Post by GTCGreg on Jan 13, 2014 22:57:30 GMT
Or what any of this has to do with measuring the height of a building using (or not using) a barometer. Looks like nobody comes up with more ideas… OK, you want another method? How's this? In the future, you look up the height of the building and write the number on the back of the barometer. You then build a time machine and send the barometer back in time to the present. How do you build the time machine? Just send back the instructions from the future. Impossible you say? Maybe. But then again, maybe not! www.upi.com/Science_News/2002/10/01/Computer-program-to-send-data-back-in-time/UPI-33801033495298/ |
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Post by c64 on Jan 14, 2014 15:42:08 GMT
Looks like nobody comes up with more ideas… OK, you want another method? How's this? In the future, you look up the height of the building and write the number on the back of the barometer. You then build a time machine and send the barometer back in time to the present. How do you build the time machine? Just send back the instructions from the future. Impossible you say? Maybe. But then again, maybe not! www.upi.com/Science_News/2002/10/01/Computer-program-to-send-data-back-in-time/UPI-33801033495298/Information isn't limited by physic at all! So sending information faster than light or backwards in time is no violation of physical laws. The problem is that we need to bind information to physic stuff in order to convey, store or send it. For example, you call your wife every day at 4PM "I will be home at 6PM". Over time, the information content of the telephone call drops toward zero. You do the same physical telephone call every day but the information you convey becomes lower and lower until its almost infinitive low. But if you stop doing that out of a sudden, you do nothing physical at all but the information content of this "nothing" increases dramatically. Something has happened and this information is represented by the lack of physical data! Or if you look at the light of a star thousands of light years away. When you see that the light changes in a way indicating that it will blow up within a few hundred years, you have the information that the star doesn't exist any more. That's information faster than light. |
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Post by GTCGreg on Jan 14, 2014 16:24:33 GMT
I agree that a non-event can still convey information. But that's not what they are talking about in the UPI article.
In the case of your star, you assume, based on your knowledge of physics, that the star doesn't exist, but you have no confirmation of that fact. You still have to wait a thousand years to be sure.
Based on my current age and knowledge of science, I can assume with ALMOST 100% certainty that I will be dead in 100 years. Does that mean I have received information from the future? What if medical science develops some way of extending the human life span beyond 200 years before I die? While extremely unlikely, the chance of that happening is still not zero.
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Post by c64 on Jan 15, 2014 9:46:30 GMT
I agree that a non-event can still convey information. But that's not what they are talking about in the UPI article. In the case of your star, you assume, based on your knowledge of physics, that the star doesn't exist, but you have no confirmation of that fact. You still have to wait a thousand years to be sure. Based on my current age and knowledge of science, I can assume with ALMOST 100% certainty that I will be dead in 100 years. Does that mean I have received information from the future? What if medical science develops some way of extending the human life span beyond 200 years before I die? While extremely unlikely, the chance of that happening is still not zero. Those are just easy to understand examples where information content is independent of physical laws. Of course, if you really want to make information time travel which contains exact details, something else is required whcih mankind isn't aware of yet. Just saying that information does not follow physical laws, but information is what me make out of physical data so the problem is indirect and no workarounds known yet! |
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Post by c64 on Jan 15, 2014 12:34:26 GMT
What has this to do with Barometers?... I had the exchange for the one we broke in the boot......  I've got a new method. While browsing a catalog, I found a weather instrument kit (with barometer) which has a built in GPS tracker. It's meant to be used with weather balloons or (RC) airplanes. Attach it to a parachute - or not - maybe tie it to a classic barometer as a dead weight and drop it from the building while recording the data sent by the tracker. When I saw the instrument kit, I immediately remembered this: Something the instrument kit is perfect for - maybe even designed with this particular application in mind. |
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Post by wvengineer on Jan 16, 2014 1:30:30 GMT
Here is a method for finding the building height. If the barometer is a dial type, you can use the graduation lines as a form of protractor. Setup the barometer a known distance from the building, use the protractor to measure the angle from the ground to the top and use your trig functions to find the height.
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Post by GTCGreg on Jan 16, 2014 3:21:41 GMT
After all, this is the Mythbusters fan site.
With that in mind, whatever method is used, it needs to have two results. The first is to measure the height of the building. And second, it MUST result in complete destruction of the barometer.
So here's two ideas that may accomplish both goals.
First method:
Set the barometer on the ground on top of your explosive of choice (C4, ANFO, Dynamite,) Then set off the explosive and using the high speed camera (we had to get that in here) measure the upward velocity and time it takes to reach the top of the building. From that, calculate the height.
Second method:
Same as the first method, except shoot the barometer straight up out of a canon. After all, how much damage could a rogue barometer cause?
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Post by the light works on Jan 16, 2014 14:56:56 GMT
walk up the stairwell. for every step make a mark on the barometer. when you get to the top, count the marks and multiply by the height of each step.
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Post by Cybermortis on Jan 16, 2014 16:02:42 GMT
{Enough with the talk about car controls please. It has nothing to do with the posted idea and is cluttering up the thread. Thank You, CM}
The using the barometer to mark off distances as you climb up was included in the original story.
A Barometer would not survive being blasted out of a cannon or using high explosives. Nor could you realistically use high explosives to propel an object into the air to estimate the height of a building - the amount of explosives needed would damage if not destroy the building.
You could probably estimate the height of a building by setting off a small charge at the base of a building and recording how long it took for you to hear the sound of the blast, although that doesn't include the barometer unless you were using that to take air pressure into account to give you a more accurate speed of sound under the prevailing conditions.
There is a 'simple' way to estimate the height of a building, and that is to count the number of windows and assume that each floor is typically 10 feet tall. (You can use the back of the barometer to do the calculations).
A variation of this would be to use markings on the barometer (or make them) from the base of one window to the base of the one above, and then use that as a scale to estimate the over all height - this would only work for office and residential buildings but would allow for a slightly more accurate estimate than just counting windows. Since the lobby is probably taller than the floors above it, and some buildings may have an additional floor that lacks windows or has a pylon on the roof. So this technique would account for this.
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Post by the light works on Jan 16, 2014 16:06:59 GMT
or you COULD take an atmospheric reading at the base of the building and another at the top, adjusting them by the variation on a second "control" barometer that remained at the same location in order to compensate for variations in ambient atmospheric pressure - thus demonstrating that you understand the function of a barometer, and the relationship between altitude and atmospheric pressure.
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Post by Cybermortis on Jan 16, 2014 18:05:24 GMT
{Since asking people nicely to stop talking about car controls didn't work the mod hammer comes out. All of the off topic posts have been removed, but since I was feeling generous I moved them to their own thread in the Hobbies section titled 'Random Car Chatter'.
If you want to understand WHY I occasionally ask for people to stop going off topic in some areas, especially the show ideas forum, consider that as of writing this thread went from four to two pages in length. If the shows researchers ran across this thread they would have given up because they don't have the time or inclination to go through a topic where over half the posts have nothing to do with the original idea, or for that matter could be considered ideas for the show.
So this is not a case of me waving the hammer around for the hell of it. Rather it is out of a vested interest to increase the chances of an idea getting picked up from the board.
CM}
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Post by silverdragon on Jan 18, 2014 10:57:59 GMT
Keep it simple...
Drop the bloody thing off the roof, and time how long it takes to get made into spare parts.
Of course, you will have had to drop the thing or its twin off a known height building to get its rate of decent....
Another method.
Set the thing on the floor, lie down, move around until the building just disappears below the top of that thing.
Make measurements.
Use that Triangle maths thing that surveyors use to use the height of the barometer squared and your distance away from it squared to get the distance you are away from the building squared into the height of the building squared...
Look, I know what I am doing here, I just cant remember off the top of my head what its called, and dont want to say trigonometry in case it makes me look any more daft than I really am?...
I am really just amazed that with all the technology available in the world, someone would go out and buy a Barometer to measure the height of a building, when a really long tape measure reel would have been cheaper....
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Post by the light works on Jan 19, 2014 15:50:53 GMT
install an accelerometer on the barometer, and drop it off the top of the building. pick it up t the bottom and read the accelerometer data to determine the force of impact; then use that to calculate the end velocity of the barometer and whether it suffered any deceleration below gravitational acceleration, all of which can be calculated using a complicated formula to determine how far it fell.
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Post by silverdragon on Jan 21, 2014 7:10:07 GMT
What is the terminal velocity of a barometer anyway?...
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Post by the light works on Jan 21, 2014 14:55:26 GMT
What is the terminal velocity of a barometer anyway?... If it reached it, you could calculate it based on changes in acceleration. - you might have to put a fin on it to stop it tumbling. |
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Post by Lokifan on Jan 26, 2014 16:59:08 GMT
What is the terminal velocity of a barometer anyway?... European or African barometer? (Apologies to Monty Python  ) Sorry, a little silly this morning. |
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Post by craighudson on Jan 26, 2014 20:37:07 GMT
The African barometer is non-migratory, so he couldn't have used it anyway.
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Post by wvengineer on Jan 27, 2014 1:19:12 GMT
Tape the barometer to the top of the building. Use a laser distance meter to find the distance between the side walk below and the barometer.
We have a 300 ft tape measure in my department at work that we occasionally use for surveying. Also one of those calibrated wheels. More and more, we are using one of those laser distance meter. The one we have is good to 800 yards, accurate to 1/32 of an inch. Works for the majority of our surveying. We pull out the real survey gear for anything longer than that. We use the long tape more for tracing out arcs. I.E. what would be in the way if a powerline broke? We just recently got a GPS. We haven't used it too much to know how well it works.
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Post by silverdragon on Jan 30, 2014 8:05:52 GMT
It could be the lesser spotted ukelalie barometer, its smaller and more sharply formed than the banjo barometer, and it is slightly more aerodynamic.
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