Talk:2737: Weather Station

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 13:02, 15 February 2023 by Xkcdjerry (talk | contribs) (added comment)
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I'm not sure if the comment about the spinning speed in the explanation section is needed, still, added it for clarity. Feel free to remove it if it seems out of place. Xkcdjerry (talk) 07:13, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Totally needed. -- Hkmaly (talk) 22:14, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
It's what Randall would have done Boatster (talk) 22:28, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Wheeeeeeeeeeeee! Mushrooms (talk) 10:57, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

It would be great if the explanation also offered a comparison between Cueball's arm speed and the wind speed of most tornadoes, as knowing the speed that Cueball's spinning it at in a bid to make it think there's a tornado doesn't mean much if one doesn't know how fast tornadoes also go. --172.71.242.191 13:46, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

FYI the rain gauge in Borrowdale, Cumbria, England - reputedly the wettest place in England - is set into a wall at thigh-height, with a collecting spout. A local farmer told me that as a boy, the gauge was between the school bus drop-off and the farm, so he and his brothers used to regularly top it up by taking a p1ss....distorting weather records has a long history! 15:34, 14 February 2023 (UTC)172.71.178.187 15:34, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

And wait until chinese weather balloons come into play ;-) --162.158.129.139 17:59, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
They don't. That's the point of shooting them down. -- Hkmaly (talk) 22:14, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
I haven't been watching Chinese weather reports, but have they been reporting that the weather over North America is explosive? Barmar (talk) 22:17, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
Another note to user "No idea if there's a character limit..."

We don't put that there. It is already below the comic. The Transcript is for things not otherwise in (non-graphical) text form, i.e. to describe only what is drawn/scrawled in the image itself. Discussions about this can be found in the Community Portal and maybe elsewhere, and you'll see that very few (if any, and ought to be none) articles have this repeated in the Transcript, reflecting the current community consensus/practice/habit. HTH, HAND. (See prior comic's Discussion, as well. I wrote something about this, and other things, also in that spot. Won't repeat it, as it got longer than intended and confused other people.) 141.101.98.189 01:02, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

No WAY "ten turns per second" is in a reasonable limit for a person. That's insanely fast! --Mushrooms (talk) 07:56, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, my bad :( should have made it clear that it meant something along hitting it with a hand to get it turning and not the hand rotating with it (which I agree would be ridiculous), any idea how to clarify that without making the paragraph too long? Xkcdjerry (talk) 08:33, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
Afterthought: I tested the 10 r/s with a ruler, a aero-whatsit would probably have less friction from the bearings but much more air resistance so it might not be easy to get it up to speed. However I do not have the means to test *that* scenario. And I'll be ever so grateful if someone with the means would check if it can be done. If it can't the last sentence would be better off as something like "This speed is not acheveable by hand but can be reached by whatever" Xkcdjerry (talk) 08:51, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
For the record, the top speed reached by a ping-pong ball (which should be a bit above the top speed of a human arm dut to the bit of length added by the racket) is 112.6km/h. So a bit less than what's needed for the minimum speed quoted. 172.71.122.227 11:46, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
Turning manually runs quickly into drag — cube of speed — so it is unlikely that high rotational speeds can be achieved.

172.71.222.76 12:27, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Using the drag equasion from google, a speed of 16m/s per the article, a drag coefficant of 0.38 when the air is blowing at the rounded side and human power 600W (10W/kg times an average-if-a-bit-low 60 kg) gives an estmate of max r of ~43cm (which means it measures ~3 foot across), it's a rough calcuation but it should suggest that power itself shouldn't be an issue. The problem is how fast we can get the power flowing from the arm into the object.