Verence17
Verence17 t1_jabyf4t wrote
Reply to ELI5 How do you calculate pressure? by Personhuman815
Pressure is defined as force per m^(2). So you can just get a piston of known size (say, 1 cm^(2)), check the force pushing on it, divide the force by size and then convert as you wish.
Also, strictly speaking kg/cm^(2) isn't a physically correct unit of pressure, it's implied that weight in normal gravity is used. "1 kg of force" is actually 1 kg * g (free fall acceleration on Earth, ~9.8 m/s^(2)), so 9.8 N of force.
Verence17 t1_jabu2yc wrote
Cast iron is even less "iron" than steel, it's just called that way. Iron is a base metal. Steel is an iron-carbon alloy with the right proportion of carbon, where the carbon makes it harder. "Cast iron" is not iron but it's another iron-carbon alloy with too much carbon, so the carbon makes it brittle.
Verence17 t1_iyd0df5 wrote
Reply to ELI5: How is that space is “flat” yet we are able to look around the universe (up, down, left, right, etc.,) as if it were not flat? by nhabz
This gets asked every week. Flat doesn't mean 2D in that context. Flat means "normal space" where parallel lines stay parallel, sum of angles in a triangle is 180 degrees and so on. For example, surface of a sphere is not flat: straight lines that are parallel in one place (for example, meridians at the equator) will converge in the other. This can be generalized to 3D space.
Verence17 t1_iycens8 wrote
Reply to ELI5: How does machine learning work? by Nightmarewasta
So, imagine playing a game: you are told a number, you add some X to that number and tell the result. You will be told if the result differs from the one expected by the person who told you the number, so you have to guess the correct X.
"1. What do we want as a result?"
"Well, maybe X = 0? 1+0=1, my answer is 1."
"No, for 1 we need something bigger. Let's try again, what do we want to get for 2?"
"Then maybe X = 2? 2+2=4, my answer is 4."
"No, we need less than that. Another try: what do we want for 3?"
"So, X is bigger than 0 but smaller than 2... Maybe X = 1? 3+1=4, my answer is 4."
"Yes, that's what we needed, you guessed the correct X!"
In this scenario, "take a number and add X to it" is your algorithm and X is a parameter for that algorithm. You don't know that parameter beforehand, you guess it in an iterative way only from the required answer.
Turns out, we can construct an algorithm with quite a lot of parameters (possibly, millions) in such a way that there will be possible values for that parameters which, in theory, will give us good results for the task at hand. Not perfect, but good. We don't know what exactly these values are, we only know that they can exist. The task can even be as complex as showing the algorithm an image of a bird and expecting the answer "bird", it still may work with some parameters unknown to us.
Learning methods allow the program, in a similar way to the example above, start with a completely random guess and then tweak all these parameters in a more or less sensible way only based on what the expected answer is. And the math goes in such a way that it will likely slowly find better and better combinations until it encounters something that actually works to an extent. This process is what's called machine learning and the set of values found for the parameters is called a model for this specific algorithm.
Verence17 t1_iu4q2gb wrote
Reply to ELI5:A child causes a wagon to accelerate by pulling it with a horizontal force. newton's third law says that the wagon exerts an equal and opposite force on the child. how can the wagon accelerate? by Gbo_the_beast
The child is pushing the ground back with his feet. So, forces acting on the child are balanced (so the child doesn't move back) but the wagon only gets one significant horizontal force (minus friction in the wheels) and doesn't accelerate.
Verence17 t1_jac41rt wrote
Reply to comment by georgecoffey in eli5 What is the difference between Iron and Steel? by georgecoffey
The commonly used divide between pure iron and steel is around 0.02% carbon, between steel and cast iron is 2.14% of carbon. For more complex alloys, where there isn't just steel and carbon but a sizeable portion of other things, it can be complicated.