Hummingbird feet : science

[–] [email protected] 342 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I have to give them credit, they actually consulted a real expert whilst they were drunk. Most people don't, not even sober

[–] grue 101 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (6 children)

To be fair, "do hummingbirds have feet" seems eminently wikipediable. I'd like to think that if I ever felt the need to drunk-dial an expert, it'd be for something less trivial.

[–] [email protected] 90 points 10 months ago (1 children)

seems eminently wikipediable

Telephones existed for a century before wikkipedia...

In the before times: The guinness book of records started as a promo by the guinness brewery given to pub owners to settle bar argumnets like this one.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 10 months ago (1 children)

TIL: Guinness Book of World Records origin story is the same as a D&D campaign: started in a tavern.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

All great things start in a bar. Or coffee shop. Or in the shower. Or in a dream. But never in a meeting.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

isnt a a bar evening just an optional meeting with no agenda and alcohol?

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 10 months ago (8 children)

Not even 20 years ago smart phones and the internet weren't ubiquitous. I'm only 35 but even I remember personal stories about bar disagreements where we just simply couldn't use our phones to search the net. Because all they were capable of is dialing a number and Snake.

[–] uid0gid0 24 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Way back in the 1950s some guy had the same observation you did. He came up with an idea for a book that would solve disputes over trivia by bar patrons. 70 years later the Guinness Book of World Records has over 22,000 entries in their database.

[–] Arielcorn 3 points 10 months ago

began as an idea conceived by British engineer and industrialist Sir Hugh Beaver, the managing director of the Guinness Brewery, to solve trivia questions among bar patrons. During the early 1950s Beaver was involved in a dispute during a shooting party about the fastest game bird in Europe; however, the answer could not be found in any bird reference book.

Wow. That guy sure was serious about bird trivia!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

When we kids there would always be someone who would rush home to look stuff up on the encyclopedia and get back with the results

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[–] meliaesc 36 points 10 months ago

But they don't just want the answer, they want to share an experience with the people they're with in a clever and fun way.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 10 months ago

There's nothing trivial about bar room disagreements. People die over those. That professor just saved someone's life.

[–] scottywh 25 points 10 months ago

To be fair, there's no time period listed on when the event described allegedly occurred and Wikipedia hasn't always existed.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You're that guy who posts lmgtfy links anytime someone asks for an opinion on something, aren't you?

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[–] Geek_King 145 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

When I was little, my mom dropped me and her friends kid off at a church for arts and crafts, I was 5. We we given toilet paper rolls, pipe cleaner, glue, and some other stuff to make butterflies. I studiously started making mine, I got the wings, the antenna and asked what I was supposed to use for the legs. A full grown ass women look me right in the eye and said "Butterflies don't have legs".

I had seen butterflies land on flowers and latch on with legs, I was so confused how an adult wouldn't know that.

[+] [email protected] 91 points 10 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 51 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Last year my daughter told me her grade 4 teacher had told the class "Well nobody really knows how magnets work" to which my science-obsessed daughter replied "You mean you don't really know how magnets work!"

I confirmed to her that yes, our understanding of magnetism is about as complete as it can get. Of all the mysteries the universe has to offer, magnetism is not one of them.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago (2 children)

What that teacher probably wanted to say was that, while we can explain how magnetism works, no one can tell you why it happens.

[–] venoft 21 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Nature doesn't have a reason to do things. There's no 'why' in anything, other than 'the laws of physics make it do so'.

[–] madejackson 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

For completeness, we cannot say for sure if we even exist. The universe could very well just be an imagination and nothing really matters, including the laws of physics and our understanding of magnets.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

In this year alone, I've had so many things happen that just scream we live in a simulation, it genuinely wouldn't even surprise me if it was true.

Either way, nature is our one true god.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Okay, but, with other forces, like electricity, we understand that elections are bumping down the line and the force/motion of that can be used to do work or something.

With magnetism, it's more like, a complete black box, we can see what happens when we do x, but we have no idea what makes it do that. Magnetism it's measurable, we know it exists, we don't know how it exists. We know it works, but we can't figure out why it works.

It's a bit like gravity. We have some good theories, but that's about it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

It's a bit like gravity. We have some good theories, but that's about it.

No! That's the point I'm trying to make! Gravity and its source truly are a mystery (aside from the basic fact that it causes mass to attract other mass, of course)

Magnetism is a well defined component of the electromagnetic force. We know what it is, where it comes from, and why it has the effect that it does. We've known most of this for a century! The study of electromagnetism came early to the field of physics because it's easy to work with and understand on human scales.

To be very short, moving electricity creates magnetism; moving magnetism creates electricity. A permanent magnet is magnetic because most of the electrons are spinning the same way, creating magnetism. That's it.

That is what you tell the grade 4 students.

Later you can teach them about magnetic domains, dipole moment, electric and magnetic fields and their relationship to radio waves etc... But these are all things we know, and I feel like it's important that kids know that humanity has in fact mastered magnetism.

Sure there is still a lot to learn, but at this point it's engineering, not science. Practical things like magnetic alloys or optimal field arrangements for motors.

[–] Gabu 3 points 10 months ago

other than ‘the laws of physics make it do so’.

Therein lies the issue. We don't know shit about the fundamentals of magnetism, other than "it sort of just follows the rules of electricity".

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

Feynman on magnets and these kind of questions.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

4th grade seems to be about the right maturity level to become a huge ICP fan, so it checks out.

[–] Olhonestjim 3 points 10 months ago

It's just that magnetism is really complicated the deeper you go, and there's nothing else to compare it to.

[–] HonoraryMancunian 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Fun fact: next time you see the moon in the day, study the angle of the sunlight hitting it — it doesn't appear to line up with the sun. This is a perspective trick based on the fact the sun is way further away than the moon yet we perceive them the same distance. And no I cannot intuitively grasp this.

[–] uid0gid0 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

It has to do with apparent size of the sun and moon. The sun is 400 times wider than the moon and coincidentally 400 times further away, so they look the same size. With no other reference points as to how big each object is, we perceive them to be the same distance.

[–] HonoraryMancunian 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That bit I can at least fully comprehend. It's the sunlight angle thing I can't wrap my head around.

[–] uid0gid0 4 points 10 months ago

You want to know about space, you ask NASA

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Stupid/inconstant adults stick in your mind. I'm lucky to have mostly had good teachers, just one teaching vowels one week taught us a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y

Then the next week tested our learning, and marked my answer "a, e, i, o, u, sometimes y" wrong because it's only aeiou. Sure teacher. No vowels at all in by, but the same sound at the beginning of bicycle has one.

I think they must have been reading from a book when teaching, but working from their own ideas for the test

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

I'm curious how that person thought that butterflies rested.... Or did they just continually flap their tiny little wings until they died?

But, I mean, you were at a church....

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

When Jim Morrison wrote People Are Strange, he actually meant People Are Stupid.

[–] kamen 46 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If birbs aren't real, how come their feet are?

/s

[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago

Depends on model but it is usually a lizard skin coating. Older prototypes used whole lizard feet.

[–] someguy3 37 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

This is what smartphones have taken from us.

[–] ClopClopMcFuckwad 33 points 10 months ago

#BirdsArentReal

[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago

when worlds collide

[+] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (7 children)

Unless you were dying and/or making your Will, you didn't bequeath anything to anyone. I wish I knew what word you meant.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Probably something like pronounce or proclaim.

[–] boatsnhos931 5 points 10 months ago

Beseech??

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Did you get into a debate about wether jackdaws were crows, then put on Groucho glasses and defend your own point?

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