Something you've learned

[JimboUK]

The UK flag is not symmetric.

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/images/uk.jpg

Look at it carefully!

 

I wish a few more of my countrymen knew that and stopped flying it upside down, flying it that way is a distress signal which probably explains why the government keep doing it.

[ub3rman123]

The UK flag is not symmetric.

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/images/uk.jpg

Look at it carefully!

 

I wish a few more of my countrymen knew that and stopped flying it upside down, flying it that way is a distress signal which probably explains why the government keep doing it.

 

Doesn't seem like it'd make a good distress signal; it'd be hard to tell from a distance I should think.

[JimboUK]

 

 

Doesn't seem like it'd make a good distress signal; it'd be hard to tell from a distance I should think.

 

Yeah as distress signals go it's not one of the better ones.

[Vindekarr]

In the world of motorsport there is a constant battle waged three ways between funding, safety, and technology.

 

In this modern era, technology and innovation have lost out to comercialism and safety concerns, but it wasn't always so.

 

Formula One car for example, are on average, getting 3 tenths of a second slower each year due to the vastly strict rules imposed by the FIA, which have slowly banned virtualy every performance aid imaginable, taking cars from hyper-efficient, turbo powered monsters and turning them into cars that, while still blindingly fast, are a pale shadow of what they used to be.

 

In the old days, before the FIA banned everything under the sun, and institued it's law that you have to send a written requisition two weeks in advance if you intend to overtake, Formula One was an utterly diferent sport.

 

The emphasis was once about not so much being the fastest, but about pure innovation. A level of "deliberate corruption" in the rules process, and very loose restrictions made for a sport that was as much a battle of the scientists as it was of racing drivers, with teams being forced to use desperate measures for that extra 1%. A glorious era for the sport's technology, overshadowed by a series of fatal accidents, the cars of the 1970s and 1980s were some of the fastest cars in history. The Lotus-Renault 90-series of cars were some of the most powerful vehicles ever built-one reaching 1300 horsepower from it's mid-mounted 2.2L V-6.

 

As the power of "superteams" like Williams and Mclaren grew, the crazier the schemes that were thought up to beat them. Tyrell came up witht he idea of increasing grip by using a six-wheeled car. Fancars followed, which sucked themselves onto the ground using turbines-giving them vast cornering ability. "ground effects"-a vastly more efficient way to generate downforce than a simple upside-down wing, came shortly after. Eventualy it was banned for safety reasons(neck-breaking G-forces), so Brabham came up with "hydropneumatic-supsension" which, when the car was sitting still and thus looked at, sat at the legal ride-height, but as it accelerated, the fluid pressurised, pinning it flat to the road and allowing it to take corners at an insane rate of speed while appearing totaly within the rules. Other teams often fitted a "steward-wing" on their cars when getting it weighed-many claimed the car was almost undriveable with the wing fitted, which was usualy made of solid lead wrapped in fake carbon fibre, but it got past the inspections, and the result was massively reduced weights.

 

And the stewards jus let it happen-the results were some of the closest racing in history, with the battle of Ayrton Senna V Alain Prost V Nigel Mansell going down in history for the shear lengths teams had to go to to get one up. It all ended in 1994 at Imola, with a pair of fatalities over the weekend, including reigning champion Ayrton Senna. The FIA had been in a long, bitter fued with the FOCA team union over rules-the conservative FIA wanting much tighter restrictions and slower cars, FOCA desiring the minimum possible rules. The FIA eventualy won, with Imola being the turning point, and the result was greatly increased safety, but the price that was paid was performance and closeness of racing, with cars not getting close to their '80s ancestors, and the kind of wheel-to-wheel racing of that era never being seen again since.

 

Nowadays a Formul One car uses a naturaly aspirated V-8, which puts out about 650 horsepower. Impressive yes, but in the 1980s many cars used turbcharged 4-cylender engines, which, running on extremely high octane fuel, and with immense air pressure from the turbocharger, ran on what was essentialy liquid oxygen mixed with liquid rocket fuel, bringing many to the 1000 horsepower mark. Dwfroce too was much higher, with ground effects allowing from unequaled handling, but eventualy the cars simply got too fast to handle, and while most would agree it's not worth having the best racing championship in the world if it kills 20 people a year, that doesn't mean many fans don't feel bitter about the changes to the sport, and the gradual degradation of performance nearly every year.

 

http://i1228.photobucket.com/albums/ee454/Vindekarr/800px-Takuma_Sato_demonstrating_Lotus_78_2010_Japan.jpg

The combination of the massive power from the turbocharged engine, and the now outlawed ground-effects body/chassis make these, though antiques, a surprisingly stiff competitor to a modern F-1

[CommanderCrazy]

That i can get into the airforce, directly into an officer position, right now (yes yes, applications and waiting and all that, what im saying is that i have the educational req's to do it)

Amazing pay too.

[yoba333]

I learned about this:

http://www.letsmow.com/

[Thor.]

I learned something new today, how to exchange gifts from steam :thumbsup: Or give gifts. Steam noob here :teehee: Edited September 3, 2011 by Thor.

[Flintlockecole]

I've learned a few thing's from this topic. He he.

[Vindekarr]

The internal combustion engine (ICE) is the most inneficient piece of machinery I have ever laid eyes on save an apple mac.

 

All engines require three key things, oxygen, a flammable, and a spark. Spark is easy, so's flammable, which leaves oxygen. The amount of oxygen entering a car engine defines power output like little else: if you've got high good engine block strength, the level of power you can attain by messing around with the oxygen is incredible.

 

A normal car engine works like this: air goes in via the intake, and goes into the Cylender, fuel is mixed with the air in the and the spark ignites it, The resulting explosion pushes the Pistol down, which turns the Crank Shaft, the crank goes tghrough the GearBox to the axles, spins the wheels, makes you go. Stronger combustion is always good, as making the engine stronger to combust usualy helps fuel economy and makes it feel livelier.

 

Now, that's what we tech-heads call a "naturaly aspirted engine" that's like in most cars from the 90's and earlier. You can ge more power by having bigger cylenders (the "litres" of an engine define it's size < 3 is small > 3 is big) but the best core way to make an I C E run better is simply to compress the air going into it. A Turbcharger does just this. It's a small fan that sits in the air pipe going into the engine and compresses said air, compressed air have more oxygen, more o2, more kaboom!. Intercoolers help too, these freeze the incoming air as it's compressed-you guessed it, the colder the denser, and it gives you better coling too.

 

A 1971 Dodge Challenger had a Dodge Mopar 7.0 litre V-8, it produced about 300 horse power, but had gargantuan fuel consumption and weighed a vast amount.

 

Nigel Mansell's 1990 Formula One car had a 1.4 litre Honda four cylender, with it's turbocharger it produced more than 900 horsepower. Running flat out it could do long race stints, reaching 300+ kilometres an hour, yet ran with only a small fuel tank. It is a true example of jus a fraction of an ICE's true potential.

 

The Lotus Formula One cars of the early 1980s had turcharged Renault engines, at their height, they could squeeze a confirmed 1,300 horsepower from a < 2 litre six-cylender.

 

Even the humblest engine can become a titan of power if it was simply better engineered, we've gotten lazy. I hope to hell that with the growing attitude in the automotive industry that electric and hydrogen cars are the future that we see more developement than we got from ICE's, because frankly I don't want t think of the damage we could do if we don't.

 

The same thing exists with jets-Pulse Jets are noticeably more efficient than regular jets, but they are hugely unpopular due to the technology's origines. Made famous by the nazis in WW-II who used it in their V-1 flying bombs, it was essentialy abandoned as the sound it made scared the easily cowed citizens of the countries that had been bombed by V-1s. Had the technology been developed, fast air travel would be more possible, as these are the very height of simplicity(NO moving parts) but because of fear, we never used it.

[BarefootWarrior]

I learned that I can't win the lottery unless I buy a lottery ticket....damn it, been waiting all these years too! :biggrin: