Assume v. Presume

EEPhil said:
Oh for f's sake!
How many things are wrong with this...
1) the hydrogen atom is "five times smaller than [a] lithium [atom]"
2) by smaller, did the lecturer actually mean one-fifth of the size?
3) by size, did he mean diameter, volume, mass, number of protons or neutrons or even electrons?
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And just to confuse things, every atom is the size of the universe really, but in probability terms, we have at least five different radii for an atom. For some, He is smaller than H, for others it is larger.
CPK_Atomic_Radii.jpg


That is one of them. Notice how much larger K is than the larger Kr? H is also larger than He. In diameter.

http://www.crystalmaker.com/support/tutorials/crystalmaker/atomic-radii/index.html
 
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Not to mention the calendar change in 1752 and the odd Julian skip day in 1800. So that would blow the 25th straight out of the water. Another part to the story is HERE
Now if that were true, 1752 and 1800 should have shifted it from the 25th, but it seems like it can be shifted about willy nilly by the latest calendar adjustments.
 
Someone elsewhere got quite heated when I suggested that if they accept December 25th as the first day of Christmas then that makes the 12th day of Christmas fall on January 5th rather than January 6th as they insisted. :rolleyes:
 
Mike0001 said:
And just to confuse things, ...
That is one of them. Notice how much larger K is than the larger Kr? H is also larger than He. In diameter.
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:o_O: :eek:
Trev said:
Not to mention the calendar change in 1752 and the odd Julian skip day in 1800. So that would blow the 25th straight out of the water. ... but it seems like it can be shifted about willy nilly by the latest calendar adjustments.
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If Dave Gorman ("Modern Life is Goodish" - Dave S3E7) had his way, who knows when Christmas Day would be (Gormanuary 23rd?)
 
As Christmas is basically the Midwinter Feast hijacked by the church they can't move it too far away from the solstice or it'll break :geek:
 
MikeSh said:
As Christmas is basically the Midwinter Feast hijacked by the church they can't move it too far away from the solstice or it'll break :geek:
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For the first few hundred years they didn't even bother to celebrate it. It's about as christian as Coca-Cola's red santa is, or Xmas trees. Bah, humbug!
 
Heard on a BBC regional news tonight, something like:
"The water temperature was 10 degrees, the air temperature was three times colder".
WTF does that actually mean?
 
:rolleyes: Jeez! That one must be a good contender for the 2017 Peabrain Award, and we're only one day in!

Which regional news, exactly?
 
prpr said:
"The water temperature was 10 degrees, the air temperature was three times colder".
WTF does that actually mean?
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Simples. The air was -20 degrees. As 'colder' means a comparison and presumably negates any calculation, then the difference was 10 x -3= -30, but the sea was at +10 so the air was at -20. But I'm not certain that this calculation holds much water in the context of the report though.
 
Black Hole said:
Which regional news, exactly?
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I think I have probably found it, in the Points West that followed the late news yesterday (I don't regularly record that one, but it's available from the BBC web site...)

The air temperature was 10°C, the water temperature was 3°C. In the minds of those unfamiliar with science concepts that means the water has one third the temperature of the air, and then mis-expressed as "three times less". We've got to do something to bring this stupidity to the attention of the public, and more particularly the people in charge of informing the public.
 
Trev said:
Simples. The air was -20 degrees. As 'colder' means a comparison and presumably negates any calculation, then the difference was 10 x -3= -30, but the sea was at +10 so the air was at -20. But I'm not certain that this calculation holds much water in the context of the report though.
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Not that simples. I would have said that as the water temperature was 283K then the air temperature would be a third of that so 94K which is -179 degrees C.
 
Black Hole said:
The air temperature was 10°C, the water temperature was 3°C. In the minds of those unfamiliar with science concepts that means the water has one third the temperature of the air, and then mis-expressed as "three times less".
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I can just about accept the one third version, but only for Celsius. Of course, if you measure temperature in Kelvin or Fahrenheit the observation fails. viz.
gomezz said:
...water temperature was 283K then the air temperature would be a third of that so 94K which is -179 degrees C.
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Three times less is a meaningless dollop of :poop:, not science.
If you want to be really confused, try a business perspective http://web.augsburg.edu/~schield/MiloPapers/984OfSigCompare3.pdf (Error 7).
I'm not convinced this person knows that "times less" is meaningless.
 
EEPhil said:
I can just about accept the one third version, but only for Celsius. Of course, if you measure temperature in Kelvin or Fahrenheit the observation fails.
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That's exactly what I meant by "in the minds of those unfamiliar with science concepts".
 
But "zero point three times less" nearly works for me, but the "less" is superfluous (+- rounding errors)
 
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