CULTURAL QA 04-2024-21 All theBELOW QA are from Quora digest to me on 21-04-2024.
Quoraanswers need not be 100% correct answers .Compiled andposted by R. Gopala krishnan, on 21-04-2024 Q1 Whichof mankind's greatest discoveries came about purely by accident? A1 Steve Baker, Senior Software Engineer (2013–present)Feb19 For surethere are significant numbers that were accidents. When Bellinvented the telephone - it was only by accidentally spilling acid on the wiresand creating a primitive battery that he got it to work. Radioactivitywas discovered when some kind of radioactive ore was stored in the same draweras some photographic plates. It was aneffort to figure out how fast the Earth was moving through the LuminiferousAether which resulted in the very odd discovery that not only is there noAether - but also that the speed of light is always the same no matter thespeed of the source or the recipient…which lead directly to Relativity. In 1965 ,two radio astronomers: Penzias and Wilson, two radio astronomers in the UnitedStates, were puzzles by a noisy signal in their radio telescope that could notbe attributed to any precise source in the sky. It apparently came fromeverywhere with the same intensity, day or night, summer or winter. Theythought for a while that there was a fault in the instrument - but aftertesting absolutely every single piece of it - could find no fault. What itturned out that they were measuring was the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation…whichis what lead to the realization that the universe started with the Big Bang. Whileattempting to grow a particular bacterial culture, Alexander Fleming found thatan accidental fungal contamination the culture appeared to kill the bacteria.This lead to the discovery of penicillin. There are aLOT of examples of this kind of thing. Even today -astronomers who were interested in measuring the masses of black holes at thecenters of galaxies by measure the rotation rates of the stars that surroundthem - and realized that there was something seriously weird about the rotationrates as a function of distance. This is what lead us to the mystery of “DarkMatter” - which we’re still trying to unravel. As I said -this kind of accident-leading-to-discovery is not at all uncommon in thesciences. Q2 Whatwas very useful when it first came out but is useless today? A2 Bob Wilson,Former Professionalgeoscientist Feb 19 Its notuseless, but it is never used anymore. The slide rule, when I was inhighschool, before calculators, slide rules were indispensable for doing largecalculations. They weren't as accurate as a calculator or as fast, but theycould save a lot of time and give a perfectly usable answer, then in my firstyear of university calculators came out. At first they couldn't do everything aslide rule could but, but within three years they could.. Later when Ichanged careers and became a ships Captain I had to learn semiphore and Morsecode, and how to use a sextant. Almostimmediately radios became good enough that semiphore and Morse code weren'trequired for new candidates. Sat Nav (later GPS) and Loran meant that I was thelast year to take the tests for Semiphore, Morse code and how to use a sextant.But I still have mine. My note- I recollect the Mathematics tables usedby me in the college during 1961-1964 and early manual Number please telephoneexchanges in vogue till 1989’s. Q3 Whatis a brilliant invention that should be more widespread? A3 Alessandro13,Mar 2 In SouthKorea, numerous solar panels are placed in the middle of the highway, betweenthe two carriageways. Below, thesehave a cycle path: cyclists are thus protected from the sun, isolated fromtraffic, and can circulate safely and peacefully, while the country producesclean energy Q4 If theinternet was invented in 1989, does that mean it has been around for 35 years? A4 Rik Elswit, Musician for 60 years.Professional musician for 55.Updated Mar 25 The internetdates back to the 1960s when ARPANET, part of the US defense department, beganhooking computers together to communicate. ARPANET managed to get two computersto have a very short conversation in 1969, and a network began to be built.TCP-IP created a communication standard in 1983, and the Worldwide Web, whichis software that runs on the internet, was created in 1990 by Britain’s TimBerners-Lee. This democratized the internet and allowed the general public to useit without having to learn Unix. The Web itself was launched in 1993. You canrummage around in there for a start date, but it’s kind of a fuzzy target.`.For most people, it’s the Web. 1993. Q5 Whenwas the first silencer invented? A5 Donald Puckridge ,Works at Women's and Children's Hospital, · 4y Americaninventor Hiram Percy Maxim, the son of “Maxim gun inventor", Hiram StevensMaxim's and co-founder of the ARRL ( American Radio Relay League); is usually creditedwith inventing and selling the first commercially successful silencer, around1902, receiving a patent for it on 30th March 1904. It had manynames, silencer, suppressor, sound suppressor or sound moderator, is a muzzledevice. It can be detachable accessory, or integral part of the muzzle orbarrel. Thetrademarked name “Maxim Silencer". Q6 What inventionplayed a major role in mankind's development but gets little attention? A6 Thomas Hedberg, Executive Director atInternational Medical Crisis Response Alliance (IMCRA) (2013–present)Apr 12 ThePhonograph. Just thinkof it when relatively new. Sounds, famous people, music, stories, education,speeches, events, drama etc. for those who were exposed to that rarely, ifever. Voices of the dead and preservation of vanishing events and peoples andlanguages. The Jazz Age, the Swing Era, Rock n Roll, Beatlemania, Death Metal,Punk, all recordings that were responsible for the naming of historical epochs.Home recordings and preservation of family scenes encouraging creativity andart. The Theatre of the Mind in people listening to programs first recorded andthen broadcasr. Finally,when added to the movies in 1893 (experimentally) and in 1910 (the kinetophone)a revolution in virtual reality. Scientifically,our first understanding of the nature of sound and with the phonautograph of1857 our first visualization of the ocean of sound surrounding us. My note-Still we can see display of phonograph as an antique item in many Kerala homes. Q7 Ifwind power is so great, why weren't there any hurricanes before windmills wereinvented? A7 JoeMcAuley, Former VariousEngineering/Technical at Ball Bros. Research Corp., Miles Laboratories, WesternElec., IBM (1962–1974)Apr 13 There werehurricanes before windmills were invented. This is the second questionregarding windmills — I presume you mean wind turbines — and hurricanes. Thereis no connection between wind turbines taking a slight amount of energy out ofa very local winds and hurricanes being generated off the African coast. Theenergy involved in creating a hurricane, or even a thunderstorm, is far greaterthan all the energy produced by wind turbines worldwide. This is a non-issue. What is anissue it that fossil fuels help create hurricanes because they warm theatmosphere by absorbing infrared radiation and radiating a portion back toearth. A warmer atmosphere warms the oceans. Warmer oceans that cover 71% ofEarth’s surface evaporate more moisture into the atmosphere. This forms moreclouds and results in more rain and other forms of precipitation, includingsnow. More moisture means more rains and snows, sometimes flooding rains andrecord snows. I don’t knowwhere this latest conspiracy theory came from, but there is nohurricane-enhancing effect from wind turbines. The opposite is true. For everykilowatt generated by wind and solar, that’s a kilowatt not generated by fossilfuels. It’s burning fossil fuels that is putting CO2 into the atmosphere andcausing warming. And the earth has had hurricanes ever since there was a planetearth with oceans and solar heating. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/955281485.1120194.1713705712401%40mail.yahoo.com.
