Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science

Lamellar body count

When I was researching sources for the term "body count," I found an article mentioned it in a context of the number of lamellar in a body... or something. None of the dictionaries I have checked have a definition that matches here. It's either the number of dead bodies in an event or number of partners someone has had. What's the definition here? I may need to cite this later in an article improvement discussion.

Also seen here: https://indianjournals.com/article/jer-26-1-004

Thanks in advance! SenshiSun (talk) 03:46, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

The question is not 100% clear to me, but in your first example, lamellar body is linked to its definition - it means the count/number of lamellar bodies. This is similar to your second example: Polyhedral occlusion body counts of naturally disease... - it refers to the the count/number of polyhedral occlusion bodies. I think the definition is covered by count in any standard dictionary. Commander Keane (talk) 07:58, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

The first article linked to also explains that lamellar bodies are lysosomal-like organelles.  ​‑‑Lambiam 10:49, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

I think you are misparsing "lamellar body count". It isn't a body count that is somehow lamellar, it is a count of of lamellar bodies. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:13, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

Disasters beyond Krakatoa in the last Million years.

I was thinking about Planetary Disaster movies like 2012 (film) where we *barely* have enough technology to keep the human race from being wiped out (and thus if the event had happened 100 years earlier, humanity would be gone) and it got me to wonder what the most significant planet level disaster in the last Million years. The Year Without a Summer from Krakatoa and the Volcanic winter of 536 appear to be tracable across continents, but are there other types of disasters that have had world-wide effect or eruptions whose ash level was 10 fold beyond Krakatoa?Naraht (talk) 18:52, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

How about this one: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/human-ancestors-nearly-went-extinct-900-000-years-ago/ --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 19:54, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

Not ten times worse than Krakatau, but the 1783 Laki eruption caused famine on 3 continents. It's mostly known for its sulphur dioxide emission and also fluorine, not ash. It not only affected weather, but also directly poisoned people and livestock throughout Europe.

Also see list of natural disasters by death toll, but most of those are regional. PiusImpavidus (talk) 21:12, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

Quoting Near-Earth supernova: "Gamma ray bursts from "dangerously close" supernova explosions occur two or more times per billion years, and this has been proposed as the cause of the end-Ordovician extinction, which resulted in the death of nearly 60% of the oceanic life on Earth."  ​‑‑Lambiam 22:38, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

It's theorized that the Toba eruption caused a population bottleneck when it erupted about 74,000 years ago. See the Toba catastrophe theory section of the page on the eruption. And I think there's been a Yellowstone eruption in the past million years, so I'd think that would cause massive disruption. Beyond that I'm not sure. Ceratarges-etc (talk) 01:11, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Year Without a Summer was 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora not 1883 eruption of Krakatoa both VEI 6. List of largest volcanic eruptions. fiveby(zero) 03:08, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Not quite global level, but it has been proposed (see for example this) that the pandemic of the Black death in the mid-14th century was set in motion by a volcanic eruption. Supposedly an as-yet-unidentified eruption somewhere in the equatorial region led to three years of bad harvests in Europe, which necessitated greatly increased grain imports from Central Asia, bringing plague-harbouring rats with them. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-76101-8 (talk) 12:40, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

There were probably many in the last million years. Just to mention Yellowstone eruption ~640,000 years ago or Oruanui eruption ~26,400 years ago or Zhamanshin impact. Ruslik_Zero 20:18, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Krakatao is a paltry sum compared with the death toll in the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:29, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

OP here. I know there are some *local* disasters like the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake, but as far as I know there was no effect in Africa or South America from that disaster. I'm less looking at local deaths and more worldwide effects.Naraht (talk) 01:31, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Scale bars on a small-scale map

Two editors (GeogSage and Timeshifter) have insisted on scale indicators on this and similar maps.

As far as I've read, for any projection, the scale must vary across the map as one cannot flatten a sphere. I suppose for a large-scale map such as of a city, the difference is negligible.

For a continent-wide region such as this projection of the USA (ignoring the different scale of Alaska), by roughly how many percent would it vary between extremes?

Thanks, cmɢʟee τaʟκ (please add {{ping|cmglee}} to your reply) 07:18, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

This strongly depends on the specific map projection. The scale distortions can be visualized with Tissot indicatrices. For the Mercator projection has no distortion along the meridians (North–South), but the scale factor along the parallels (East–West) varies with the cosines of their latitudes. From 49° N (border with Canada) to 30° N (New Orleans), the difference between the geometric mean of these cosines is about ± 15%. Other projections divide the pain more equally between the directions of the compass. If I am not mistaken, the map we see here uses the Albers equal-area conic projection, since it is used by the United States Census Bureau. This projection should be much better in this respect. While I have no immediate data, I expect that this will come out at a variation of about ± 8% around the mean in any direction. If the reference latitude and the standard parallels used are known, the formulas in the article can be used to give a more definitive outcome.  ​‑‑Lambiam 10:35, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Maps are two dimensional and the scale in the two dimensions can differ. Horizontal different from vertical, east-west different from north-south, any rotation of those, or radial different from tangential. On angle preserving projections (Mercator), the east-west scale is the same as the north-south scale at every point on the map, but both vary strongly, typically with latitude. On area preserving maps, two directions have a scale varying inversely proportional to each other, giving larger deformations.

Let's for example take the azimuthal parallel projection, which has a fixed scale in the tangential direction, but shrinks in the radial direction when going away from the centre. This radial scale is proportional to the cosine of the angle from the projection centre of the map. On a map centred at Kansas City, the radial scale at San Francisco will be reduced to about 93% of the tangential scale or the radial scale at the centre (the angle Kansas City – centre of Earth – San Francisco is about 0.38 radians), so that's a 7% change. Other projections may give different numbers, but usually on the same order of magnitude. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:15, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Even if you were to provide some kind of more accurate representation of scale such as the one for Mercator in the linear scale article how would it help visualize the data the map is attempting to present? How does the compass rose, the repetition of the title in the subtitle, the large red text disclaimer which draw the eye away from the data? Chartjunk. fiveby(zero) 15:58, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

One could do many things here to improve the map, the immediate problem i see is the use of a two color gradient and inclusion of states without data. I would experiment with a single color gradient, removing the states w/o data or representing them in a completely different method such as hatching. Make the color legend larger and more prominent, perhaps vertical on the left rather than horizontal. Change the range from 10.5-41.1 to start at 0 and maybe go to some meaningful maximum (median or max for world?) Maybe indicate the states with min/max/median on the legend?

I think i'm really unlikely to use this map for navigation or nuclear applications. Would rather you helped me visualize the data. fiveby(zero) 16:20, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

I think maybe you have misread GeogSage's comment. fiveby(zero) 16:34, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Comment: I'm not really sure about the whole context of this conversation here yet, however I want to note a few things:

• In a thematic map, area of the enumeration units is one of the pieces of data that is being given. In a choropleth map, especially one that is showing three different scales/projections, some indication is necessary to contextualize the data.
• Indication of North is important as not all maps are oriented with North at the top, and relying on the user to recognize a geographic area is not a good risk to take. A compass rose offers a very specific benefit when you are discussing a map, not all users know the directions of a compass rose, and including one allows you to reference spatial relationships in the text (Example could be the West coast, or discussing things being East of Colorado) without relying on the user knowing these directions.
• When making maps on Wikipedia, it is important to remember these can be removed from their context and used anywhere online. The most basic cartographic conventions (like essential map elements) should be followed.

GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 01:28, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, everyone, for your replies. Glad to know that it is neither negligible nor uniform. I was indeed reluctant to add not just one, but three scale bars for the main map and two insets, and hope that convinces GeogSage and Timeshifter.

As we've moved on to critiquing the map itself...

@Fiveby: GeogSage also objected to the two-color gradient. I had thought that it would help readers easily distinguish states with high and low values, and identify clusters of similar values. Would a single color with different luma effect this?

I've already greyed out states without data. I think removing them entirely makes the map look discontinuous, especially if most states have no data and are scattered. Hatching is an interesting idea; would it make overlaid text hard to read?

I'd rather put the legend where it is to not take up more horizontal space, causing the map to shrink for the same thumbnail size. Wouldn't starting from 0 make it hard to distinguish values that are close, if the range was, say, 100 to 110? Would the median weight each state the same? It seems unfair to weight, say, Wyoming with 580,000+ population the same as California with 39 million.

Re "chartjunk", I did state that adding an orientation indicator, scale bars, projection and source(s) used clutters up the map, and that the reader is not supposed to measure distances or areas on such maps. Glad someone agrees.

Thanks for your feedback, cmɢʟee τaʟκ (please add {{ping|cmglee}} to your reply) 16:44, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

@Cmglee:, when i look at the map i form an initial impression before i actually understand the way you are trying to present the data. When i take time and examine more closely i do understand. But my initial impression is a "lie" i haven't yet grasped the relationship between the bluish and the redish parts, i assume that all states are part of the dataset and grayed out does not mean they are excluded from the data but that these states are doing very well as to maternal mortality. That initial impression is sometimes hard to overcome, i'm constantly reminded of it every time i glance at the map. It distracts me from your purpose in creating this graphic, what you must be trying to show beyond what could be accomplished with a sortable text table.

I don't really know how best to change that first impression, i'd say that it is an art with some principles which might be applied. Depends on that data and what you are actually trying to accomplish with a spatial or graphical presentation. I would experiment and see.

Most of us are probably very used to seeing maps of the U.S. colored by state: we know the area, we know where we are in relation to the data, the extent of the area and position in the world. But present the same data for example somewhere in central Asia and it might be a different story. In that case you might give me better information as to "scale" by highlighting the extent on a rendering of a sphere with landmasses, and a few political boundaries. Quick locator and idea of scale.

Also, you are not just creating a map here. You are creating a SVG rendered as a web element, amongst other elements. I'm not sure exactly what the wiki software allows within SVG's: links? javascript? Can you for example provide a link where the map says "Source: Center for Disease Control (CDC)" to a source within the article's list of references so i can go find the exact data your using? All sorts of cool stuff you can do with SVG's. The conversation you linked seems to be somewhat about best practices for maps, but you're not creating a paper map here and you might also think of best practices for web pages. Could you for instance have a little icon link, "about this map", which opens a popup or takes you to a separate page which provides additional information which you should be providing under best practices. The projection, list of data sources used, license information, disclaimers etc.? fiveby(zero) 18:04, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

@Fiveby:@GeogSage:@Timeshifter: I've updated the map as above. I would have preferred for the details to be on the file description page, namely, File:Template_map_of_US_states_and_District_of_Columbia.svg but the editors insisted that they should all be on the map in case it's used elsewhere.

Adding links to the SVG is trivial. However, most readers won't see the SVG directly but instead the PNG thumbnail. Though one can make it an image map, that requires editors adding them to articles to know how to do that. Instead, there's the two-rectangle icon on the bottom right of thumbnails that link to the file description page, exactly where I suggested putting all the info. cmɢʟee τaʟκ (please add {{ping|cmglee}} to your reply) 03:19, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

The compass rose is somewhat misleading. The North direction varies across the map. The Utah–Nevada border is a north-south line along the 114°W meridian but is skewed on this map. Only somewhat to the right of the middle, like at the Missouri-Oklahoma border, is North straight up.  ​‑‑Lambiam 07:50, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Excellent point, Lambiam; thanks. I should've observed the straight edges of, say, Oregon and Pennsylvania! @GeogSage: and @Timeshifter: how would you resolve this? What's the best practice in cartography? cmɢʟee τaʟκ (please add {{ping|cmglee}} to your reply) 10:53, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Ideally, we could use a graticule or grid, but on thematic maps those get a lot of push back. On a map showing a large region like the U.S. it isn't as big a deal, but a general indication of North is important, and including the other directions makes discussing the map in text or speech smoother. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 15:25, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

@Cmglee: Could move the legend down some, and put the compass rose below Louisiana. Google AI says: "Yes, Ohio has a straight north-south line forming its border with Indiana (except for a small northern section) and another for most of its eastern boundary with Pennsylvania, known as the Ellicott Line. The border with Indiana runs directly north from the Great Miami River." Now I see how the 2-D map was unfolded from the round earth. Compass rose could be made a little bit smaller if necessary. --Timeshifter (talk) 12:38, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

@Cmglee:, you might enjoy John Nelson's discussion in "Put a North Arrow On That Map?" video. The current version i think is much clearer, especially the presentation of N/A states. You might consider muting some of the elements with grayscale colors. One criticism i have is that you have not set a width and height for the SVG, as the container size gets larger it seems to me that the state labels become bolder and my eye focuses on them rather than data you're trying to present. I think that is a harder problem to solve for an SVG which is intended to be displayed at varying sizes. Would require CSS or JS to mute the color or reduce the size of the font as the container gets larger. Please take all the criticism tho as feedback and suggestions, good work. fiveby(zero) 13:58, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Galileo thermometer floating mid-way

Recently, a certain individual I decline further to characterize made a comment about ships "floating at the bottom of the sea". This brought some derision in a Facebook group I follow, but it made me think about the Galileo thermometer, in which individual temperature buoys can sometimes apparently find an equilibrium where they are floating somewhere in the column, neither at the top nor the bottom.

I had always figured this happened because liquids are not quite incompressible, so the density of the liquid will increase as you go down the column, and therefore you can sometimes find a spot where the liquid displaced has the same weight as the buoy, whereas above that point it would weigh less, and below it it would weigh more.

But I started thinking about it and realized that could happen only if, roughly speaking, the bulk modulus of the liquid were less than that of the buoy, and that seemed a little unlikely. Or does it? My intuition was being triggered by the fact that the buoy has air inside, and I thought of the walls compressing the air like a balloon. But maybe glass doesn't behave that way? Or maybe the alcohol–water medium just has a low bulk modulus?

Anyone know more? --Trovatore (talk) 20:37, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

In this situation in a thermometer, the floater could actually be very slowly moving and you don't notice. There could also be temperature and salinity gradients affecting the density in a water column in the ocean. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:37, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

It's conceivable it could be just moving too slowly to detect, I suppose. I don't think that's what's happening, largely because this situation arises a lot, and it would seem to require the density to be very delicately balanced. But I haven't tried to do any quantitative analysis. Are you aware of anyone who has tried to distinguish between the two explanations? --Trovatore (talk) 22:30, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

this guy wrote down some numbers. Have no idea if they are meaningful. fiveby(zero) 23:43, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

The individual glass vessels are somewhat deformable and contain gas. They will become ever so slightly rounder under pressure. This means the volume decreases and so their density increases with pressure. I expect that this effect is much larger than that of the varying water density. This actually works against a stable equilibrium at any height level, leaving a temperature gradient, with the temperature increasing with height, as the most plausible explanation of observed stability.  ​‑‑Lambiam 07:29, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Trovatore, your assumption of the density changing with temperature is correct (it even works with incompressible fluids), and is mathematically described in the article Boussinesq_approximation_(buoyancy). Rmvandijk (talk) 12:16, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

When heating or cooling happens by conduction through the glass wall of the thermometer, one expects a slight temperature gradient, the top being warmer. Warm fluid rises along the wall to the top, cold fluid sinks in the centre.

BTW, the bulk modulus of a submarine is typically less than that of sea water, so they are, like we expect for the glass spheres, unstable in depth. PiusImpavidus (talk) 17:18, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Transitional Fossils

Evolution

Second Law of Thermodynamics vs. Evolution

Pieces of World Cup trophy falling back to Earth

I just saw on a YouTube video that the background story to the 1994 video game Soccer Kid says that the alien pirate Scab tried to steal the World Cup trophy by pulling it from Earth to his spaceship but the trophy hit a passing asteroid on the way and smashed into pieces. The pieces then fell back to Earth.

This struck me as wrong. Assuming the asteroid is far away from Earth not to crash into it, shouldn't the pieces have fallen down on the asteroid as it was the dominating body of mass where the trophy was smashed? JIP | Talk 01:33, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

That would depend on the mass of the asteroid as well as the force with which it smashed into the cup. If it was a massive asteroid at slow speed then the cup pieces would settle on the asteroid, but that is impossible. The pieces would either fly off into space or fall to earth. Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:32, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

At typical interplanetary speeds of a few tens of kilometres per second before the collision, the pieces (if the trophy wasn't vaporised) would most likey move much faster than the escape velocity of the asteroid (no more than a few meters per second). The pieces would end up in heliocentric orbit, but they might hit Earth again in the future. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:27, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It also strikes me as wrong that the disappearance of a World Cup trophy was not a major news item at the time, and also that alien pirates would be interested in such trinkets as World Cup trophies. Surely, this is a projection of base human traits on unsuspecting aliens, so we need to invoke the doctrine of artistic licence. Restricting ourselves to physics as we know it, even a tiny asteroid, with a mass comparable to that of the trophy, will almost certainly have enough kinetic energy to smash it, if not into oblivion, then to smithereens. Surely, even if the asteroid was quite massive, their velocities will now be much higher than the escape velocity, so they will not be captured by the asteroid. If the asteroid was in an orbit around the Sun – a reasonable assumption – a relatively large amount of its momentum, tangential to the orbit and probably directed away from Earth, is transferred to the pieces, which, it seems in the narrative, were already moving away from Earth before the collision occurred and are now scattered into orbits moving even farther away. Some of these orbits may intersect Earth's orbits so after months or years one piece or another may be intercepted and give a brief flash as a meteor. There is zero chance of them conspiring to give some kind of meteor shower.  ​‑‑Lambiam 10:40, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

@Lambiam: ...also that alien pirates would be interested in such trinkets as World Cup trophies – I tell you, they are definitely not very intelligent. Would any intelligent being fly across the Galaxy just to steal a cow...? --CiaPan (talk) 06:50, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Counter-intuitive impedance

It is well-known that the input resistance of an infinite chain of four-terminal elements, each consisting of a 1-ohm resistor in series and another across the output terminals, is the golden ratio, about 1.618 ohms. Each added element increases the number of parallel paths, so the input resistance falls steadily from its initial value of 2 ohms. A similar analysis, for the case of replacing the shunt resistor in the element with a capacitor of reactance 1 ohm at the applied frequency, shows that the input impedance of an infinite chain is very nearly 1.3 - 0.625i, this having a magnitude of about 1.443 ohms. The initial input impedance is 1 - i with a magnitude of root 2, about 1.414 ohms. So the added parallel paths do not give a steady reduction in magnitude, which seems counter-intuitive.~2026-15082-11 (talk) 15:49, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

But this is the nature of complex numbers. Ruslik_Zero 18:55, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

A popular chatbot that claims the advantage of having no biological brain or intuition whatever nevertheless claims "I have thought" about the question as follows. I need to compute the input impedance of a ladder circuit. The first module has a series resistor (1Ω) between IN and OUT, and another 1Ω resistor from OUT to ground. So, the input impedance seems like 1Ω in series with 1Ω to ground, but wait, the OUT node is only connected to a resistor to ground. After thinking it through, I realise the input impedance is 2Ω in series.

For two modules in series, the impedance is R1 + the impedance seen from node A to ground, which is R2 in parallel with (R3 + R4). This gives 5/3Ω.

For an infinite chain, the impedance from node A to ground satisfies X = 1 || (1 + X).

Working through the RC-modules

I’m calculating the impedance for a module with a series 1Ω resistor and a shunt capacitor with reactance -j1Ω. For a single RC-module, the input impedance is 1 - jΩ, with a magnitude of √2. For two RC-modules in series, the impedance from node A is calculated as Z_A = (1 - 3j)/5, giving a total input impedance of 1.2 - 0.6jΩ, with a magnitude of 1.342Ω.

For an infinite chain of [RC circuits], the impedance equation becomes Z = 1 + (-j || Z), leading to a quadratic equation. Solving this gives Z ≈ 1.30 - 0.63jΩ, with a magnitude of 1.442Ω. ~2026-15106-48 (talk) 22:06, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

see continued fraction Golden ratio#Continued fraction and square root and Khan, Shahryar (22 January 2024). "Resistors, Continued Fractions and the Golden Ratio". fiveby(zero) 23:32, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

The intuition is correct for resistors; it is Rayleigh's monotonicity law. catslash (talk) 23:42, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Saying that "this is the nature of complex numbers" hardly addresses the specific query. I accept, from the numerical results, that the impedance magnitude does not decrease with each added path (sometimes it does, sometimes it increases), but was hoping for a reasoned explanation as to why there is not always an increased current flow for a given applied voltage when the shunt capacitor in the first element is given an extra parallel path.~2026-15082-11 (talk) 16:08, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

"First element" is ambiguous - I meant the capacitor closest to the new element.~2026-15082-11 (talk) 16:20, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

It is like an arago spot that counterintuitevely appears in the center of a circular shadow. Sometimes you need to accept that your intuition leads to a wrong conlusion. Ruslik_Zero 20:40, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Anything in characteristic impedance help, the derivations? iterative impedance? Your chain of resistors and capacitors is like a transmission line w/o inductance or conductance. Instead of starting with first element and adding more, start with and infinitely long transmission line and add more, the characteristic impedance doesn't change. Start with an infinite chain already and add one more element, the iterative impedance does not change. fiveby(zero) 21:34, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

A counterintuitive or seemingly paradoxical result, such as the OP's observation that adding a current flow path to a finite RC ladder may increase rather than decrease the input impedance magnitude, both piques our intellectual curiosity and motivates us to seek a better understanding of how it could happen. A near-parallel result is Braess's paradox the counterintuitive result in traffic network theory showing that adding a new road or bypass can make overall traffic flow worse. Similarity of the paradoxes is only partial: Braess's paradox arises because drivers act selfishly, each being too tempted to choose their own fastest route especially when it is novel, while the collective result becomes worse for everyone. However electrons flowing inevitably from negative to positive potential in a circuit are not like selfish conscious drivers. The two paradoxes here identified do have similar negative corollaries: A road network planner who is ignorant of Braess's paradox may never realize that traffic flow in his network can be improved by closing off a particular road. A circuit designer who needs to reduce the input impedance magnitude of an RC ladder might without the OP's help never realize that can be achieved by cutting out components. ~2026-15106-48 (talk) 17:22, 11 March 2026 (UTC) (edited)

For the RC case, does it help the intuition to consider the fact that going into the ladder, the currents in each section lag those in the previous section by (I reckon) about 38.6683°? So after about 9.30996 sections, the currents are the reverse of what you want. catslash (talk) 18:14, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Have you calculated 360° / 38.6683° ≈ 9.30996 ? Why ? Current is reversed by a 180° shift. The OP's intuition was about the magnitude of the input impedance which is a measurement blind to phase. ~2026-15106-48 (talk) 20:01, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes, just that. Because the input current is the sum of the capacitor currents. The magnitude of the sum is less than sum of the magnitudes unless all terms have the same sign – which they haven't. Also, as you spotted, I was stupid and should have said 4.65498 sections. catslash (talk) 23:22, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

On reflection, my answer could be better. Intuition does not rest on numbers. Try this: In both the resistive ladder and the RC ladder, whether finite or infinite, the input current is the sum of the rung (shunt) currents. In the resistive ladder all the rung currents flow in unison and so do actually add. Conversely, in the RC ladder, the rung currents are out of step and so partially cancel, giving a reduced total (i.e an increased-magnitude impedance). catslash (talk) 00:16, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Mutation

A complicated question about consuming junk food

If I do OMAD (One-meal-a-day fasting), which is less harmful to health: eating junk food for two minutes every day or eating junk food for one hour every month? ~2026-14733-34 (talk) 12:04, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

That's a question for your doctor. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:05, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

I assume the two-minute daily junk food feast is not your whole single daily meal. Eaten in moderation, so-called "junk food" is not by itself particularly harmful. An unbalanced diet is. If the unbalanced and therefore unhealthy diet consists largely of junk food, it is particularly unhealthy. Also, overeating is unhealthy and overeating on junk food is particularly unhealthy. Eating moderate amounts of junk food in addition to an otherwise healthy diet is not harmful to one's health.  ​‑‑Lambiam 23:19, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

What if they're allergic to something in the junk food? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:47, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

And what if they are tube-fed?  ​‑‑Lambiam 10:33, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Same as if they're allergic to anything in the normal or super healthy food. --CiaPan (talk) 11:27, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Is this diagram meaningful?

It's used at Electromagnetic_pulse#Effects. If it illustrates wireless power, why are there wires?  Card Zero  (talk) 10:12, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

We'd have to ask the creator, but their last contribution was the addition of the diagram, so we are not likely to receive a response. Next to the wires, which I think would be absent in the case of a solar flare, lightning strike or nuclear detonation, there is also a curious mislabeling throughout the diagram: what looks like a wire is labeled "Magnetron", what is presumably the magnetron is labeled "Microwaves", what looks like intended to represent the microwaves is unlabeled, and the irrelevant base of the light "bulb" is labeled "Capacitive coupling through air". There are also curious dashed arc segments as if the radiation is reflected by the "bulb". If the purpose is to explain in a diagram how an electromagnetic wave induces a gradient of electric potential across a circuit, it is IMO not helpful. (The article Electromagnetic pulse also does not attempt to explain this.) It is probably just as helpful to illustrate this with a bolt labeled "EMP" directed at an explosion star labeled "KABLOOEY!".  ​‑‑Lambiam 11:36, 13 March 2026 (UTC)