Talk:1862: Particle Properties

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 20:35, 13 July 2017 by WhiteDragon (talk | contribs) (comment about Kg)
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oh dear, they copied the alt text wrong 173.245.50.108 14:58, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

More significantly, color charge is carried by gluons as well as quarks. Mjackson (talk) 15:19, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

As suggested by Zach Weinersmith ("For a joke: If you put pure alcohol under extreme pressure, could you claim to exceed 200 proof?"), it's kind of confusing that the comic suggests alcohol proof can exceed 200 proof, and also that baseball batting averages can exceed 100%. Although on further review, they use the arrow-dot →∙ notation rather than the dot-arrow ∙→, so maybe it's not intended to indicate a lack of an upper bound. But then I'm not sure what it does indicate, esp. compared to the Electric Charge property. Continuous vs. discrete? It doesn't seem clear… JohnHawkinson (talk) 15:41, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Proof is presumably US proof - UK usage based on gunpowder 175 degrees proof would be 100% alcohol

Batting average is presumably from baseball Cricket batting averages are measured in runs per dismissal and are in theory unbounded. It is possible to have an infinite average for a season or series - though in terms of lifetime averages the best for players with more than ten matches is 99.96.

If it is for baseball, it's labeled incorrectly. A perfect batting average is 1.000, not 100%. Batting average is actually a ratio - number of hits to number of at-bats - expressed as a decimal, not a percentage. For example, if a batter goes 3 for 5 in a game, his batting average would be .600, not 60%. OldCorps (talk) 16:25, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

We should probably arrange descriptions into a table.


How is it that there's no pain scale?

Because Randall didn't think -- or possibly want -- to use it. Besides, do you really want every scale in existence in a single comic? If not, Randall has to select based on his own criteria, whatever they may be. As it is, there are 9 or 10 (depending on how you count "entropy") fields that don't apply to particle properties, as opposed to 5 or 6 that do. Gotta stop somewhere. Nyperold (talk) 22:44, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
He could also have added the Volume scale, which would, of course, have been between 0 and 11.141.101.107.66 13:20, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Actually, D&D calls you "dead" if you go to your NEGATIVE hit point maximum. Otherwise, you make a completely random (50%) death saving throw. After 3 cumulative fails, you die. After 3 cumulative successes, you are stable. More info can be found in the Player's Handbook. SilverMagpie (talk) 21:33, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

According to the rules I know (Editions 3, 3.5 and Pathfinder) it's: 0 HP = unconscious; [-1; -CON) = dying (-> lose 1 HP each round unless you make a successful CON check); -CON = dead. http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/conditions/#TOC-Dead Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 10:15, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

"Heat" measured in jalapeño has also been used by some email systems such as Eudora to measure how strong an email message is (e.g., whether it will lead to a flame war) 198.41.238.46 05:02, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

"String Type" being ByteString-CharString is a reference to Haskell, the programming language referenced in 1312: Haskell and used to make 1037: Umlaut, which is structurally obsessed with data types. ByteString is the go-to type for dynamic text, which in more literal form unpacks to a String of [Char]s. 108.162.246.65 08:41, 13 July 2017 (UTC)


The lower case g in Kg looks odd. I thought it was a strangely shaped 's'. WhiteDragon (talk) 20:35, 13 July 2017 (UTC)