Fun Stuff...Off Topic(O/T)

[Websman]

Webs,
You have to much free time on your hands.

The Goji made me do it...(hic)

[IIC]

Nothing is Sacred

You can run but you can't hide...New site allows you to see a photo of anyone's drivers license...I deleted mine...maybe you should too???

http://www.license.shorturl.com/

[billyjoe]

Doug,
That's amazing. I can't believe it's legal. I just looked up websman and what can I say ?
-------billyjoe

[IIC]

Here's an oldie...but maybe some never saw it:

http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/games/magic-gopher-central.swf

[billyjoe]

Trivia question. No "trick" answers accepted. Can the same water flow over Niagara Falls twice ? If so , how long will it take to get back to the falls a second time ?

---------billyjoe

[Rob]

Billy's Question

Trivia question. No "trick" answers accepted. Can the same water flow over Niagara Falls twice ? If so , how long will it take to get back to the falls a second time ?

Just conjecturing here, since the smallest quantity of water is one H2O molecule, and since there is a constant, huge cloud of mist rising up from the falls, I would say that often the same water flows over Niagara Falls within minutes. In other cases it may be millennia before the same water makes that trip again.

"All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again."—Ecclesiastes 1:7

Click the image for a live Niagara Falls Web cam.

[jamiew]

If you're talking about the water being completely removed from the system, and the returning, there are allot of variables that the error would be huge, and the time parameter would be bell shaped spanning over many hundred of thousand years from the centre.


Statistical mechanics:

I’ll have a serious attempt at it any way:
I have to make some assumptions to make the calculations easier:

*Assumption1 - water is not conserved by any other system
*Assumption2 - all of earths water is obtainable and will re-enter each system
*Assumption 3 - each molecule re-enters the system at a constant rate

*Approximately 70% of earth is water.
*Volume of earth = 1,097,509,500,000,000,000,000 cubic meters (*1x10to The21)
* So volume of water on earth is 7x10toThe20m³
* Approximate rate of flow rate of Niagara falls: 5,000 m³/s
*approximate time for all of earths water to flow through Niagara falls = 1.4*10toThe17 = 4.44*10tothe9 years

So an average of 4440000000 years with many assumption and probably quite a larger error. If anyone else cares to correct me, I would be happy to see how they do it.

-note
This calculation is for a free flowing system, in which all molecules return to the system at the same rate.

edit- please note this is very much an over simplification

[Lyehopper]

Water Water everywhere.... and not a virgin drop in sight

Trivia question. No "trick" answers accepted. Can the same water flow over Niagara Falls twice ? If so , how long will it take to get back to the falls a second time ?

---------billyjoe

BillyJoe.... It depends on "exactly" what the term "same water" actually means. When a young virgin bride loses her virginity, she is no longer "the same girl" that she once was.... Just as a man who plummets over these magnificent falls in a barrel is forever "changed" by this experience.... The water taking this terrifying plunge over Niagara Falls is itself forever changed....yes, it loses it's "virginity" to the massive Falls and therefore can never and will never be "the same water" ever again.... So I'd say the answer is.... no.

[Lyehopper]

BillyJoe.... It depends on "exactly" what the term "same water" actually means. When a young virgin bride loses her virginity, she is no longer "the same girl" that she once was.... Just as a man who plummets over these magnificent falls in a barrel is forever "changed" by this experience.... The water taking this terrifying plunge over Niagara Falls is itself forever changed....yes, it loses it's "virginity" to the massive Falls and therefore can never and will never be "the same water" ever again.... So I'd say the answer is.... no.

Another explanation with the same final answer is this.... Just as every drop of blood in a person's body travels through their heart repeatedly... and given the rate that water moves over Niagara Falls.... and given the available gallons of water on the earth.... and given the continuous cycle that water takes.... I would say that over several billion years, even before the polar ice caps formed, that every single drop of water on this earth has already (at one time or another) passed over Niagara Falls.... So since there are no "virgin water molecules" available on this planet that have not experienced Niagara Falls.... So, the answer is again....no

[Lyehopper]

On second thought....

Another explanation with the same final answer is this.... Just as every drop of blood in a person's body travels through their heart repeatedly... and given the rate that water moves over Niagara Falls.... and given the available gallons of water on the earth.... and given the continuous cycle that water takes.... I would say that over several billion years, even before the polar ice caps formed, that every single drop of water on this earth has already (at one time or another) passed over Niagara Falls.... So since there are no "virgin water molecules" available on this planet that have not experienced Niagara Falls.... So, the answer is again....no

hmmmmmm.... ok, If there are no Virgin water molecules left on the earth then the same "non virgin" molecules could indeed pass over the falls repeatedly so the answer could be yes.... As for the time it would take to make this trip?.... Please see Rob and jamiew's posts.

[peanuts]

Trivia question. No "trick" answers accepted. Can the same water flow over Niagara Falls twice ? If so , how long will it take to get back to the falls a second time ?

---------billyjoe

I'd say "yes"

I'll prove it too... I'll go drink water from below the falls and then pee in Lake Erie about an hour later

[jamiew]

Um isn’t that kind of trick answer peanuts.

From a biological chemist point of view your kind of right Lyehopper

Water is changed from chemical/biochemical process, in most cases we can use the deuterium isotope affect to measure the kinetics of these changes. In a system as large as the world, this would be quite hard to measure. However my same calculation could be applied to the atoms O and H, these are inherit, have a v.slow rate of decay(considered 0), only really change in charge properties.

Maybe you could argue if an e- has been taken away from an O and replace by another e- it is no longer the same O... in which case bugger!

So Ill cheat and add an assumption

*Assumption1 - water is not conserved by any other system
*Assumption2 - all of earths water is obtainable and will re-enter each system
*Assumption3 - each molecule re-enters the system at a constant rate
*Assumption4 - For each molecule, molecular properties are constant

So an average of 4440000000 years. (thats 4.4 billion years not taking into account of water being held back by many systems, such as pointed out by L
Lyehopper "polar ice caps")

I expect the actual answer is between 5 and 15 billion years, which is interesting since the age of the earth is only 4.5 billion years.

[billyjoe]

You guys have some great answers , way over my head. In order to simplify things I'll reask the question.

-------- Water in a bottle goes over Niagara Falls on January 1st, 2000. Forget about factoring frozen Falls into this. Assuming the bottle never is broken , leaks, or is hung up along the way for more than a 24 hour time period, is never removed from it's major source of locomotion by animal or beast, or act of God, will the bottle and ,therefore, the water contained within , ever pass over Niagara Falls again ? For extra credit , give me the date.

----------billyjoe

[jamiew]

You guys have some great answers , way over my head. In order to simplify things I'll reask the question.

-------- Water in a bottle goes over Niagara Falls on January 1st, 2000. Forget about factoring frozen Falls into this. Assuming the bottle never is broken , leaks, or is hung up along the way for more than a 24 hour time period, is never removed from it's major source of locomotion by animal or beast, or act of God, will the bottle and ,therefore, the water contained within , ever pass over Niagara Falls again ? For extra credit , give me the date.

----------billyjoe

hmm by adding the bottle you have made it harder, in order for water to return it must be able to:
* evaporate
* condensate
* precipitate
* and recollect
(high school geography), wow surprised i can still remember any of that

If your question is, will the bottle ever return though a river system, um no!
the source Niagara falls is from a combination of valleys and mountains… into stream rivers etc.

Rivers are never cyclic especially after falls (river water does not flow in an upwards direction)

[Rob]

Billyjoe, the only way that bottle is going to make it back up to that river above the falls, without being carried up there by man or animal, is by some violent act of nature such as a tornado. And since the Falls are hundreds of miles inland, one tornado would not do it. It would have to be carried by a series of them. Not very likely to happen. The water source just ahead of the Falls is 561 ft. above sea level. There just aren't too many ways a bottle can make it up there, especially one that's full of water.