Talk:2198: Throw

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Revision as of 08:09, 5 September 2019 by 162.158.154.241 (talk) (Reference to Mjolnir)
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I created this page as it seem DgbrtBOT fails because it is interactive. So far it still won't shown on the front page or with a button to it from the previous comic or the "newest" comic button. Maybe it just takes some time? It is now in the List_of_all_comics but still no luck getting it to work... --Kynde (talk) 07:58, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Maybe it is because it was published on a tuesday? --Lupo (talk) 08:16, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
No it is not unusual that a comic does not come out on MWF. For instance the Sunday comic recently. Here is the list of Tuesday comics: Category:Tuesday_comics--Kynde (talk) 13:29, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
Also it doesn't display my comment below the explanation. Something is very broken here...--Lupo (talk) 08:25, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
It appears now. PkmnQ (talk) 08:53, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

How did he get an estimate for Carly Rae Jepson, anyway? 162.158.255.34 09:52, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgwAywJlo1M 172.68.142.221 09:55, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
Alternatively he could have worked together with her, as with Serena Williams. I will look it up in the afternoon, when I have my preordered book :) --Lupo (talk) 10:22, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

By the transitive property of Worthiness, if Capt America can throw Thor's Hammer, surely George Washington is Worthy! 172.69.68.141 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I got this data from the code:

id name canThrow canBeThrown length diameter mass dragC throwPower
microwave A microwave oven false true 0.406 0.406 10.591 0.8
basketball a basketball false true 0.243 0.243 0.624 0.3
blender a blender false true 0.203 0.203 5.216 0.8
gold_bar a gold bar false true 0.0535 0.0535 12.4 0.8
cake a wedding cake false true 0.51 0.51 13 0.8
pingpong a ping pong ball false true 0.04 0.04 0.003 0.5
quarterback an NFL quarterback true false 1.905 0.584 102.058 0.6 20
acorn an acorn false true 0.0191 0.0191 0.0045 0.3
hammer thor's hammer false true 0.5 0.15 2000 0.4
javelin a javelin false true 1.8 0.0254 0.8 0.1
george George Washington true true 1.829 0.562 90.718 0.6 15
pikachu Pikachu true true 0.4 0.3 5.9874 0.4 10
car A car false true 4.5 2.134 1179.34 0.25
silver_spin a silver dollar (spinning) false true 0.04 0.011 0.027 0.5
silver_tumble a silver dollar (tumbling) false true 0.04 0.04 0.027 0.66
carly Carly Rae Jepsen true false 1.575 0.46 49.895 0.6 10
thor thor, god of thunder true false 1.91 0.59 91 0.6 10000
chris hemsworth chris hemsworth true false 1.91 0.59 91 0.6 10
squirrel A squirrel true true 0.203 0.096 0.454 0.6 10

(Sorry if this table messes the talk page.)162.158.78.136 13:51, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Nah its great. Not sure how to use it in the explanation yet, but guess it will go in there somehow later.--Kynde (talk) 14:28, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
id name canThrow canBeThrown length diameter mass dragC throwPower
you (mass^(1/3))/8 0.6 5/10/15/20
Sebastian --172.68.110.64 09:17, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

The comic looks different on my screen, not displaying multiple possible selections next to each other, but all below each other. Quite dynamic... --Lupo (talk) 14:26, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

If I zoom out I can make it shown only one item each line, but if I zoom in two is maximum. But it should go in the explanation when we get there.--Kynde (talk) 14:28, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

The suggestion to litteraly throw a party in the air could be a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy in which there is a flying building with a party in it, and there's even Thor partying in it when the protagonists are coming there. --Roger 15:12, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Any reason why George Washington has 50% more throw power than Christ Hemsworth? Some reference? ~TK

Interesting, there appears to be additional units of measurement in the source code that were not used in the comic: "wiffles" and "light-nanoseconds" 108.162.241.52 16:52, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm going to try to add those to the table; I know where nano-light seconds are, but could you give an example length that's converted to wiffles? --Account (talk) 16:41, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
Pulled unit data from the code:
id plural name conversion
meter meters meters:1
foot feet meters:.3048
furlong furlongs meters:201.168
attoparsec attoparsecs meters:.03086
smoot smoots meters:1.7
wiffle wiffles meters:.0089
football_field football fields meters:91.44
rack_unit rack units meters:.04445
horse horses meters:2.4
manhattan_block manhattan blocks meters:80
light_nanosecond light-nanoseconds meters:.03
kilogram kilograms kg:1
pound pounds kg:.453592
N.B. Conversion for "wiffles" is off by a factor of ten (i.e. should be .089 rather than .0089). While wiffles should be the next unit above rack-units and below feet, the unit conversion typo prevents it from being accessible by any thrower-object combination, as far as I can tell. OneHunted (talk) 02:57, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Does it seem... excessive to anyone else that the NFL quarterback can throw a silver dollar almost two football fields?172.68.142.161 17:08, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

The explanation for Manhattan block conversion appears to be wrong. They mention that their calculation for how large one block is was made with 4 numbers ignoring George Washington as an outlier. However there are 6 total examples of Manhattan block to use and George Washington's is not an outlier. I calculated the mean with all of the data to be 79.9142 meters.--Szeth (talk) 17:12, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

We need a table with a brief description of each thrower. DKMell (talk) 17:14, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

How do we know how old George Washington was when he throws a squirrel? Speaking of age, this format kind of reminds me of the Magnus comic: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1628:_Magnus 108.162.241.52 17:41, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

I think we need to add something about the myth that George Washington threw a silver dollar across the Potomac River 108.162.241.40 19:42, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

I agree it adds to the appreciation of the humor and have added that myth to the explanation. I have also added the fact that football quarterbacks are specialists at throwing the ball. Rtanenbaum (talk) 13:55, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Pretty sure that the ping-pong ball distances are severely overestimated due to air resistance slowing them very rapidly. Someone with lab facilities might want to check... --Marcus Rowland (talk) 19:49, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, never mind, I think I saw a very early version of the actual page that had the distances much greater - seems reasonable now. --Marcus Rowland (talk) 19:53, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

The buttons look to be failing simply because Template:LATESTCOMIC hasn't been updated with the lastest comic number - the page is protected so needs someone with higher powers than I. Dresken (talk) 19:59, 3 September 2019 (UTC) 'Worthiness' was only a thing in the comics. In the myths Thor had a belt of strength and a couple other things. --172.69.33.125 21:35, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Unless I am missing something there is a unit conversion error for pound and kilogram. For instance if you enter 1.83m and 90.7kg for "YOU" the throw distance by Thor is 137m. However, if you enter the equivalent weight of 200lb you get a throw distance of 183m.172.68.206.28 23:20, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

That is correct! The mass gets converted twice from pounds to kg. The intermediate mass (after one conversion, i.e. the correct mass) is used for deducing the diameter - so the same results cannot be easily obtained. Clearly a bug! Sebastian --172.68.110.82 13:47, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

"An American football field (where Randall comes from) is 100 yards or 91.44 m long" Please rewrite. I don't think (and I humbly reserve the right to be wrong) that Randall did not come from a football field. OtterlyAmazin (talk) 23:24, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

I attempted a rewrite per your request - hopefully I have addressed the issue without making things worse. Ianrbibtitlht (talk) 01:37, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
I've substituted another explanation - American Football (the game with the field implied to be measured here) is not only played in North America, and Canadioan Football fields, in North America, have different measurements. No doubt someone else will replace my edit in turn.108.162.210.238 03:02, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Should images of the throwers and objects be included? As the comic image is not interactive as the full comic, one cannot see what Randall's version of e.g. Thor or Chris H. looks like, without of visiting the actual comic and using it. Similar things have been done with other interactive comics (IIRC). --Lupo (talk) 06:13, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

I tried to do just that. However, apparently, only special users are allowed to upload files: "Upload error - You do not have permission to create new pages." An uploaded image file seems to count as a "page" for MediaWiki. I prepared a 7zip file with all of this comic's thrower/item images from xkcd, already properly renamed. It's available for download here. In case some mighty editor comes along and would want to upload the images and insert them on this page, please feel free to do so. --Passerby (talk) 20:20, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Could somebody figure out the equation he's using from the book and post it in the explanation? --Account (talk) 14:57, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Instead of Carly Rae Jepsen, he should have used Kelsey Plum who throws t-shirts like a cannon! [1] Rtanenbaum (talk) 15:16, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Used Formulas:

g = 9.805;

A = (3 * thrower_length * thrower_throwPower * thrower_mass / (object_mass + thrower_mass / 1000))^(1 / 3);

B = sqrt(2 * object_mass * g / (PI * (object_diameter / 2)^2 * 1.2041 * object_dragC));

Result = A^2 * sqrt(2) / (g * sqrt(A^4 / B^4 * 0.8 + A^2 / B^2 * 3 + 2));

Sebastian --172.68.110.64 15:39, 4 September 2019 (UTC), slightly corrected on --172.68.110.64 21:37, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

1,2041 is in units of kg/m³ and is the density of air at sea level; both A and B are in units of speed m/s; throwPower is in m²/s³, or equivalently in m/s * N/kg. Sebastian --172.68.110.82 21:22, 4 September 2019 (UTC)


I posted this yesterday but it didn't "take." The alternative distance-units used are entirely a function of the distance thrown in meters: light-nanoseconds (1.00-1.06m), atto-parsecs (1.07-2.69m), rack units (2.70-6.67m), feet (6.68-16m), smoots (16-36m), horses (36-75m), manhattan blocks (75-131m), football fields (132-201m), furlongs (201m+). It's not true that only Thor uses furlongs; a sufficiently large and athletic custom thrower can throw a javelin 206 furlongs. To get light-nanometers, trying having a minimally-athletic "You" 0.2m tall and 129kg throw a gold brick. -Jojo (talk) 18:44, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Er, I meant "to get light-nanoseconds." (It's my first post. Obviously I had to make a mistake.) --Jojo (talk) 18:48, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Should the hotlinking/embedding image at https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/throw.png be referencd somehow? Kyuuhachi (talk) 20:17, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Re: Mjolnir, an enchanted hammer in Marvel comics? Does this reference take priority over the Norse myths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mj%C3%B6lnir

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