Things you always wanted to know the answer to [Vol. 5]

[StevieBee]

audi321 said:

Ok I’ll bite. Who on earth pays to get their wheelie bins cleaned!

We used to until we started having a separate food waste collection. Nothing goes in the other bins that causes a stink and just give the food waste bin a swirl with a bit of bleach after collection day.

[audi321]

I understand steam powered things to generate power, and to me as a layman, I assume nuclear power is similar? I.e instead of burning something, the nuclear reaction generates the heat, then the power is generated in a similar way to burning something?

So if a nuclear submarine just gets its power from heat/steam from a nuclear reaction heating water up, what happens to that steam (ie it doesn’t exhaust from the sub does it?)

[Trustmeimadoctor]

stolen from howstuffworks.com

Within the nuclear reactor, a neutron is used to split an atom of uranium, producing energy in the form of gamma radiation and heat. A coil filled with circulating water is superheated as it's routed past the reactor. This water is under extremely high pressure, which prevents it from boiling. Inside self-contained piping, the water is directed through a secondary source of water, where it's heated again. Here, the water is converted to steam and is piped toward the turbine that generates power for the submarine. The steam is condensed again in special cooling tubes, and the resulting water flows back into the steam generator. Inside the generator, it's reheated and the process repeats. This method requires no oxygen, so the submarine doesn't need to maintain or refresh a supply of air from above the surface.

[stemll]

audi321 said:

I understand steam powered things to generate power, and to me as a layman, I assume nuclear power is similar? I.e instead of burning something, the nuclear reaction generates the heat, then the power is generated in a similar way to burning something?

So if a nuclear submarine just gets its power from heat/steam from a nuclear reaction heating water up, what happens to that steam (ie it doesn’t exhaust from the sub does it?)

It's condensed back to water and goes around again

[RizzoTheRat]

And of course you can't turn it off, which is why diesel electric are stealthier than nuclear subs.

[Halmyre]

StevieBee said:

audi321 said:

Ok I’ll bite. Who on earth pays to get their wheelie bins cleaned!

We used to until we started having a separate food waste collection. Nothing goes in the other bins that causes a stink and just give the food waste bin a swirl with a bit of bleach after collection day.

Our food waste is bagged and goes in the garden waste bin. Never had any issues, the inside of the bin sometimes gets lined with dried grass clippings but eventually it all flakes off. The day I see a grizzly bear rooting through the bins, I might change my mind.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

Halmyre said:

Our food waste is bagged and goes in the garden waste bin. Never had any issues, the inside of the bin sometimes gets lined with dried grass clippings but eventually it all flakes off. The day I see a grizzly bear rooting through the bins, I might change my mind.

Different Councils have different rules. For example, I'm not allowed to put windfall apples in my Garden Waste bin as it is classed as "food waste" and must therefore go in the General Waste bin (as we do not have Food Waste bins).

Obviously I always bag food waste. However, this doesn't always prevent the occurrence of 'disco rice'.

[Error_404_Username_not_found]

We had a Polish fellow turn up one day and offer to pressure wash the wheelie bins for £2 a time. But I had a cunning plan.
I bought a pressure washer for only £300! And it only uses about £5 of petrol an hour!
Well, it made sense to me.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

stemll said:

It's condensed back to water and goes around again

Indeed. It's a closed loop system.

[audi321]

Clockwork Cupcake said:

stemll said:

It's condensed back to water and goes around again

Indeed. It's a closed loop system.

Thanks. So a quick follow on question then. Why don’t they do this for normal power stations then instead of going to the effort of building huge cooling towers? They’d save money too by recycling the water?

[loquacious]

Multi-lingual people, what language do they 'think' in? Do they transpose into their 'mother' tongue mentally before they speak or...

[CivicDuties]

loquacious said:

Multi-lingual people, what language do they 'think' in? Do they transpose into their 'mother' tongue mentally before they speak or...

I speak 5 languages, to differing standards, only one of which is a mother tongue - I am not bi-lingual through upbringing. I learnt the other 4 throughout my education. I find that the answer is "it depends". If I'm spending time in a country where I speak the language I start out mainly "thinking in English", but without really noticing it begin to think in the foreign language after a fairly short time, particularly the languages I'm more fluent in.

I do sometimes dream in foreign, but not often.

My missus is an immigrant, she left home nearly 30 years ago and has been speaking English on a daily basis ever since. She has 2 languages, her native one and English. A few years ago she realised she was actually losing her native language, and really struggled to think in it at all. Fortunately I speak that language so we've started conversing a bit at home in it, and she's taken to watching TV shows in it on YouTube on a daily basis, just to keep her mind sharp to it. It's "use it or lose it" with languages.

Edited by CivicDuties on Monday 20th November 16:38

[AstonZagato]

CivicDuties said:

loquacious said:

Multi-lingual people, what language do they 'think' in? Do they transpose into their 'mother' tongue mentally before they speak or...

I speak 5 languages, to differing standards, only one of which is a mother tongue - I am not bi-lingual through upbringing. I learnt the other 4 throughout my education. I find that the answer is "it depends". If I'm spending time in a country where I speak the language I start out mainly "thinking in English", but without really noticing it begin to think in the foreign language after a fairly short time, particularly the languages I'm more fluent in.

I do sometimes dream in foreign, but not often.

My father read Modern Languages at university and lived for a year in France. He thought he was truly fluent once he began dreaming in French.

I lived for a couple of years in Germany, learning the language from scratch. At first, I translated everything back into English in my head (or formulated what I wanted to say in English before translating it into German). After a while I began to skip that process and I would register and understand the German without any translation. Sometimes a colleague would ask me how to say something in English and I'd struggle. Strange.

The oddest moment was in Paris. I'd done A level French and was reasonably proficient. A chap came up to me and asked (in French) for directions. I understood perfectly and carefully explained how to get there in my best French. He looked at me oddly. My colleague asked why I'd answered in German. I genuinely thought I was speaking French. Obviously my brain had a "speak foreign" setting that now defaulted to German without me knowing.

[21st Century Man]

My late Aunt could never grasp the concept of foreign languages and why people spoke foreign? She actually thought that they thought in English and they converted it into foreign as they spoke it out, so she didn't really see the point of foreign, why not just speak it as they thought it in their head?

[Nethybridge]

audi321 said:

Thanks. So a quick follow on question then. Why don’t they do this for normal power stations then instead of going to the effort of building huge cooling towers? They’d save money too by recycling the water?

As a guess I'd say that using the same steam/water
repeatedly would invite contamination and
lead to corrosion and undue wear on delicate and
expensive surfaces like, steam nozzles, turbine vanes, so cheap, abundant, clean water
is much preferable.

Just think of using the same oil in your car for 100000 miles.

I did read that in the 1930s energy companies in the US experimented
with using Mercury instead of water as the propellant, with mercury having a higher
boiling point it was thought it would be vastly more efficient, I'm
thinking the very likely dangers of mercury poisoning caused this idea
to be dropped.

Edited by Nethybridge on Monday 20th November 17:55

Edited by Nethybridge on Monday 20th November 17:56

[skwdenyer]

21st Century Man said:

My late Aunt could never grasp the concept of foreign languages and why people spoke foreign? She actually thought that they thought in English and they converted it into foreign as they spoke it out, so she didn't really see the point of foreign, why not just speak it as they thought it in their head?

As the (doubtless apocryphal) story goes about a speech in the Texas state legislature in the 19th century on the topic of teaching Spanish in Texan schools, “if English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for the children of Texas…”

[FiF]

"

Nethybridge said:

audi321 said:

Thanks. So a quick follow on question then. Why don’t they do this for normal power stations then instead of going to the effort of building huge cooling towers? They’d save money too by recycling the water?

As a guess I'd say that using the same steam/water
repeatedly would invite contamination and
lead to corrosion and undue wear on delicate and
expensive surfaces like, steam nozzles, turbine vanes, so cheap, abundant, clean water
is much preferable.

Just think of using the same oil in your car for 100000 miles.

I did read that in the 1930s energy companies in the US experimented
with using Mercury instead of water as the propellant, with mercury having a higher
boiling point it was thought it would be vastly more efficient, I'm
thinking the very likely dangers of mercury poisoning caused this idea
to be dropped.

Edited by Nethybridge on Monday 20th November 17:55

Edited by Nethybridge on Monday 20th November 17:56

The water in the steam circuit is demineralised water. After the turbines in order to increase efficiency the water is cooled to extract as much energy as possible and finally passes through condensers which are cooled by water typically pumped from rivers or even seawater on occasions. In condensing steam to liquid water a vast amount of latent energy is taken up by the river cooling water, and this itself has to be cooled before it's returned to the river. It's this cooling water which is sprayed into the cooling towers and not the steam circuit water.

Extremely simplified diagram

[Abbott]

loquacious said:

Multi-lingual people, what language do they 'think' in? Do they transpose into their 'mother' tongue mentally before they speak or...

My late father in law, a modern languages teacher, used to say "You know when you have a language to a good level when you can have a conversation at a dinner table and eavesdrop on another table in a different language"

[Pit Pony]

Brother D said:

Been far too long since engineering stats class and 5 beers in. Question:



Sent to family text thread, and I said I'd do 50:50 for the $50m. Wife said "I'd do 50:50 as well so we'd deffo get it"
But pretty sure it wouldn't be the case. Would it be 3 out of 4 that we as a couple would win?

With things like this I picture it as a dice throw. One roll.
If you get 2, 4 or 6, you have a 1 in 2 chance of winning.
If she rolls the same. The same. 50% unfortunately you can't add them as they are independent, throws.
Urika just came to me
It's an And/or gate.

It's the probability of one plus the probability of both.
So 0.5 + (0.5x0.5) = 0.75 (75%)

With 3 people it would be

0.5+(0.5×0.5)+(0.5×0.5×0.5) = 0.875 (87%)

I think.

Would I risk £1million ? No.

[Pit Pony]

Halmyre said:

StevieBee said:

audi321 said:

Ok I’ll bite. Who on earth pays to get their wheelie bins cleaned!

We used to until we started having a separate food waste collection. Nothing goes in the other bins that causes a stink and just give the food waste bin a swirl with a bit of bleach after collection day.

Our food waste is bagged and goes in the garden waste bin. Never had any issues, the inside of the bin sometimes gets lined with dried grass clippings but eventually it all flakes off. The day I see a grizzly bear rooting through the bins, I might change my mind.

We used to have a small food waste bin, but after the bin man smashed our third one, I gave up.

Rotten apples, found in the garden go in the garden waste, along with any thing wood (branches or old pine furniture). It will rot eventually. And dead flowers and weeds and grass cuttings.

On the subject of food waste bins, my daughter reminds me that 20 years ago. I never gave her guinea pigs a proper burial, and that the food waste bin was probably not the appropriate send off. Ah well shame.