I flew for the first time on a plane last week and I’ve seen planes take off at the airport. It looks crazy. But being on one is totally different like holy shit. The thing just FLIES. It just… Soars… Through the sky! Like whoa man. Wtf… It’s crazy. With how much these things weigh, it’s insane to me the thing can just go up and bam, there we are, we’re flying now. Like wow… Dude crazy.

You think that’s crazy? The ship that blocked the Suez Canal, the Ever Given, has a ship displacement (how much water is displaced when it sits in the ocean) of 265,000 Tons.

That’s 240 million kilograms.

And that shit just floats on fucking water maaaaan…

Since when 1000kg is not equal to one tonne?

There are tons of tons, believe it or not.

There’s the short ton (2000lbs), long ton (2240 lbs), and tonne (1000kgs) which are all measure weight. However there’s also the shipping/freight/ocean ton which is a measure of volume (which is also different in the US and UK), and the register ton.

However I did make a mistake. The wikipedia page I was reading said the weight in t and long tons. I made the mistake of assuming they meant short tons - in reality when measuring displacement for a ship, tonnes are used (which is pretty sensible, considering you’re displacing water and a liter of water to a kilogram of water have a pretty easy conversion formula formula…)

I see, the common “Americans will use anything but SI”, but in this case it’s also the Brits lol

Thanks for explanation

Ton (imperial) is 2000lb vs tonne (metric)

Don’t get them going about their crazy units!

I hate that everybody’s like, it’s not that big a deal.

We only started doing it 124 years ago! Prior to that it was a very big deal indeed.

Everyone’s so fucking smart these days, there’s no room for a sense of wonder. It’s like being blasé and knowledgeable is cool. It’s really not.

You keep flying with your beautiful sense of wonder, Buttflapper!

Well fucking said. Smoke noodles rarely have room for curiosity, which is where new things often come from.

Edit: Not sure how smarmy know-it-alls became that, but I’m not changing it now

I’m pretty sure i can’t trust Arthur Vandelay, they are the kind of people that would pass off something they did as if it wasnt intentional

Some lady told me she read Atlas Shrugged while in the hospital for a long stay, kept alive by equipment she neither invented nor paid for. How oblivious people can be when we are all just barely something more than monkeys? Some of us manage to be passably unoblivious and I think that’s what makes us human; the potential to be more rational than a monkey. It’s no guarantee, though, as you so noted. You know there was a caveperson who just learned about fire and still went around and acted like he invented it straight up to the caveperson that did invent it. Monkey brain stuff.

I don’t need ignorance to feel wonder. I think things are cooler when I can marvel at the complex mechanics behind it all.

True. But I wasn’t arguing that.

What puts me in awe of things like flight isn’t the act itself, but the brilliance of the people who designed it to work. I look at the aerodynamic shape of an airfoil and think “we did that…humans”.

To be fair, we sorta knew it was possible because birds. I think it’s more impressive when we don’t know what can happen, like breaking the sound barrier or putting people in space.

That’s the thing though, what’s amazing about planes really depends on your knowledge base or what experience is specifically being enjoyed. If you don’t understand how planes work then the difference is moot because whether seeing or doing the entire thing is magical. If you do understand how planes work you might know that the crazy thing isn’t flight, we knew how to do that since approximately 1800 when the first gliders were built, the crazy part was generating enough power to make powered flight possible. If you understand how flight works and are still enjoying the experience of flight is where wonder still exists.

You know the wonder of flight still exists because some number of kids and adults would pick flight as a super power if given the choice.

it works because we believe in it. if everyone would lose faith in airplanes, they’d drop out of the sky.

Can I just lose faith in the private jets?

And will it fly higher if we have the Faith of the Heart?

easier yet, if everyone crams to the tail, it will likely crash

Is this true? Sounds true but I feel like this should also be a test they do to ensure it doesn’t fail.

Dafuq is this!? Stress testing?

No, every once in a while the planes need to stretch out. They get tired from being so stiff. This helps their joints later in their life span.

Basically. The wings have to be able to bend that much so they don’t break off in strong winds or hard maneuvers.

Wait until you find out about electricity! 🤯

Computers is teachibg rocks to think

We grow flawless crystals, slice them into perfect disks, engrave billions of arcane runes onto them with magical potions and rays of light, animate them with lightning, and make them do our bidding.

And then we give them an “intelligence” that can’t even count the Rs in strawberry…

I think we’re doing pretty fucking well, all things considered.

Saw this the other day, seems relevant to your comment

engrave billions of arcane runes

Omg, you just made me love my job more.

Try looking at a die under a microscope

By filling them with lightning

Magnets, how do they work?

Does anyone actually know? We have laws and math that predict and model behavior but last time I checked know one knew why.

I mean, big magnets work because they are made of electrons that have their magnetic fields aligned so they don’t cancel each other out. Now, as for why electrons have magnetic fields in the first place, that we don’t know

And telephones! Even en old-school analogue phone is pretty amazing how sound becomes an electrical signal and then is converted back to sound at the other end.

Modern digital phones are just pure magic compared to analogue phones.

Considering how we use it. It is absolutely fascinating. Same for magnetism

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It's crazy that a 60 ton metal airplane can just fly

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