A test of your common sense

Edit.. it's been answered.. and I can't be arsed.Edited by Heathen, : No reason given.

Very young children can understand 2+2=4, but not usually Calculus until they are older and have learned more.Children can understand the simple concepts of evolution - that small changes that are beneficial to organisms will be selected for in their environment and carried on by their offspring - but will probably never understand the molecular biology that underpins it unless they go on to specialise in that field of study.I understand the principles behind bridge building but I could not even attempt to generate the maths necessary to actually design one - we leave that job to those whose life's work is to do it.Uneducated individuals not understanding the intricate detail of everything, does not negate the facts that bridges carry loads and are successfully built, calculus works and evolution happens. Thinking that everyone needs to understand everything or that everything needs to be common sense for it to be true or to work would be silly wouldn't it?Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

No evolution is simple and completely logical its just some people have more common sense then others.But there are things that dont go well with common sense like say speed. Everything you pushed in life goes faster, but if you would travel at the speed of light and push something it would not go faster because it cant.There are allot of things people believe that go tottaly against common sense like magic men in the sky managing the world. Like you know why earthquakes happen but when an earthquake hits Japan and fucks up their nuclear power plant suddenly that was magic-mans doing. And when they pull a little girl out from under some rubble after 7 days its magic man again he saved her it wasent just dumb luck or because he had the sense to hide under the door frame when she felt the earthquake, and all the rescuers and helpers, and their trained dogs had nothing to do with saving her life it was all magic man praise him.

Sorry Tangle, but you will have to take that up with Taz. He will tell you that you are not really qualified to discuss evolution, because you can't use common sense to figure it out, and you don't have the technical education to make an educated guess about it. I guess we have to wait to hear from the expert to know what's true, whoever he is. Edited by Bolder-dash, : No reason given.

The point of the wheels is to transfer the load to the ground.
so put the wheels directly under where the plant pot transfers its load to the dolly.that is the simplest most straight forward load path. a straight line down.otherwise you're introducing a moment into the cross members.Edited by Heathen, : No reason given.

Hi Taz. Wouldn't it have been better to ask a question to Creationists about evolution that would require an answer beyond what common sense could provide and see what kind of answers we would have given?I think when Creationists give answers that suggest it's common sense it's more along the lines of "well, common sense says it's designed".I don't think it happens much where an evolutionist were to ask "given a population of wolves how many changes in that population would it take for a novel feature to evolve?"I don't think Creationist' would answer "well, common sense says "so and so".It depends on how technical the debate is, who's debating and what the subject is. Your OP here is asking a question about a topic related to engineering and asking what Creationists think cause "a lot of them seem to be all knowing".It might have been better to ask a topic related to the creation/evolution debate that was somewhat technical to make your point.If you think that a lot of Creationists seem to be "all knowing" I assume you mean when it comes to the "debate" and not engineering.So, maybe to test this hypothesis a thread should be made to see what kind of answers you might get from a question related to the creation/evolution debate that goes beyond what common sense would say.Edited by Chuck77, : No reason given.

NO!That is NOT what Taz has said. He is not saying only experts can discuss evolution (or whatever they are expert in). what he is saying is that you can't apply everday common sense carte blanche.You should never apply 'common sense' to detailed investigations as 'common sense' from a scientific point of view is often utterly inadequate to explain reality.Common sense seems to show the Sun goes around the Earth.
Common sense seems to show that time is fixed
Common sense seems to show that matter is solid
Common sense seems to show that the speed of light can be exceeded....had enough yet?Anyone can discuss evolution (and any other subject they care to discusss). However for that person to have rational relevant content, it requires detailed study of evidence and the underlying theories of the subject so far discovered.....and defininitely NOT common sense.And THAT is the point being made here.Edited by Drosophilla, : No reason given.

I'm prepared to put a large bet on the fact that Taz will tell you that you're wrong to say that I'm not qualified to discuss evolution. Are you prepared to take it?

Who did that? What I saw was people asking you for more information. Since when is asking for more information a bad thing? What do you think EvC is here for? Apparently, it's because engineers are taught to think and argue like creationists. Edited by ringo, : Added a smilie to reflect the kinder, gentler ringo.

Engineers are getting a bad rap. Nothing in their education teaches them to argue like a Creationists. However, engineers are not scientists, and many of them don't learn anything more about geology, biology, or cosmology than any other rube. Most engineers do not work with subject matter on a day to day basis that forces them to confront evidence that creationism is wrong.All of that said, at least the electrical engineers who post here don't seem to argue much like Creationists.

I should have put in a smilie. I was just taking a cheap sot at Taz. Edited by ringo, : Added signature.

I know. But the guy insisted to me that the middle is where it will break and therefore putting the wheels toward the center will help it... or something like that. You can't argue with people like that.Edit.Perhaps I should be more clear. The dolly thing was made of wood. Just by carrying the pot around, it was clear to me that the pot wasn't going to break the dolly thing any time soon. That's why I thought it was better to put the wheels toward the outside for stability. Now, if the pot was heavier, then yes put the wheels directly underneath. But putting them toward the middle is just plain stupid.In this particular case, the guy's common sense clearly told him the middle was going to break and therefore he needed to put the wheels underneath there. But from our perspective, that actually made it worse. Anyway, I tried for about a couple sentences to get him to change his mind. The thing about me is I don't like to argue with people who can't understand me. So, I just gave up and agreed with him. No point in demonstrating to him how it actually works.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

Going off my single CIV101 (Civil Engineering) course in University over 10 years ago, so don't take this as perfect. But I didn't see it answered and decided to have a go: Exactly. The intention is to show that the beam is held by "a point" (like a bolt), not glued completely in place. That is, if the beam was longer, the left of the pin would 'swing up' as the right swung down... as opposed to having the left staying flat and causing deflection to the right if it were "glued completely in place." Simply general notation (I think). No. It would simply go against standard practice (I think). Actually, the roller cannot "move away."
The roller, again, is part of standard notation and doesn't act like an actual, real roller would.
The point of drawing the roller-symbol is to say that the beam will not "drop" at that point, that it is constantly supported vertiaclly, regardless of the amount of deflection. You can imagine the roller "magically" moving inward as the beam deflects, if you'd like.
So, even if the beam would greatly deflect, if something was constructed to represent this diagram... the beam would either be long enough so as to never drop to the inside of the roller, or the roller would be forced to move inward to make sure the beam never dropped due to not having a vertical support at that end. Or it's quite possible that no roller is used at all, perphaps it's some weird upside-down piano-key-like thing where a certain key is pressed up to support the load wherever it moves horizontally... The point is that the load at that end is vertically supported... no matter what happens due to deflection.The symbols are not physical representations of anything specific. They indicate "I don't care how it's physically done in the real world, but I'm talking about a fixed, rotation-allowed support here, and a verticial-only support where x-axis movement is allowed over here."
Those two symbols are generally used in conjunction with each other. This drawing is generally used to say "hey, we don't care about all the other shit that could happen in reality, this diagram is to show that we're testing the load force required to break this beam under the simplest of conditions."
In bridges, "rollers" are generally used at one end for purposes of expansion/contraction as well. But that is not the purpose of using that symbol in this diagram....from what I can remember, anyway.

Hi Stile, Correct, it would also prevent the end from rising under load. What it means is that there is no induced stress from tension load that would occur with two pinned ends under deflection.Enjoy.

Well then: What I get here is that all of the drawing is fiction, but not only that, secretive codes...symbols! that have coded meanings only for card-carrying members of the Busily Esteemed Engineering Society (BEES). Nothing about this is actually at all commonplace, as posited in the OP.So basically the triangle "pin" represents a roller of 0.00 radius and the roller is a fat pin (r>0) and they are both anchored to a fixed, practically infinitely strong background. One of the answers was that the pin breaks. ??? We weren't given the info that the pin might be weaker than the beam. WTF? WTF??Why not just put a board over 2 cinder blocks? There's your commonplace example. Jeez...eyes roll....