this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
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xkcd #3094: Mass Spec (imgs.xkcd.com)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

xkcd #3094: Mass Spec

Title text:

Patients at least found it to be an improvement over Millikan's incredibly messy and unpleasant oil drop suspension procedure.

Transcript:

[Ponytail, wearing a lab coat, is giving a balloon to Cueball. Behind Cueball, there is a ramp on the ground, a magnet hanging from the ceiling, and a target on a poster on the wall.]
Ponytail: Rub this balloon against your head, then go jump past that magnet toward the target on the wall.

[Caption below the panel:]
Before the bathroom scale was invented, the only way to weigh people was mass spectrometry.

Source: https://xkcd.com/3094/

explainxkcd for #3094

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[โ€“] remotelove 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Gravity is not a constant and that would probably matter at the precision that needs to be measured in the given test environment. In any other situation, gravity (or the state of the earths magnetic field) would generally not matter enough to measure.

The precision of F=MA might even be debatable as an accurate formula at these scales.. I dunno about that though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_of_Earth

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/84266/measuring-earths-magnetism

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Hell yeah, I love scientists ๐Ÿ˜Ž

You're right ๐Ÿ‘

I guess this makes me an engineer using FP4 and not FP64