| General > General Technical Chat |
| Examples of fast events for normal people |
| << < (5/7) > >> |
| CatalinaWOW:
The explosion front for even fast high explosives only travels a few thousand meters per second, so even the fastest physical events can't get far into the sub-millisecond time frame. And even that has the flaw that few people are really familiar with this type of event. I think we are stuck with EM wave propagation for really short time intervals. |
| daqq:
Thanks for the discussion and ideas! I like the "one nanosecond is to a second what a second is to a century"* approach - basically upscale it into something relatable and compare it with something really huge that's relatable. Might work nicely. Handing out bits of wire to people and telling them that that is a nanosecond is actually a good idea as well! Everyone should have a nanosecond in their drawer :) Concerning other examples, yeah, it seems that sub-millisecond things are simply not that relatable to laypeople. I'll probably use the speed of light for some of the really fast stuff. * - I'll use the proper numbers, don't worry :) Thanks! |
| jonpaul:
Fastest events in Physics are nuclear and thermonuclear devices, 1942 paper: https://sgp.fas.org/othergov/doe/lanl/docs1/00349710.pdf Book: The Los Alamos Primer: The First Lectures on How To Build an Atomic Bomb https://www.amazon.com/Los-Alamos-Primer-Lectures-Atomic/dp/0520075765 Serber's incredible hand drawn diagram below, is the log of energy, neutron flux, pressure over time with 10 exp 30 log scale covering pS to minutes. From an Optimist in the Nuclear Age! Jon |
| Circlotron:
--- Quote from: daqq on June 20, 2022, 08:58:14 pm ---Do you have any relatable events that take a millisecond, microsecond, nanosecond or somewhere in that area? --- End quote --- The time it takes some people I know to zone out once I start talking tech. :P |
| tszaboo:
In my hometown they had scaled solar system with some statues. The Sun was like a 400mm ball, Earth was a few mm and I think they only could go to Saturn, which was on the other side of town, a few KM away. That really put things in perspective. Fast would be to go the thickness of the human hair on the highway with your car (~GHz ?). That reminds me, I had a colleague, who made everything technical into a car analogy. I told him to stop doing that, because I actually understand how the electronics works better than how my car works. |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |
| Previous page |