Talk:1778: Interest Timescales

I think the parts of the mountain that suddenly rise(s) refers to lava, smoke, ash, etc. 162.158.122.102 07:53, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Looks to me that Randall got the chart wrong. Rockets go much faster than fireworks. Very large fireworks can go faster than the speed of sound on the order of a couple hundred miles per hour, https://www.fireworkscrazy.co.uk/blog/how-fast-are-fireworks/ But in order for rockets to go into orbit they have to reach speed in the thousands of miles per hour, http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/basics/launch.html So the rocket ship should be to the left of the fireworks. Unless the initial acceleration of the firework is faster than the rocket. In other words for the first hundred or so feet, does the firework go faster than the rocket? Does anyone know that? Rtanenbaum (talk) 15:23, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Looking again, it seems that Randall is not talking about how fast the object rises, but how much time it takes to rise, hang and drift away. In other words how fast is the experience? In that case fireworks do follow the process of rising and hanging and drifting faster than a rocket does. So the experience takes less time (seconds) even though the rocket travels faster the whole process takes longer (minutes for blastoff and hours or days to return). Rtanenbaum (talk) 15:35, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I can't help but feel the explanation of the trees is a bit wrong. A tree will take anywhere from months to centuries to grow before it dies depending on the species. If the interest were in leaves the current description of them falling in Autumn would apply, but in that case the image of the tree would probably be something more specific to leaves. In fact, overall I think we might be over-reading the text about the majority of things Randall is interested in being things which rise up and drift in the wind. It's hard to say that is true of mountains, except in the most extreme cases. (Signed: Random anonymous coward. December 28, 2016)

Did anyone notice Randall’s mistake in subject‐verb agreement? “...parts of a slowly‐rising mountain suddenly rises.” It should be “parts...suddenly rise”. I don’t know if it’s worth mentioning in the article. 108.162.246.89 19:04, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it probably is worth mentioning.Mulan15262 (talk) 14:53, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I emailed him about that and he corrected it. The article should be changed to account for that (and probably a bit of trivia mentioning how it was corrected). 162.158.18.16 13:31, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

I updated the title text in the comic accordingly and added a note in the explanation section for the title text fix. However, I'm new to this wiki and don't yet know how to add a trivia section for it. Can someone else help me out with that? --Ianrbibtitlht (talk) 14:52, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

It's now moved to a new trivia section. Just for editors: The trivia section is below the transcript but above the {{comic discussion}} tag. Every part starts with an asterisk at the beginning of the line (list-item) but please avoid nested lists like it's often done here. And keep it short. Check the source for better understanding.--Dgbrt (talk) 20:04, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

I looked at the source to see what you did. Thanks. --Ianrbibtitlht (talk) 20:13, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Does anyone else think that the rocket looks a lot like the Delta II? --