Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2015 October 12

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October 12

Eye independence in vertebrates

I have recently read that dolphins can aim their eyes at separate objects, and have long known that chameleons can do so. Is it known what the primitive state of this ability in early chordates was? Could sharks, bony fish, or more primitive fish focus on two separate objects at the same time? Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 00:54, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Found this article. Bony fish with eye independence that this paper mentions include the Syngnathidae (seahorses and pipefish), triggerfish, the wrasse family and the sandlance. Modocc (talk) 02:55, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

What about most herbivores? A horse (for example) has 350 degree vision - with only 65 degrees of binocular vision. So it can clearly rotate one eye to an angle that the other eye cannot match. Are they then 'switching off' the other eye to get a simple monocular image - or are they getting two completely unrelated images simultaneously? SteveBaker (talk) 03:16, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

If you go to early chordates, you're possibly looking for a little dark spot at the front tip of the nerve cord in amphioxus, the frontal eye of the lancelet. See, oh, [1] or something. Note that lancelets have various other types of little tiny eyes pointing different ways. (illustration) But it's not actually clear to me that the common ancestor of annelids and lancelets had quite such a rudimentary eye - it could have, but it might have had more. Though eyes have been evolved from a very simple state in multiple separate origins, there seems to be some indication that the ancestor had different specialized eyes; cephalopods famously evolved an eye with different organization than that of vertebrates, but my impression is that when you look at the simplest organisms they might have had the predecessors of both geometries. But all guesswork aside, we really don't know what they were, or what they had for eyes, and whether there was any motion of them; if there was a way to move those eyes, they almost certainly evolved for independent motion, since binocular vision is a complex evolved process with specialized features like ocular dominance columns. Wnt (talk) 07:49, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

If I were to restate my question in more technical terms, it would be, "Is there some point in vertebrate evolution from which eye independence would be considered a symplesiomorphy?" The reason I ask is that things like snake venom were once believed to have evolved many times, but the recently discovered clade Toxicofera shows that the possession of venom in certain snakes and lizards evolved once, and was elaborated in some groups, yet lost in others. μηδείς (talk) 01:19, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

taking information regarding training procedure in food processing and quality control department

sir i am pursuing msc in food technology and i want to pusue training in quality control and food processing department so what steps should i adopt in order to apply for training in your industry — Preceding unsigned comment added by 14.139.244.247 (talk) 08:50, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

The first thing you need to do is find someone who is already involved in that industry. Wikipedia is not involved in any industry except maintaining an encyclopedia. Ian.thomson (talk) 08:52, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Do spiders get dizzy?

If I accidentally suck up a spider into a dyson vacuum cleaner and the spider get spun round and round, will the spider get dizzy and disorientated? 220.239.43.253 (talk) 12:25, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

As far as I know spiders don't have (nor need) a labyrinth. If one looks at one of those house spiders which when disturbed spin round and round. They can still run away, sure-footed on thin silk webs and stay balanced. So they don't look dizzy to me.--Aspro (talk) 13:01, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

No. They don't get dizzy. Dizziness in humans is caused by imbalance in the inner ear causing difficulty orienting oneself. Spiders do not use an inner ear for orientation. Some spiders orient themselves purely kinesthetically. Others use visual cues. Most use both. Those are purely kinesthetic can be easily confused by placing them on a moving platform. They don't realize they are moving and will assume they are standing still. Those who use pure visual cues can be confused, but I believe it is a bit mean to do so. I've read experiments where they painted black paint over a wolf spider's eyes. The wolf spider was blind and couldn't orient itself. If you want to call that being "dizzy", you can. But, it is a completely different thing. 199.15.144.250 (talk) 13:02, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

There is a very fundamental homology of otoliths and statoliths (in statocysts) throughout the animals, even in Scyphozoa. However, the structure can be lost in individual lineages, and though they are present in crustaceans and some insects, I didn't see any reference to any arachnids having them in a quick search. The cysts tend to be at the base of some specialized sound-sensing limb, like the antenna in insects or the jaw of reptiles/ossicles in mammals; I'm not sure how much of that is truly homology, or what kind of homology it is. But the semicircular canals are a more recent innovation, and those are most often blamed for dizziness. Though the statocyst has a broader range of duties in organisms without them, it's not clear to me whether dizziness can occur in that situation. Wnt (talk) 20:36, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that model vacuum cleaner would kill a spider (it advertises an absurd number of g's), so it would never have a chance to get dizzy. I did once vacuum up some bees with a hand vacuum, though, and buzzing sounds came from the bag for quite some time after. StuRat (talk) 23:44, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Railgun railroad

Couldn't a train or a streetcar, be powered without an electric cable? Couldn't we use the rails as a railgun?--Scicurious (talk) 17:12, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

It could, and a few are. See Linear induction motor#Uses. See also Tracked Hovercraft for a concept with less commercial viability. Tevildo (talk) 17:31, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

As to why most electric trains don't use such technology, the consensus seems to be that the benefits typically aren't worth the costs. You don't get much of a gain in maximum speed versus technologies like TGV, and inductive propulsion is less energy-efficient and more complex. For low-speed trains, if you want to eliminate overhead cables, you can just electrify the tracks instead, which is cheaper and easier (see railway electrification). --71.119.131.184 (talk) 21:04, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

I wonder how safety compares. Electrified rails would seem to be more dangerous, but perhaps overhead cables could fall down and pose a worse hazard. StuRat (talk) 22:41, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

On the linear-induction lines I'm familiar with (the Scarborough RT and others using the same technology), the reaction rail is not electrified by connection to the power supply. (I suppose there must be some stray current induced by the magnetic fields, though.) When you talk about "electrified rails" that usually means using a third rail power supply in preference to overhead wires. The linear-induction motor itself doesn't care where the power comes from. (The Scarborough RT uses a third rail, or actually two of them, so together with the reaction rail its tracks have 5 rails.) For advantages and disadvantages of third-rail power, see the article. --174.88.134.156 (talk) 23:34, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Doing a quick search, the M-Bahn (Berlin, 1989) and Transrapid, implemented in the Shanghai Maglev Train (2004), were propelled by electromagnets in the track, rather than having the stator of the linear motor in the car drawing power from conductor rails. Tevildo (talk) 22:07, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Maglev is sort of like a railgun in reverse. One problem I see with a true railgun railroad might be how to control many independent trains on the same 2 rails, i'm not saying this would be insurmountable, but possibly much more complicated than it seems. Vespine (talk) 23:36, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Does fuel explode in a internal combustion engine?

Do fuels like diesel or gasoline explode in an internal combustion engine? --Jubilujj 2015 (talk) 20:34, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

This may get a debate going. You use explosive mixtures in such engines and ignite them with a spark. But an explosion is a rapid increase in volume. If all goes well, an internal combustion engine demands the slow motion of a piston. So I would say they do not explode - no more than a rocket explodes when (fingers crossed) nothing goes wrong in the launch. Wnt (talk) 20:40, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, they deflagrate but do not detonate. If they do detonate, you've got trouble. I think that's more or less what "pinging" is. --Trovatore (talk) 20:41, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

And in normal use, do both diesel and fuel go through the same physical process (albeit under different pressure and temperature)?--Jubilujj 2015 (talk) 21:09, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Deflagrate is the correct term. It is also called a "slow explosion" because it is, by definition, an explosion that travels slower than the speed of sound (subsonic). You want this for an internal combustion engine. You want the force of the explosion to get the full effect of transferring energy to the piston. You don't want an extremely quick pop and then nothing. 75.139.70.50 (talk) 21:42, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

I've heard it referred to as a "controlled explosion", though that might be an oxymoron. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:39, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Internal combustion engines which actually use explosive fuel have been designed, see Gunpowder engine. Vespine (talk) 21:42, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Gunpowder also deflagrates, at least according to our gunpowder article. So for purposes of the question, I don't see any real difference between gunpowder and a gasoline–air mixture (they both "explode", but the flame front in both is subsonic, so they don't qualify as high explosives). --Trovatore (talk) 21:44, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

To better understand why we want a deflagrate explosion, we have to get into impulse (physics) - cool, it's blue. 75.139.70.50 (talk) 21:46, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

I dispute the claim that just because gunpowder "deflegrates" under certain conditions makes it not an explosive. The very first line of our gunpowder article calls it a chemical explosive. Sure you can pour some gunpowder on the ground and it will deflegrate when it is lit, but pack some into a can and add a fuse and tell me what happens.. I'm kidding, don't try this at home, it WILL explode. Vespine (talk) 21:49, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Hmm? Who said it's not an explosive? Certainly not me. --Trovatore (talk) 21:52, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Sorry Trov, I misread your post, indeed that's not what you said. Vespine (talk) 22:03, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Back when I learned this terminology, we used the prefix "high explosive" to denote those explosives that detonate supersonically; "explosive" to denote anything that expands; therefore, "explosive" material includes any chemical that can experience detonation, deflagration, chemical combustion, rapid oxidation or other chemical reactions that evoke large quantities of gas under pressure; and the term "explosive" even denotes other items, like expansion due to release of pressure from a compressed inert gas or a BLEVE. Your institution or safety organization may use terminology differently. Nimur (talk) 23:00, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

• The problem, with the debate above, is that the term "explode" and related words (explosion, explosive, etc.) are imprecise terms, and thus there is not general agreement on whether the gasoline inside the piston explodes or does not. According to one understanding, it does, and according to another, it does not, and the people having the argument above are refusing to recognize the definition of the other camp as "valid". Scientists have long has this problem in deciding between the kind of explosion which is just "expanding gases from burning very quickly" and the kind of explosion which is "shockwave generated by massive release of chemical energy". As a result, we have terms like "low explosive" and "high explosive", which roughly match the two definitions above, as well as terms like deflagration and detonation, which are different process that a lay-person would could describe as "explosion" (which, again, is imprecise because it can describe two different processes). Both gunpowder and gasoline explode when a) in a confined space by b) burning, which makes them "low explosives". Other materials like dynamite and semtex detonate rather than deflagrate, and are called "high explosives" for that reason. Because a gasoline engine uses the low-explosive material "gasoline", some people would argue that's "not a real explosion" while others would argue "that's an explosion, but a different kind of explosion than occurs with stuff like dynamite", and since neither is wrong, because each are using different definitions to defend themselves, you get the silly debate above. --Jayron32 22:17, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

I think the low and high explosive issue is actually a sidetrack. Various forms of rocket fuel are powerful high explosives; still we don't say that the rocket "explodes" when the launch is successful. The fuel still creates a lot of pressure when it burns, but that pressure is mostly tapped for useful work rather than lost to shrapnel, sound, waste heat. This is the situation with an internal combustion engine, though to be sure there is some inefficiency when the valves open and the waste gasses are released, and it does sound suspiciously like a repeated explosion with the muffler off. But that's an explosion from which most of the energy has been taken out before we hear it go off; it's hard to picture calling opening a valve an "explosion", even though in essence it is something of the same thing. Wnt (talk) 07:33, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

If rocket fuel did consist of high explosive they would never get off the launch pad – well not in one piece.--Aspro (talk) 14:54, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. Rocket fuel deflagrates, usually with a stationary flame front. The purpose of the nozzle is to transform the highly energized, high pressure exhaust products into a supersonic or hypersonic flow at the exit of the engine. The combustion itself is usually intended to be subsonic and stable, which means that propellants must be selected that do not detonate. Perhaps there are a handful of counterexamples, but they are exceptions rather than the norm. Nimur (talk) 15:13, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Not quite. For solid fuel, you are right. But liquid fuels are fed into the combustion chamber and are only mixed and burned there. Modern engines use cryogenic fuels, e.g. LH2 and LOX, and their mixture, Knallgas, indeed detonates. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:24, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

The best example of a cryo-fuel engine that I can think of is Space Shuttle Main Engine, in which reactant combustion in the main combustion chamber was decidedly not supersonic (i.e. it was not a detonation by this definition). For reference, I would point you to the great chapter On Twin Pillars of Fire from the book To Rise from Earth, written by a spaceflight engineer from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Or, for more technical reading, here is a 1991 technical report on SSME combustion stability from NTRS. Nimur (talk) 15:57, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Indeed, rocket fuels are not a high explosive under any definition. It does not detonate, it burns energetically. Very different mechanism than high explosives. If it detonated, you'd have rocket bits strewn about the launch pad. --Jayron32 15:26, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Well, the rocket fuel article talks about HMX and RDX, for example. They are not used in a way that sends a large detonation front through the engine, but (as in the car engine) that is a matter of engineering. Wnt (talk) 21:25, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Cryogenic rocket engines can only withstand about 500 bar of internal pressure (they are only sintered moldings). If the burning fuel passed the deflagration to detonation transition it would spoil the astronauts whole day – not to mention the rocket itself.--Aspro (talk) 18:44, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

This is another one of those "fuzzy meanings of words" thing. There doesn't appear to be any kind of sharp scientific distinction between "burning" and "exploding" - it's the same thing - just a matter of speed and scale. Unless there is some kind of official definition of the words that we can test against - it's really rather unimportant which words you use at the boundary of these terms. We're pretty clear that a candle "burns" and that TNT "explodes"...but somewhere between those limits is something that could adequately be described by either word.

We get this kind of question all the time here on the reference desks - and it always seems kinda inadequate to say that - but it's the truth.

The clearest example was the "Is Pluto a Planet?" thing - the answer to which has nothing to do with what Pluto is or is not - but more to do with the arbitrary set of rules that astronomers decided to use to firmly define the word. Now that the word "Planet" is (more or less) firmly defined, we can answer questions like: "Is Sedna a planet?" with some degree of confidence.

But unless the Society of Chemical Engineers or some other august body has defined "Explosion" in a similarly definite manner - we have no good answer, and nobody should go around insisting that gasoline either burns or explodes inside a car engine. Really, use either word - it's fine. If it matters, then you'll want to ask about the rate that pressure changes over time in that enclosed space - there will be definite numbers that you can compare to other things that burn/explode - but you still won't know what arbitrary label to attach to the process unless/until the meaning of those labels is formally defined someplace significant.

SteveBaker (talk) 20:04, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

I think the authoritative organizations would be Society of Automotive Engineers (for the topic of the original question); and for some of our tangential discussions, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, or ICDERS (publishers of several journals and organizers of several colloquia on explosions and combustion). Has anyone got a copy of the SAE Glossary of Automotive Terms in which they can look up "explosion" within the context of automotive internal combustion engines? Nimur (talk) 20:36, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Things can expand rapidly enough to be considered "exploding" without necessarily doing so by burning, detonating or deflagrating. By any common usage of the term, a ruptured scuba tank explodes (complete with shrapnel) and actually lowers its temperature during the process. 82.225.48.44 (talk) 14:24, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

→Octane rating --Hans Haase (有问题吗) 17:28, 15 October 2015 (UTC)