{"id":1814,"date":"2011-08-01T12:32:25","date_gmt":"2011-08-01T17:32:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/?p=1814"},"modified":"2011-08-01T15:31:18","modified_gmt":"2011-08-01T20:31:18","slug":"full-sensory-legos-the-doubling-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/2011\/08\/full-sensory-legos-the-doubling-question\/","title":{"rendered":"Full-sensory Legos \/ the Doubling Question"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday, 29 July 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

Have you ever really played with Legos? I’m talking about a full-sensory experience; an immersion into the world of humanity’s greatest building materials. I know, it’s a tough question to answer. Allow me to show you what I mean, using my beautiful assistant as a model—<\/p>\n

First, get into the bin of Legos:<\/p>\n

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Next, ensure that you’re comfortable. If your tongue is hanging out, that’s a good sign.<\/p>\n

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Then, just stretch out and enjoy the full-body comfort of sitting on a bed of Legos:<\/p>\n

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Dig:<\/p>\n

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And play:<\/p>\n

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And don’t let the fact that you only have six teeth stop you from eating these tasty bits of plastic. Legos…yum!<\/p>\n

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Finally, if some bigger, smarter, ‘parental’ adult tries to take you out of the bin for fear that you’re gonna choke on a brick, you sass off to them as if you freakin’ own these Legos.<\/p>\n

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Saturday, 30 July 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

This evening, my son and I watched the Star Trek <\/em>episode “The Terratin Incident<\/a>.” The main plot of the episode features the crew shrinking in size and unsure how to correct the problem.<\/p>\n

Why they are shrinking and how the solve the matter is not important here (though you can click the link above and spoil the crap out of the story for yourself, if you wish). What I will divulge, however, is that the crew initially are unsure if they are shrinking or if the ship, and everything in the ship, are enlarging. Their clothes, incidentally, are shrinking right along with them (since they’re also made of organic material), but their jewelery stays the same size; Nurse Chapel remarks that her arm band could now be used as a necklace.<\/p>\n

There are a number of gaffes and missed opportunities in this episode, but the first one to strike me was this: How in the galaxy could the crew not realize that they are shrinking? I mean, think about it, if you wake up tomorrow and everything in your home is double the size it was the night before, would you wonder if your bed, walls, blankets, clocks, and everything else expanded? Or would you, rather, conclude that you had shrunk?<\/p>\n

This whole scenario reminded me of a(n) (ex-)friend who used to raise all sorts of obscure questions, mostly just for laughs. On a couple of occasions, he asked: If everything – everything<\/em> – double in size right now, would we notice?<\/p>\n

My immediate answer the first time he posed this inquiry was, “of course!” I replied by saying, “Wouldn’t it be obvious that the sun was twice as big in the sky?” But then my friend would show me the level of complexity in his subtly simple question by responding, “No, it wouldn’t be obvious because, remember, EVERYTHING would double in size – thus the distance between Earth and the sun would also have doubled, and therefore you wouldn’t notice the sun’s increased diameter.”<\/p>\n

This would then open up a volley of inquiries and retorts, every time my friend noting that I had forgot something.<\/p>\n

But here’s the final answer: Yes, you would notice. I was right all along, I just failed at providing the reasons why. For one thing, doubling the distance between Earth and its star would create a noticeable drop off in gravitational pull – the earth’s rate of revolution would slow – a drop off that would not be counteracted by a doubling of the sun’s mass. Additionally, doubling the strength of gravity would be rather negligible compared to the doubling of the nuclear forces – atoms would have a tougher time forming molecules, and radioactivity would slow. More pedestrian, doubling the population of the city I live in would be immediately noticeable, even with a doubling of the city’s area.<\/p>\n

In fact, I would add that my friend’s question does not even make sense, because it would be impossible for everything to double in size. As an example, let’s look at a very square place to live: Colorado.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Colorado has four sides: its north and south borders are approximately 378 miles long, and its east and west borders are approximately 276 miles long. This gives Colorado a land area of roughly 104,300 square miles.<\/p>\n

Now, let’s do what my friend says and double the size of everything:<\/p>\n

Now Colorado has north and south borders that are 756 miles long, and east and west borders that are 552 miles long. So far, so good, right? Except that now, Colorado’s land area is about 417,300 square miles – quadruple what it was before. Uh-oh.<\/p>\n

Anyway, if you’re reading this Andy: Thanks for the great mental exercises.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday, 29 July 2011 Have you ever really played with Legos? I’m talking about a full-sensory experience; an immersion into the world of humanity’s greatest building materials. I know, it’s a tough question to answer. Allow me to show you what I mean, using my beautiful assistant as a model— First, get into the bin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1814"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1838,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1814\/revisions\/1838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}