The 20p Question Thread

[Edwardoka]

How much wood can a wood chucker chuck?

You'd need to specify whether your question is "how much can they chuck in one go" or "how much can they chuck per hour"
The answer depends upon a combination of strength and endurance.

Yes but can a wood chucker chuck wood????

That is what we need to know

Well, yes. It's in the name.

A woodchuck, on the other hand, prefers to make statistical predictions, usually but not exclusively about weather.
I understand that these days if one emerges from its burrow and sees its own shadow it means six more weeks of lockdown.

How much wood can a wood chucker chuck?

Wait... hmm, weird. Well, you didn't say whether you were asking "how much can they chuck in one go" or e.g. "how much can they chuck per hour", but I imagine they're limited either by strength or endurance.

Yes but can a wood chucker chuck wood????

That is what we need to know

This is so strange. Err, never mind. A wood chucker by definition is one who chucks wood. A woodchuck (better known as a groundhog), likes to make predictions of weather. Surely you've heard of Punxatawney Phil?

How much wood can a wood chucker chuck?

Yes but can a wood chucker chuck wood????

That is what we need to know

Oh no.

 

[Edwardoka]

Why do companies advertise their hamburgers as being 100% beef?

Porcine propaganda.

 

[BoldonLad]

No idea but I love dredging info from my ravaged brain so I'll throw some proverbial at the wall.

Without searching the web, because that's cheating.

Data is stored on magnetic media - be that tape or disc - as discrete magnetic fields. As magnetism is energy and energy is mass, a magnetised bit of data on magnetic medium MUST be heavier than just the medium itself, and there must be way to theoretically measure it. I guarantee you 100% that someone will have done the maths and worked out how much energy a bit has for a given data density and a given field strength.

From the elementary comp.sci I learned oh my god 25 years ago, 0 on magnetic medium isn't represented by the lack of a magnetic field, it's a magnetic field in the opposite direction. If it's the same strength field a 0 will have the same energy as a 1, so the total energy in the disk would stay the same.

Back when I learned this stuff, floppy disks were split into radial sectors and tracks, like a dartboard, and hard drives were basically a stack of discs (called platters) on top of each other, using a sturdier material that could pack more data onto the surfaces.

If the track and sector approach still holds then it means that the data density can't be uniform across the whole disk. The further outer along the disc you go the less dense the data is in order for track and sector addressing to make any kind of sense. With variable data density the "weight" of any given bit depends upon where on a disk it is.

And if it's on a platter higher up in the rack, it means it has more potential energy because of gravity.

So my answer is, I haven't the foggiest. Any split makes it impossible to answer. I'm going to have the play the following card:
View attachment 578477

Fascinating read, but... surely, the "bit" will "weigh" the same, no matter where on the disk it is, it simply means the that the "gaps" are greater closer to the centre?... and... I cannot recall the exact details from my "O" level Physics (58/59 years ago), but, isn't there a difference between weight and mass, depending on where you are? ...... time for a lie down now, I have just activated some synapses which have not seen action for a long, long time

 

[houblon]

QUOTE="Craig the cyclist, post: 6346321, member: 109321"]
Why do companies advertise their hamburgers as being 100% beef?
[/QUOTE]

Because the name reflects that they were invented in Hamburg, not that they contain ham? Is the boring answer.

 

[glasgowcyclist]

Because the name reflects that they were invented in Hamburg, not that they contain ham? Is the boring answer.

Probably not, is the even more boring answer. There’s no recorded connection between the city and the meat product. https://www.etymonline.com/word/hamburger

 

[houblon]

Youll be UOTE="glasgowcyclist, post: 6346352, member: 21181"]
Probably not, is the even more boring answer. There’s no recorded connection between the city and the meat product. https://www.etymonline.com/word/hamburger
[/QUOTE]

You'll be telling me there's no uniquorn in Quorn next.

 

[Drago]

And what is the difference between a hamburger and a beefburger? Ok, Tesco's ones are traditionally made frommhorse, but that aside they taste the same to me.

 

[Edwardoka]

Fascinating read, but... surely, the "bit" will "weigh" the same, no matter where on the disk it is, it simply means the that the "gaps" are greater closer to the centre?...

<edit>I think you got it backwards, the gaps would be greater towards the edge, but you're on the right track (pun intended) </edit>
In theory, correct, in reality, possibly not? (?)

The platters are spinning at a constant rate, so the further towards the rim you are, more disk surface will be "covered" in the time it takes to actually read or write the data. (While this time is extremely small in comparison to the "seek" time where the drive head is moving to be over the correct part of the platter and the wait for the platter to reach the right phase in its rotation, it's not zero)

To assure data integrity I imagine that multiple particles are magnetised for a given bit, but I have no source for this. I don't know how precise the write process is these days. It could be fast enough that exactly the same number of particles are magnetised per write no matter where on the platter it is.

My google-fu has informed me that modern hard drive controllers handle variable width sectors with ease, so the further out you go the more sectors there are, and the data is packed more densely than it was when I learned this stuff in the last millennium. Still not uniform, though.

and... I cannot recall the exact details from my "O" level Physics (58/59 years ago), but, isn't there a difference between weight and mass, depending on where you are? ......

Very good point. I completely missed that. Ignore the stuff about gravity.

time for a lie down now, I have just activated some synapses which have not seen action for a long, long time

It's good to warm up the circuits sometimes, thanks!

 

[Ming the Merciless]

How much rice pudding do you need to eat each day before your become Grand Tour pro?

 

[BoldonLad]

.....

The platters are spinning at a constant rate, so the further towards the rim you are, more disk surface will be "covered" in the time it takes to actually read or write the data. (While this time is extremely small in comparison to the "seek" time where the drive head is moving to be over the correct part of the platter and the wait for the platter to reach the right phase in its rotation, it's not zero)

........

Ho, ho, that brings back happy(?) memories, I used to work in IT (or, Data Processing, as it was then called), in the days when tape drives were being replaced with these new fangled things about the size of a washing machine, called "disk drives". I vaguely remember a whole lot of stuff about cylinder/head/track address. Sectors, interleaving, latency also come to mind, as key factors in the search for speed of access? The first disks I remember were a little bigger than an average size dinner plate, one platter, and, held about 2MB of data.

 

[Drago]

The first disks I remember were a little bigger than an average size dinner plate, one platter, and, held about 2MB of data.

 

[Edwardoka]

Ho, ho, that brings back happy(?) memories, I used to work in IT (or, Data Processing, as it was then called), in the days when tape drives were being replaced with these new fangled things about the size of a washing machine, called "disk drives". I vaguely remember a whole lot of stuff about cylinder/head/track address. Sectors, interleaving, latency also come to mind, as key factors in the search for speed of access? The first disks I remember were a little bigger than an average size dinner plate, one platter, and, held about 2MB of data.

Very interesting, thank you. I shall have to play another card

*throws flashbang, vanishes*

 

[Edwardoka]

How much rice pudding do you need to eat each day before your become Grand Tour pro?

I don't know, but I heard that if you drink lots of milk, you could grow up to play for Accrington Stanley.

 

[BoldonLad]

Very interesting, thank you. I shall have to play another card
View attachment 578540

*throws flashbang, vanishes*

Not at all, I certainly didn't mean to imply that It is all a world away now, I have more processing power and storage in my iPhone, that we were using to run a Company, way, way back in the 1960's. I recall the first time I saw, a "desktop computer", it was an Apple, and, I could just not believe what I was seeing. Even more amazing, my experiences were not even at the beginning of Computers, that was way back before my time. At school, we had a Ferranti something or other, it took up a whole class room, it was "down", more than it was "up".

ah... nostalgia.......

 

[Ming the Merciless]

How much faster are go faster stripes?