Most desired Sci-Fi Invention

[Gatac]

Your explanation is clear, but lacks local color.

Gatac

[Nate the Great]

If you can add sand to drinking water, then I'm not going to the right parties.

I think we've got the "seethroughability" range pinned down to transparent and opaque, but I'm not sure that transparent=clear.

What color is "water-white" supposed to be? I've seen "clear" water, white cloudy water, red water, and so on.

As long as we're off-topic, how many people prefer a certain amount of "hardness" in their drinking water? I was raised in a house that used well water. We needed a water softener for the washing machine and so on, but the stuff coming out of the taps was all natural. The Mississippi River was literally across the street. I was raised on "rust water" and like it, within reason. To this day I find that nothing can quench my thirst like ice-cold, rock-hard water.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

I think we've got the "seethroughability" range pinned down to transparent and opaque, but I'm not sure that transparent=clear.

I've got an M.Sc. in Chemistry that says it does. Plain water is clear and colourless. Kool-Aid is clear and coloured.

What color is "water-white" supposed to be?

Colourless. There's a reason it's not used anymore.

[Nate the Great]

I think we're getting to the point where the "most desired scifi invention" is a universal translator/dictionary/Encyclopedia Galactica/etc. that contains a unified set of terms.

You say "Master's of Science" as M.Sc.? Never saw that one before. Around here, it's either M.S. for master of science or M.(abbreviation of the major)
When I finally go back to grad school, I'll be going for M.C.E.

[Nate the Great]

I think we're getting to the point where the "most desired scifi invention" is a universal translator/dictionary/Encyclopedia Galactica/etc. that contains a unified set of terms.

You say "Master's of Science" as M.Sc.? Never saw that one before. Around here, it's either M.S. for master of science or M.(abbreviation of the major)

[Sa'ar Chasm]

I think we're getting to the point where the "most desired scifi invention" is a universal translator/dictionary/Encyclopedia Galactica/etc. that contains a unified set of terms.

We already have that. It's called IUPAC (the Internation Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry).

You say "Master's of Science" as M.Sc.? Never saw that one before. Around here, it's either M.S. for master of science or M.(abbreviation of the major)

Actually, the front page of my thesis said "Master of Science". I had to check it against somebody else's thesis to make sure.

[Nate the Great]

Uh, that's not universal yet, or else we'd have km/hr on our speed limit signs. Plus I hear the Alpha Centurians are miffed at our presumption.

[Chancellor Valium]

We use the same abbreviations for science degrees over here.

Oh, and as I understand it, metric is used universally by scientists.

[Starpaul20]

I would love a Transporter, but I'll be happy with a laser.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

Uh, that's not universal yet, or else we'd have km/hr on our speed limit signs.

We do. It's not my fault you live in an abberrant region.

Scientists have put a lot of effort into standard, universal definitions of things, so that everyone knows what everyone else is talking about when someone uses a term. It's also not my fault you haven't read them.

[Nate the Great]

I suppose you'd want the sharks to attach them to, as well. Oh, and I thought we already had lasers, just not Captain Proton-worthy ones.

I'm an engineer, not a scientist! And as we all know, engineers always break the rules.

As I understand it, Americans are proud of being abberant, and also proud of continually trying to rewrite the world so that we'd no longer be abberant. Just look at the proliferation of our money, language, culture, yada yada.

[MaverickZer0]

Metric is metric and sense. Water should freeze at zero, units should be in tens and hundreds. Water freezing at 32 or whatever doesn't make much sense. Then 0 is way below the freezing point and there's no point of having a zero if it's not doing anything special.

Don't get me wrong, I use imperial for height and stuff though I know I shouldn't. But metric makes more sense, and damn you Americans for shoving otherwise on us. You and your...coffee.

[Nate the Great]

If you can believe Isaac Asimov's scientific essays (and I do), this is an abbreviated, as-factual-as-I-can-recall story of the zero point on the Farenheit scale:

One day a scientist made a new kind of thermometer. Whether he invented the modern mercury thermometer or not is beside the point. To create gradations he decided to set zero as the coldest temperature that he could create in a lab. This turned out to be a slush of salt and snow. He plunked in his termometer and marked off zero. As for thirty-two and two-twelve, he decided to show off by separating the range between ice freezing and boiling into a hundred and eighty degrees. This is because the predominating scale at the time had only eighteen "degrees" in it because of the crudeness of previous thermometers. He wanted to show off and say that his thermometer was ten times as accurate. Using this range of numbers and the current zero, we get thirty-two and two-twelve.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

That's a nice story, but his methods were unscientific. Nobody else can replicate or calibrate a similar thermometer, which makes it useless as a scientific instrument.

The story I heard in one of my chem classes was that 0 was "an average winter's day in Vienna", Fahrenheit being Austrian, and 100 was his body temperature (he must have been running a fever that day, given that healathy human body temperature is 98.6 F). Given the fact that he's been dead for a century and a half and global warming has ensured that winter in Vienna now is not the same as winter in Vienna in the mid nineteenth century, we still can't replicate either of these reference points.

[Derek]

Originally Posted by MaverickZer0

Water should freeze at zero,

Using that logic, all liquids should freeze at zero.

units should be in tens and hundreds.

Which is true of all base-10 measuring systems. And even taking you at your meaning, Fahrenheit isn't exactly like distances which have inches, feet, yards, and miles, with non-base-10 conversions between them. There's only one unit.

Water freezing at 32 or whatever doesn't make much sense.

Why is water special? Why does it make sense that ethanol freezes at -114.3 °C instead of -173.74 °F?

Then 0 is way below the freezing point and there's no point of having a zero if it's not doing anything special.

It's still arbitrary. There's no scientific reason why water should be chosen as the fluid. Why not hydrogen? Or nitrogen? Or mercury? Or gold? Those are elements, not compounds, so you think they might be given priority. Scientifically, it makes sense that absolute zero would be zero.

(Apparently I'm in an argumentative mood today. Ignore me.)

[Nate the Great]

As a Minnesotan I'm a little disquieted that anyone would think that "average winter days" exist, at least in anything approaching a measurable sense. Maybe if you're just talking about raw temperatures.

Water is the base unit because it's the building block of the universe. The number of lifeforms that don't depend on water as a critial element of life is either zero or so close to zero that you might as well round down. Plus it's abundant and we can measure it's properties in repeatable experiments easily.

I'd look up the appropriate Asimov essay and quote passages, but the book's in my attic at the moment. A shame, really.

[Nate the Great]

As a Minnesotan I'm a little disquieted that anyone would think that "average winter days" exist, at least in anything approaching a measurable sense. Maybe if you're just talking about raw temperatures.

Water is the base unit because it's the building block of the universe. The number of lifeforms that don't depend on water as a critial element of life is either zero or so close to zero that you might as well round down. Plus it's abundant and we can measure it's properties in repeatable experiments easily.

I'd look up the appropriate Asimov essay and quote passages, but the book's in my attic at the moment. A shame, really. Looking back at my previous story, I can already tell that there are holes in it.

[Derek]

Originally Posted by Infinite Improbability

Water is the base unit because it's the building block of the universe.

No, it isn't. It's a building block of Life, but not the Universe, and not everything.

Plus it's abundant and we can measure it's properties in repeatable experiments easily.

Many elements and compounds are abundant, and all are repeatable. Why water?

[Nate the Great]

Okay, but as it is Life that's calibrating the thermometers. I don't really see The Universe or Everything doing that stuff, do you?

I just noticed that the thread has a five-star rating. Even if that's the result of only one review, I appreciate the sentiment.

Not all experiments dealing with liquids and phase changes are equally easy to repeat. For example, for compounds with longer melting and boiling ranges, where do you cut off melting and boiling temperatures? The midpoint, the solid end of the scale, what? Early scientists had to deal with these questions.

Oh, and water is easy to get, easy to purify, easy to recover from a gaseous state, and so on. Think about it. Gold is more abundant than certain other metals (as I recall), it's just that a lot of it is locked up in low concentrations in water and other sources that require so much energy to extract that at this time it's de facto useless and out of reach.

[Gatac]

While I agree that there's countless vagaries in the Celsius scale (re: boiling point - what about the salt content of your water?), it is easier to reconstruct as it only requires a fairly common substance (water) going through two aggregate changes. If you want a scientifically solid scale, try Kelvin, which is fixed through absolute zero and the triple point of water.

To me, it's not a valid defense of Fahrenheit to say "Celsius is also whack!". Yes, it is, but Fahrenheit is the worse offender, and we should pick the lesser evil instead of wallowing in our temperature scale misery and sticking with what we have because it's all hopeless anyway, which is the vibe I'm getting here...

Gatac