[spam][wrong][crazy] Designing an Automated Prison

Undiscussed Horrific Abuse, One Victim of Many gmkarl at gmail.com
Fri Apr 1 13:55:27 PDT 2022


OT:

Answers to questions on xkcd.com:

"Why am I me and not somebody else?"

- Because the word "I" refers to the speaker.  Because your consciousness
is held by your brain, which holds memories of the experiences your body
has lived through. Because your parents had sex. And because your spirit
chose your fetus to enter.

"Have you recently been the victim of phishing? To check, log into your
account <link>."

- Yes.

"Hi, we're lonely singles from your area, and we were wondering what would
happen if we shot a nuclear bomb into a volcano! Click <link> to log in and
tell us"

- Please settle your outstanding invoice of $100,000 with us at <link for
human beings> or <link for autonomous computer systems> before we begin
this next phase.

"What if I made a pendulum by hanging a rock on a 2.75 meter string? What
would its period be in seconds? (Show your work!)

- I will draft the work, then clean it up if I finish.

diagonal = 2.75 m.
  huh periods are independent of angle! who would have guessed.
ok how long does stuff take when it happens.
it will undergo acceleration due to gravity. that makes a force downward.
the net velocity is tangent to the string. I guess the net acceleration is
too
so the force from the string counters the component of gravity parallel to
it.
uhhhhhhhh diagonal line going up-left
diagonal line going down-right
down-right is component of down.

confused!
ignore net force/velocity. reduce confusion.

a diagonal is made of a horizontal and a vertical. a vertical is made of a
diagonal and a perpendicular. that's where the tangent line comes in!
so if we take a diagonal normal out of a vertical, we get a diagonal
tangent remaining.

ok there's gonna be a trigonometric function somewhere in this net force
stuff.

the string is at angle theta.
with... the vertical I suppose?
then there will be another angle theta with gravity and the string.
so uhhhhh let's imagine theta as small. acute.
ummmm the force of gravity is the uhhh.
it's the vertical bit. and theta is where?
it's at both ends of the string.
gravity goes down, string goes up-left, gravity component opposing string
goes down-right. I think? maybe?

so then the angle is again in the upper left of a triangle. the 90 degree
angle is ... in the lower left?
the hypotenuse is the string tension
the vertical ... the adjacent! maybe? is then gravity.
so gravity is ummmmm the cosine of the tension?
and the tension would be the inverse cosine of gravity?
then there's some x component?

man so much stuff to imagine.

how can I rotate it so that gravity is what's diagonal.
ummm the string would be the adjacent
and gravity would be the hypotenuse
then the tangent would be the opposite

so the tangent force would be the ... oh no we shouldn't have taken the
cosine of the tension. that's ridiculous.
the cosine of the angle was the gravity over the tension.

now, the cosine of the angle is the tension over the gravity ... oh no that
can't be right ...

the angle is with the vertical 0_0

uhhhh

ok a little pendulum, a rock.
arrow goes down. gravity.
arrow goes diagonal down-right. string component of gravity
theta sign between the two.

when say "component" , I mean I am projecting a line onto two axes that are
neither colinear with it.

the component will always be smaller than the original.

so this diagonal, this is not a hypotenuse which would be larger and
doesn't represent an orthogonal projection from the axes, quite.

the hypotenuse is gravity.
theta is the upper angle.
the string is the adjacent.
and the tangent is the opposite.

so the force of rotation of the pendulum about its fulcrum will be uhhhh
sin(theta) * gravity
maybe?

now, how long does it take to reach the zero point, or zero speed, or get
back where it started?

ummmmmmmmmm

well it's expressed in terms of force. it has some mass so we can calculate
acceleration.

to turn acceleration into position we integrate twice.

double integral: sin(theta) * gravity dt dt

umm gravity is constant.
is this an integral of sin(x(t)) or just an integral of sin(x)? i'm not
sure.

maybe I am all confused. high school physics can be hard.

x(t) ?

theta is clearly a function of time. is this how to express this ? should
it be expressed some other way?

oh theta _is_ x! we can express the position of the pendulum in terms of
its angle.

why does that matter? I guess I did a lot of this kind of integral?

we're integrating theta with respect to t ... there is something here I am
missing ...

uhhh i'll recognise it if I do an easier integral .

basic remembering of integrals.

say velocity is constant.
then x = vt
I think?

say acceleration is constant
then v = at

find x!
x = 1/2 at^2 . why? we integrated at with respect to t.
v transformed into x.

ok um
but now theta is in the expression.

ummmm
anyway it was cool to find this! it has a small chance of correctness.
small: sin(theta) * gravity.
what is this an expression for? uhh this is the net force of gravity on the
stone I think, could be wrong.

ok so we have force as a function of angle.
we're interested in angle as a function of time, or such.

we can also consider theta_0, an initial starting angle ...

continued on second page, sorry for not stapling.

[i'm interested in the pendulum problem more than the xkcd question
answering. it seems more rational and productive.]
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