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costard

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Posts posted by costard

  1. Good idea SeaMonkey, using a low viscosity oil (a vegetable oil would be environmentally preferable) should provide some interesting observations.

    I cocked up, by the way, with the statement "n hasn't increased". It has, of course, increased with the increased mass of air pumped into the bottle. :o

  2. I hadn't thought of that. Could it also be that adding the detergent also slightly increases the specific gravity of the water, thus increasing the reaction mass slightly? I ask because I have no information on the subject.

    Michael

    I like John's explanation - 'tis truly elegant. How much does the sg change with the addition of the detergent? I suspect that the increase wouldn't translate to a noticeable change in maximum altitude.

    Back to the original question of where the energy comes from - it's put into the mass of air in the bottle by compression in the pump; is the joule value of the stored energy the latent heat of the air mass? Boyle's Law PV=nRT, P has increased whilst T has remained almost constant. n has remained constant, R is a constant (8.14?), therefore my reasoning ability has run out and I can continue no further - help?

  3. By the by, I'd recommend a wooden rod next time ;)

    Jon

    But the metal rod is so easily come by - and it telescopes up to fit nicely into a pack too: just "borrow" it from the nearest unoccupied vehicle.:D

    Otherwise you have to battle someone for their broom - kicking a grandma in the shins to get her to let go just isn't done.

  4. ...And work is still being done on advanced munitions types: Caseless and case telescoped rounds.

    I thought the caseless round had been dropped - the brass case from a standard round takes a goodly amount of heat with it when ejected; without this, the weapon heats up too quickly.

  5. It looks like the fact it used 2 engines and (effectively) two gearboxes gave it an advantage in mechanical reliability - that and the weight, and despite having twice as many engines to go wrong at the wrong time. Vauxhaul, eh? When did they go under?

    Wiki sez the design brief recognised the lack of a need to fight trench warfare

    With France conquered, the scenario of trench warfare in Northern Europe was no longer applicable and the design was revised by Dr. H.E. Merritt[3], director of Tank Design at Woolwich Arsenal, based on the combat witnessed in Poland and France. These new specifications, for the A22 or Infantry Tank Mark IV, were given to Vauxhall in June 1940.[4]

    JasonC, thanks for the info - and the reasoning.

  6. Man, who stole your teddy bear?

    decision/assault delays - some decisions will be made on the instant: a unit will return fire if not pinned or suffering from morale failure, will generally seek cover if they come under fire; delays are a modelling of experience of the troops (WW2 saw large numbers of conscript troops with very little training thrown into battle), command cohesion (if your squad is ordered to assault a building but isn't within the command radius of its leader, a delay penalty occurs) and suppression. If you seek to play with instant reaction training, try going with veteran or better troops, in command. The delays also balance, to some extent, the time allowance for the decision making process that the player has with WEGO.

    vehicles not firing on an occupied foxhole - if the crew can't see the occupants it will only area fire at your order. If the crew is green and has come under fire, the gunner will most likely button up and not open fire. They will also seek to preserve themselves from what they perceive as a stupid order: "Advance, die for your country and your commander's pleasure!" is an order that might be obeyed by troops of the most fanatic bent (and these are modelled, but probably aren't in the demo): anybody else will consider fragging their leader a realistic solution to their problem (and this isn't modelled, alas, the vehicles will merely retreat). Frustrating for sure, but the modelling pushes you to providing suppressing fire with MGs from a distance, as they are designed to do. I think the bit missing here is the Area Fire command. Try it - works pretty good. A couple of minutes of suppressing fire will lower the foxhole inhabitants' morale, at which point they become easy prey for an assaulting squad. Firepower values at range are given for various weapons (click on a unit and hit "enter"), you can do some rough calculations of effectiveness from here.

    magical mgs - the game engine is ten years old and home computers still don't have the grunt to build a 3D model that deforms in real-time as the real world does in the midst of battle. The programming and processing required for the degree of realism you would seem to expect lies outside the purview of a $50 game played on a $1000 machine. Thus, some elements of realism are definitely fudged, most certainly they aren't represented in the graphics.

    Finally, playing against the AI is good fun, but nothing like playing against a human opponent. Garn, give it a go! Or wait until CM:Normandy (not its real name) comes out and play real time with the newer game engine.:D

  7. It isn't just power to weight. The point is the entire system was engineered for 40 tons, and then saddled with 70. The wonder isn't that they broke down, it is that they ever went anywhere.

    Did the Tiger 1 have a different power train? I'm guessing all these units were going into new Tiger 1 hulls and providing repair stock - it seems an odd decision to manufacture for unreliability, particularly for German engineers.

  8. I find it difficult to believe that the designers and engineers on the KT project didn't know about this before the unit went into the front line. Given that, is it a case of those on high not understanding or caring about the unreliability (for power political reasons they may not have been able to come at further delays to deployment), or is it a lack of quality in the manufacturing process for the gearbox only?

  9. But Diesel, you miss out on all that information! Which products not to buy - because a large part of their shelf price now has to pay for the advertising campaign and the product quality will fall to compensate: the ad campaign has to generate profits, or it's of no earthly use; the cost compensation has to come from somewhere.

  10. Stop that caterwauling, you Aussie feck! Now, on the count:

    Up rode the squatter, mounted on his thoroughbred,

    Down came the troopers, one, two, three,

    "Where's that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker bag?"

    "You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"

    I think you'll find it's "whose" - even Australian police aren't stupid enough to ask the other question.. I applaud your taste - it's a great song to sing, different characters giving the punch line different meanings along the way.

  11. Both of these are mistakes borne of foreign words -- Hebrew ("Satan") and Chinese ("gung ho") -- incorporated into English.

    ...

    The student had probably never heard "gung ho" pronounced carefully enough to notice the "ng" ending of the first word. In light of the US of A's gun-mongering image (in the eyes of much of the rest of the world), it's no surprise that the student rendered "gung ho" as "gun hoe".

    Given that "gun" in Australian slang means "good" - e.g. "He's a gun welder." - I find the meaning difficult to decipher from the context. Does the writer truly believe that the US has an international reputation for farm implement use? What references does s/he cite?:confused:

  12. Well, maybe, for a given value of "good". I can certainly predict being able to eat less food if it's all vitamised into a single liquid serve - texture and flavour matter, ask anybody who eats for pleasure.

    Even worse, it inhibits the breakdown of stored fat during times of weight loss. Inject ghrelin into the bloodstream of a rat and the animal eats insatiably - and quickly becomes obese.

    The juxtaposition of the two sentences implies some sort of cause and effect relationship - until you read the bloody things and attempt to parse them. "Times of weight loss" don't happen when the test rat is able to eat ravenously, and I doubt that the presence or otherwise of ghrelin has much effect in these circumstances. If, however, the test showed that a starved rat, injected with ghrelin, did not convert fat to energy, I might be more accepting of the claim that "it inhibits the breakdown of stored fat (is there any other type?) during times of weight loss".

    Lots of holes in my back yard needing to be dug. Hihohiho...

  13. Fewer calories in + more calories burned = fewer calories stored. Every other idea about how to lose weight is a sop to weak willed individuals with money they can afford to give away. Buy a shovel and dig some holes, chop some wood, go for a run, go for a swim, go for a walk - HEY FATTY, GET OFF YOUR ARSE AND DO SOME WORK! :)

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