Why is the mercury arc rectifier getting a “what the fuck”? I don’t know much about them, are they more magic than glowing rocks, runes, levitation and demon cores?
Physics!
Submitted 1 month ago by Stamets@lemmy.dbzer0.com to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/e87a004f-c4d7-4803-a0c3-0c233a446ef8.webp
Comments
gbzm@piefed.social 1 month ago
CountVlad47@feddit.org 1 month ago
Just piggy backing this comment to save people a click. A mercury-arc valve is used to convert alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC). It probably got a WTF for how weird it looks and how it looks like a crystal ball when it’s working.
redsand@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
Are you telling me that’s a full bridge rectifier made of glass, liquid metal and plasma?🧙♂️
zululove@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
That shits amazing
fullsquare@awful.systems 1 month ago
no, but they will also kill you (but not by magic)
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 1 month ago
How so? Can I touch it? Lick it?
ameancow@lemmy.world 1 month ago
On this note, one of the best Cosmic Horror shows of all time was Chernobyl on HBO.
A story of a small town affected by forces outside anyone’s understanding. Terrible, primal, cosmic power unleashed and uncontained threatening the entire world. It kills indiscriminately in the most horrible ways, melting people alive and contaminating all it touches after escaping a high-security confinement.
A plucky team of brave souls work tirelessly to find some way to stop the monster from burrowing into the Earth and gaining even more power.
And what’s most amazing is no part of it is exaggerated or sensationalized, it’s so accurate to reality that even the actors look like their real-life counterparts. The showrunners went on to work on The Last of Us.
Spacehooks@reddthat.com 1 month ago
No black magic here!
From The dudes using candles, incense, and chanting something about the machine spirit while using this:
ThePyroPython@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Let’s not forget they’re fiddling strange multi pronged metal sticks, muttering about impedance matching, in a giant spiky room with large metal doors.
Spacehooks@reddthat.com 1 month ago
peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 1 month ago
But you want to know what is magic about physics?
Forces. Forces are definitely observable. But they are fictitious. A photon (force mediator of the electromagnetic force) is a packet of energy on the electromagnetic field that creates a curvature in the electromagnetic field such that two particles with opposing charges (intrinsic charge) has that field curved together, resulting in what an observer would see as a force.
Gravity? The thing keeping everything on the ground? Not real. Just a result of the spacetime field being curve by the presence of energy in it. In order to escape the curve, you have to exchange energy, which is to be a force.
anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 1 month ago
The fact that you knew exactly what I was talking about enough to pull up the relevant XKCD is impressive good sir/ma’am/(actually I don’t know what the non binary term would be there. I know military it’s “Sir” regardless).
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 month ago
mattyroses@lemmygrad.ml 1 month ago
Also gravitons exist, unless you’re looking for them, then they don’t. Also they move in curved space time but also don’t.
Yes, this is totally real, not just stuff we made up stoned.
Reality_Suit@lemmy.world 1 month ago
There are universal truths that span time and all eternity. One of those such truths is “The Scooby Doo.” That truth states that it is never spirits, demons, apparitions, or anything unearthly that is the cause of the unexplained, but rather It’s always someone you know. Usually, the person closest to you.
Kellenved@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Frequently some breed of capitalist trying to scam someone
ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world 1 month ago
If physics are not magic, then how do you explain magnets? Checkmate.
niktemadur@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I picture someone like Grand Mage Paul Dirac cracking his Special Relativity knuckles as he takes the challenge, “right then…!”
tallricefarmer@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
You might enjoy watching Richard Feynman getting asked how magnets work. It is on youtube.
nialv7@lemmy.world 1 month ago
magnets, how do they work
Chakravanti@monero.town 1 month ago
They don’t. If they do, it’s a union and they have the strongest untouchable force with their own kind.
saltnotsugar@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Invisible forces controlling literally everything!? Nerd magic.
peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 1 month ago
No no no, there are no forces. It’s energy controlling invisible fields literally everywhere.
Physics, is it’s own terror
luciole@beehaw.org 1 month ago
not a demon (it’s worse)
marcos@lemmy.world 1 month ago
You will spend a week wishing for an eternity of damnation instead.
Zerush@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Anyway it’s still not clearly solved the Mpemba effect, a almost daily phenomen in which hot water freeze faster than cold one,
Nomecks@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Full bridge rectifiers, not even once.
ThePyroPython@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Oh boy, just wait until you hear about zero-crossings and phase-lock loops.
syaochan@feddit.it 1 month ago
Mercury rectifiers are one of the coolest thing I’ve ever seen (not in person unfortunately)
stevedice@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
It took me longer that I’d like to admit to realize that the magic glowing rocks below Paradis in Attack on Titan were just nuclear fuel all along.
mattyroses@lemmygrad.ml 1 month ago
Me in 2012 - hahahaha stupid Juggalos, asking how magnets work Me a month later - wait, I was a physics major for a year, and I can’t really say how magnets work?
jankforlife@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Ill take one Glowing death aura please
owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
I mean, sure, we kinda imbued rocks with lightning and now they can think but it’s not magic
Agent641@lemmy.world 1 month ago
And then we taught those rocks to think in ways we don’t really understand, and dedicated cities worth of electrical energy to allow them to think harder and faster, and gave them the means to improve themselves.
owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
It’s called computer science and it’s not magic and why are you making a pyre