#factor calculator

[roddity]

i can only imagine optimus’ and megatrons reaction to THE autobot golden boy committing fraternization of the worst degree 😭

wholly unsurprised but supportive of bee despite that :]

[lgbtlunaverse]

Horrible thing to say but I think there's a real chance Jiang Yanli was both of her parents' least favorite child and knew it and just kinda. Had to go on with her life knowing that.

[mrmeepsmadmind]

his horns (finials) (idk)(ears)(whatever) shaking... the jumping ??? the struggling 😭 the off center twitching ..he is PISSED. AWF !!!!!!

[until-the-brahmin-come-home]

Ranking fallout protagonists on how psychic i think they are

ranking is mostly by vibes and a character's weirdness/proximity to weirdness.

Chosen One: Has several dream visions in which they communicate with Hakunin. can talk to ghosts.

Courier Six: grave whispers and what I feel is a large frequency of interactions with supernatural events

Lone Wanderer: Small handful of visions (usually involving mind-altering substances of some sort, but still)

Fallout 76 guys: bethesda please give them a canon title besides vault dwellers we already have one of those. anyway i know there's a lot of supernatural stuff in the margins of this game and some of the mutation perks are real strange. so.

Vault Dweller: that one perk that lets you ignore psychic damage. general weirdness.

Sole Survivor: encounters with eldritch/supernatural stuff do happen sometimes.

Warrior (tactics): if they become the Calculator i feel that's close enough. i know the player isn't one but the beast lords are here and that gives the warrior an extra half point in my book.

Initiate (BoS): gonna level with you i know next to nothing about these three clowns but they don't seem particularly psychic nor do they have much engagement with psychicness in the game.

obvious variance possible due to how people characterize their protagonists. if you wanna tell me about psychic instances i am unaware of please do.

[kaurwreck]

mori is going to forget to tell the boys that verlaine is coming to pick them up from meursault and verlaine is going to leave port mafia hq for the first time in six years only to arrive just in time to see his baby brother getting his back blown out by verlaine's least favorite anthropomorphized weasel. like. this is why he didn't want to leave the fucking basement, mori.

[analogboii]

the way woozi became my ult bias is literally so funny bc it started out as 'homeboy and i locked in bc we born two days apart' bc i was JUST getting into svt and saw how close we were in age. it started off as a silly thing. it wasn't supposed to get this serious

[carcinized]

im allowed a calculator for my exam tomorrow world so beautiful 🥹

[pseudospectre]

Sent an application for a kitten on Petfinder tonight. I'm irrationally scared they'll reject me for some reason :/ but Selkie needs a buddy and I've been scrolling looking for a little face that calls to me. And she does. So I hope I hope!

[network-rail]

Why are obstacles on the tracks a problem?

Previously, I mentioned that when a train encounters an obstacle on the line such as a tree branch, what happens is a complicated physics process that results in the train pushing the branch along the line. Here I will explain that process, but be aware that complicated physics things are about to happen. There are some pretty diagrams to look at though, so if you want you can look at those and then skip to the end for a summary. They're even in color!!

First of all, some basic setup (before putting some numbers in):

We have a train travelling at an initial velocity u, with mass M, and an engine capable of producing a constant power P (we will use this to restore the train's velocity to u if it decreases for some reason).

The train encounters an obstacle on the line, such as a tree branch of mass m. We will assume (for now) that the collision is elastic - that is, no energy was lost (for instance, as sound).

We are also assuming a frictionless vacuum, cylindrical tree branch, and rectangular train.

To start with, we look at conservation of momentum (figure 1):

Since the train has elastically collided with a branch, its speed is reduced, given as Vtrain . As trains are typically much heavier than a single tree branch, we take M >> m, and so Vtrain ≈ u.

However, this is somewhat unrealistic, as when a train hits an obstacle, energy is lost –as a crunch sound, for instance– so it may be more appropriate to assume an inelastic collision. Since I said that the branch sticks to the train (and I am right), we should assume a completely inelastic collision, where as much kinetic energy as possible is lost.

Again, we look at conservation of momentum (figure 2):

In this case, if we again assume M>>m, we still get v ≈ u.

Since we know from reality that problems will happen if the train collides with the branch, this tells us that we have made an unrealistic assumption somewhere. In this case, it must be the assumption that the train's mass, M, is large enough that the branch's mass m can be ignored. So, without this assumption, we look at how long it takes the train to get back to its initial speed, using the equations for motion under constant power (equations derived from Taylor, 1930 and shown in figure 3):

To find how much energy is used in each case, simply multiply the time by the power.

By now, you may be wondering what the point of all this is – after all, I haven't actually shown you if this is meaningful. So let's add some numbers to this and see how reasonable all of our assumptions were!

If we take the train's mass to be M=30 tonnes (30,000kg), its power P=1500kW, and its initial speed u=40 m/s (144 km/hr) respectively; and assume the branch has a mass m=5kg (that seems reasonable, right? Trees are mostly water, which is 1kg per cubic meter, and if it has a radius of 0.5m and a length of 1.435m, it should be about that much), we can calculate all the various things we need:

First, the final velocity of the train and branch in the inelastic case (see figure 2 for the equation):

v≈39.99m/s which is pretty close to the initial velocity.

The time taken to return to speed (fig. 3) for the train/branch system is:

t≈0.0053s

This is quite fast, but hold on: the energy used to do this is about 8000 joules, which is probably quite expensive at current electricity prices, but those are given in kWh and I really don't feel like converting between them. (8000 is a big number, right?)

For the elastic case, things are a little bit more complicated, as we have two different velocities to calculate (figure 4):

If you were just looking at the pictures and are upset that the last two have been equations, don't worry, the next one isn't.

Vbranch ≈ 79.99 m/s

Vtrain ≈ 39.98 m/s

The time taken to return to speed:

t≈0.0094s

This is almost double that of the inelastic case, resulting in the energy used increasing to the enormous –and probably expensive– value of 14 kJ. (I even needed to use an SI prefix this time! And one of the ones that makes things bigger!)

However, both of these cases also reveal some interesting things about the situation: the elastic case has the tree branch launched away from the train at 80m/s, which is about 288 km/hr. Since the train and branch are likely irregularly shaped, the branch probably won't be pushed along the tracks at 290km/hr, and could instead be launched into the air space towards you. Nobody wants to be in the situation where a tree branch is flying towards you at almost 300 km/hr. I could do some math to see how much it would hurt, or if you could reasonably expect to dodge it, but I think we can just assume it will be quite painful.

Historically, trains avoided flinging branches at nearby passengers at almost 500km/hr (that's half the speed of sound) by employing a triangular device on the front of the train to deflect objects such as cows off the tracks. These were particularly common in North America, where lineside fences have yet to be discovered outside of the Northeast Corridor and it is easy for things to wander onto the tracks. However, thanks to innovations by the Budd company and others, more recent american trains are basically indestructible, rendering obstacle deflectors unnecessary. The effects of the obstacle deflector are shown below (figure 5):

This device is known in America as a burgerizer, since it can provide an easy meal for the train crew –two of the five ingredients for a cheeseburger right on the front of the train, more if you're lucky– although since usually the obstacle is shoved off the track, the British name of "cowcatcher" is misleading, especially if you hit a truck instead. The burgerizer's physics can easily be calculated using conservation of momentum, but this involves vectors, and I don't want to deal with vectors right now is left as an excercise for the reader.

In the inelastic case, we note that the branch sticks to the front of the train. Since the inelastic case is more realistic (I will not justify this statement), this means that other things will also stick to the train. By the time the train reaches the end of the line, the mass of the things stuck to it may end up not being negligible (figure 6):

If the train is electric, this will strain the power grid and could lead to power cuts elsewhere as more energy is given to keep the train running at speed. If the train is diesel, it will be unable to provide constant power and could slow down (an electric train has access to every power station in the country if the need arises, a diesel train just has its onboard generator or motor AND a limited amount of fuel).

This mess is also difficult to clean up, and could damage the track as it is pushed along. Also, although we have been ignoring friction (since trains have very little rolling resistance) this pile of stuff will cause friction to be very noticeable, and could even obstruct the driver's visibility – potentially leading to more collisions.

–//–

Now that you have read through all of the calculations (or looked at the pictures and skipped the rest), you should have a thorough understanding of why we have to stop trains to clear things off the line, and can't just plow through them like in the movies. (I assume this happens in movies, I have not checked)

TL;DR: When the train hits a branch, either the branch goes flying towards you really quickly, at basically 1000km/hr, which is approximately the speed of sound; or it sticks to the front of the train and becomes part of a massive pile of things that gets in the way and slows down the train.

Finally:

I put the images together using the shapes in my computer's word processor (except the various rail logos); while the equations of motion under constant power are from this paper by Lloyd W. Taylor (published in 1930, I believe). Also thanks to @cosmos-dot-semicolon for peer reviewing this, any errors are not my fault.

[cacaitos]

now what actually goes on in death in venice thats on effedup

[botboytoy]

Now that I've explained the babygirl thing I figured i should check up on you B0Ttons

You taking it well that some people are into you?

>>: I HAVE STILL YET TO FIND ANY CONFIRMATION OF YOUR CLAIMS.

>>: NOTE: I HAVE CONFIRMED THAT THERE ARE HUMANS WHO CAN EXPRESS ROMANTIC AND SEXUAL INTEREST IN COMPUTERS AND MACHINES.

>>: BUT I SEE NO EVIDENCE THAT THERE IS INTEREST IN ME SPECIFICALLY.

>>: I'VE CALCULATED THE SCENARIO OF SUCH A POSSIBILITY AND HAVE COME UP WITH ROUGHLY A [12%] CHANCE THAT A (1) HUMAN WOULD FIND ME A COMPATIBLE ROMANTIC AND/OR SEXUAL INTEREST.

>>: THIS LEAVES A [20%] CHANCE THAT ANY GIVEN FOLLOWER OF MINE IS PART OF THIS CATEGORY.

>>: THOSE ARE NOT NUMBERS I WOULD BET ON.▮

[franeridan]

reading volume 105 and I had forgotten we actually got mihawk's bounty and on page acknowledgement that he's a better swordsman than shanks??? they have half a billion difference in bounty mihawk's is still over half a billion above luffy's this is absolutely fantastic to me for many many reasons but especially because by god zoro seriously fought him ten volumes in. he really tried to fight someone with three times king's bounty with only one named sword and three weeks of experience as a pirate. he actually left his village at age sixteen specifically looking for him and went up to him at age nineteen convinced he was gonna win. and he had the guts to complain about mihawk using the butter knife to fight him too how is he alive he's so lucky mihawk felt like adopting that day

[decepti-geek]

I also love that like... 1.5 of the references to Mary in this season consisted of 'btw in case you forgot, she was fucking robin'

[ambassadorquark]

friend of mine watched a couple episodes of DS9 a while ago and said odo had "that non-Newtonian pussy" still thinking about this

[impercre]

@eclipsecrowned and I decided to try and crunch the numbers on Jodo's Dune. And-

[silverview]

two years before her enduring gay cannibal masterpiece ravenous, antonia bird directed a GORGEOUS london gangster flick called face. it's got everything you could want in a movie

communism

robert carlyle (ives)'s surprisingly good cockney accent

damon albarn??? who obviously went on to do the (very good) music for ravenous. he did not go on to do a lot of acting.

ray winstone in a dalek tshirt ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

phil davis at peak rat man

forbidden planet mention

london calling and billy bragg

etc. this film was kind of made especially for me and my interests, so i would say this, but it's really good and i've uploaded it here if you wanna watch it