explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2100: Models of the Atom

2019-03-01T05:04:22Z

172.68.146.134: Gave explanation for tiny bird model.

{{comic
| number = 2100
| date = January 18, 2019
| title = Models of the Atom
| image = models_of_the_atom.png
| titletext = J.J. Thompson won a Nobel Prize for his work in electricity in gases, but was unfairly passed over for his "An atom is plum pudding, and plum pudding is MADE of atoms! Duuuuude." theory.
}}

==Explanation==

This comic humorously describes the changing view of what an {{w|atom}} is. This has happened so much it seems that we never really knew what we are looking at, and there have been many competing theories aside from the mainstream ones we are taught in school. He lists major depictions in the history of our understanding of an atom, and adds a few humorous ones in to poke fun at how diverse, contentious, and in retrospect often foolhardy, this history has been.

;Small hard ball model
The first model shown, in 1810, is said to be a "small hard ball model." Around this time, {{w|John Dalton}} published his textbook ''A New System of Chemical Philosophy'' which linked existing ideas of atomic theory and chemical reactivity to produce a combined {{w|Law of multiple proportions}} which proposed that each chemical element is comprised of a single unique type of atom, and introduced the concept of {{w|Molecular mass|molecular weight}}. Dalton's theories form the basis of what is known today as {{w|stoichiometry}}, which underpins chemical reactivity. As atoms were considered at this time to be the smallest possible division of matter the scientific community thought of them as "hard round balls" of different sizes; thus the name described here. The "small hard ball" model is still commonly used when teaching and discussing chemical molecules which do not require the level of detail provided by more advanced models, with atoms represented as small, hard, round balls connected by sticks representing chemical bonds.

;Plum pudding model
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the study of these "atom" things faced a crisis: where would the newly discovered "{{w|electron}}s" go? In 1904, physicist {{w|J. J. Thomson}}, who discovered electrons, had an idea: maybe the electrons were small point charges moving around in a big mass of positive charge. This was the "{{w|plum pudding model}}", the second model on the comic, called this because people imagined the positively charged mass as a "{{w|Christmas pudding|plum pudding}}". (The title text references Thomson as well, along with the humorous observation that plum puddings themselves are made of atoms.) The problem with this approach is that same charges generally repel, resulting in the more mobile or unbalanced charges forming a surface shell around the others, attempting to escape, rather than being content to being randomly distributed among them.

;Tiny bird model
There were many competing ideas in the formative years of what-are-atoms-made-of-ology, [[Randall]] makes up a 1907 "tiny bird model." In this model, four birds surround the small hard ball at equal distances to one another. Two of them are singing and the other two are not and all birds are opposite to their identical bird. The non-singing birds balance the singing birds like electrons and protons. This model might be mocking the strange and sometimes illogical models that were presented for the shape of an atom.

;Rutherford model
Ultimately, the tentative winner in the battle was the model of Thomson's student {{w|Ernest Rutherford}}, who discovered from electrostatic scattering experiments that the positive charge seemed to be concentrated in the center of the atom, and proposed his {{w|Rutherford model}}, or "planetary model", in 1911, where electrons orbit a very concentrated positive charge. This model has often been compared to the orbit of the planets around the sun, with the electrostatic attraction of the electrons and protons shaping the orbits, rather than gravity. This is the fourth model in the comic.

;Bohr model
The Rutherford model could not explain the discrete spectral lines in absorption and emission spectra. It also did not explain why electrons did not spiral in to the nucleus. {{w|Niels Bohr}} patched the model up by proposing that electrons could only exist in distinct "energy levels" at discrete distances from the nucleus. The 1913 "{{w|Bohr model}}", the fifth model shown here, was part of beginning quantum mechanics. Physics behaves differently at the small scale of atoms than the large scales we are more familiar with.

;Nunchuck model
Randall facetiously suggests a "{{w|Nunchaku|nunchuck}} model", the sixth model shown, of a packet of protons swinging a packet of electrons around. One can imagine a handle filled with electrons bonded by the strong nuclear force to a chain made of neutrons, bonded again by the strong nuclear force to a handle made of protons. The heavier protonic handle acts loosely as an orbital center as the electron-filled opposite handle swings wildly around it, attempting to resolve its electrostatic attraction within the restraints of its chain.

;Chadwick model
The next refinement was in the structure of the nucleus. Note that at this time, nobody thought of splitting up the nucleus into {{w|proton}}s and {{w|neutron}}s. But pretty soon people noticed that protons and neutrons existed; {{w|James Chadwick}}, who discovered the neutron, figured that the atom had a nucleus of neutrons and protons, along with a bunch of electrons orbiting around it in a Bohrish manner. This is what the layman today often thinks of as an atom, and is the seventh model shown here.

;538 Model
The eighth model shown is a made up "538 model," in 2008. {{w|FiveThirtyEight|538}} is a statistical analysis website that gained fame in 2008 for predicting every race but 2 correctly in the {{w|2008 United States presidential election|US presidential election}} and predicting every state and Obama's win in the 2012 election. Unlike most other media and polling institutes it saw a rather high probability of 29% for Trump to win the 2016 election by summing up the uncertainties in all the battle states. It has since been known for making mathematical models for everything; the model jokingly suggests that 538 has modeled and presumably made predictions about the atom. The {{w|pie chart}} shows the statistical composition of neutrons, protons and electrons, 38%, 31%, and 31% respectively. This could either be the average of a massive body with several isotopes or represent gallium-69, the most abundant {{w|Isotopes of gallium|isotope of gallium}}, with 31 protons, 31 electrons and 38 neutrons. FiveThirtyEight has previously been mentioned in several xkcd comics, including in [[477: Typewriter]], [[500: Election]], [[635: Locke and Demosthenes]], [[1130: Poll Watching]], [[1779: 2017]], and [[2002: LeBron James and Stephen Curry]]. It's appropriate to list the 538 model as a precursor to the quantum model, as it is a step towards considering the likelihood of different quantities of subatomic particles to be in different volumes of space, rather than considering them as strictly kinematic particles. The comic moves this development into 2008 in support of this joke, when it was actually made much earlier.

;Quantum model
But is the Chadwick model what scientists endorse today? No!
{{w|Maxwell's equations|The theory of electromagnetism}} says that accelerated charges, like the electrons circling, would lose energy emitted as electromagnetic waves and would quickly orbit into the nucleus. Bohr only postulated that this would not happen, but his model could not explain why. Another problem{{Citation needed}} is that atoms, even the hydrogen atom are not flat - which they would be, if a single electron orbited in a circular or elliptical trajectory (the circular motion of charge results in a magnetic moment; Otto Stern and Walter Gerlach {{w|Stern–Gerlach experiment|showed}} that independent from the direction of the measurement the angular momentum - for certain elements - always has the maximum positive or negative value, i.e. not only the radius, but also the angular momentum is quantized - and never zero. You cannot 'look at' the atom from above and 'see' the orbital circle. It always 'seems', as if you 'looked' from the side and would measure the full magnetic dipole. Stern and Gerlach actually saw the spin of an electron of the silver atom instead of the angular momentum, which is according to quantum mechanics 0).
Today (i.e. actually since 1926, 29 years after the discovery of the electron) physicists subscribe to a quantum model, which is the ninth model shown here. Instead of electrons with definite location and momentum (~speed), the parts of the atom are described by probability fields of possible locations and momentums. The changes in momentum probability normally cancel each other out, so there is no electromagnetic radiation. This is very abstract, and in the last model, the model is postulated to get so abstract that it is just a "small hard ball surrounded by math" model, the last model shown. This then is remarkably similar to the model we started out from, the "small hard ball model" (without the math).

;“Small hard ball surrounded by math” model
The picture for the "small ball surrounded by math" depicts a circle with several numbers around it. While the numbers seem to symbolize the "surrounding math" in a general sense, some of them suggest constants used in actual mathematical equations or other numbers related to the quantum model. The shapes and densities of the atomic orbitals are calculated with the {{w|Schrödinger equation}}, which is complex and difficult to solve. For this reason atoms are generally precisely considered in only very simple simulations, and the details of interactions of many atoms at large scales that form our daily lives are incredibly hard to precisely understand and predict on an atomic level. It comes down to "these roundish things we call atoms are moving around in these approximate ways obeying this complex equation with too many numbers involved in most situations to accurately model, so let's use a different, empirically derived formula that describes the behavior of the system in general."

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Number !! Explanation
|-
| 18 || Maximum number of electrons in the third (M) {{w|electron shell}}
|-
| 0.1 || 1/10th, a simple decimal. Could be the atomic radius in nm of elements like phosphorus, sulfur, and chlorine. Also part of the definition of the {{w|Decibel#Field_quantities_and_root-power_quantities|Decibel}} which is sometimes used when measuring fields
|-
| π || The {{w|Pi|number pi}} ratio of circumference of a circle to half its diameter. Pi is present in many physics equations, often as its double value (2π); also in the definition of the {{w|Planck_constant#Value|reduced Planck constant ħ (h bar)}} present in quantum-mechanical equations.
|-
| 173 || Could be the mass of the top quark in GeV/c². Or it could be the atomic number from which point {{w|Extended periodic table|supercritical atoms}} (the innermost electron shells of those supercritical atoms have such high binding energies that they {{w|Pair production|create electron-positron pairs from the vaccum}} and thus cannot be fully ionized) start. This atomic number can be calculated by a mathematical term and does not fit to a typical fundamental physical theory. Alternatively, a typo, and it should be 137, referring to the fine structure constant which value is approximately 1/137. As an interesting aside, the start of the supercritical atoms would be exactly the fine-structure-constant 137, if the nucleus is assumed to have zero size, and in the Bohr model of such an atom the speed of the innermost electron would reach light speed.
|-
| √2 || An irrational constant, the square root of two, which comes up frequently
|-
| 4i || A simple complex number; i is the principal square root of -1, 4i is the principal square root of -16
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[One large panel with a caption centered on top and ten small drawings in two rows. Each drawing has a description below it.]

:'''Models of the Atom'''
:over time

:[A somewhat imperfectly drawn circle.]
:1810 Small hard ball model

:[A rounded-corners trapezoid inside which there are four small plus signs and four small circles with minus signs inside them.]
:1904 Plum pudding model

:[A bigger circle, with four birds on the surface and music notes above.]
:1907 Tiny bird model

:[A small circle with dots circling around it, drawn with paths.]
:1911 Rutherford model

:[A circle with a plus sign with three circles around it, each with a dot.]
:1913 Bohr model

:[A nunchuck swinging, with the left stick filled with circles with plus signs and the right stick filled with circles with minus signs.]
:1928 Nunchuck model

:[A nucleus with three circles around it, each with a dot.]
:1932 Chadwick model

:[A pie chart, where a part of it has a circle, a part of it has a circle with a minus sign and a part of it has a circle with a plus sign.]
:2008 538 model

:[A small circle with clover-like orbitals around it and surrounded by two outer partly dashed circles.]
:Today Quantum model

:[A circle surrounded with numbers.]
:Numbers: 18, 0.1, π, 173, √2, 4i
:Future "Small hard ball surrounded by math" model

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]] 
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Animals]]

2100: Models of the Atom

2019-02-18T13:38:50Z

172.68.146.134: Gave reason for incomplete explanation

{{comic
| number = 2100
| date = January 18, 2019
| title = Models of the Atom
| image = models_of_the_atom.png
| titletext = J.J. Thompson won a Nobel Prize for his work in electricity in gases, but was unfairly passed over for his "An atom is plum pudding, and plum pudding is MADE of atoms! Duuuuude." theory.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a COMPLAINING EQUATION. Tiny bird model should be explained more. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This comic humorously describes the changing view of what an {{w|atom}} is. This has happened so much it seems that we never really knew what we are looking at, and there have been many competing theories aside from the mainstream ones we are taught in school. He lists major depictions in the history of our understanding of an atom, and adds a few humorous ones in to poke fun at how diverse, contentious, and in retrospect often foolhardy, this history has been.

;Small hard ball model
The first model shown, in 1810, is said to be a "small hard ball model." Around this time, {{w|John Dalton}} published his textbook ''A New System of Chemical Philosophy'' which linked existing ideas of atomic theory and chemical reactivity to produce a combined {{w|Law of multiple proportions}} which proposed that each chemical element is comprised of a single unique type of atom, and introduced the concept of {{w|Molecular mass|molecular weight}}. Dalton's theories form the basis of what is known today as {{w|stoichiometry}}, which underpins chemical reactivity. As atoms were considered at this time to be the smallest possible division of matter the scientific community thought of them as "hard round balls" of different sizes; thus the name described here. The "small hard ball" model is still commonly used when teaching and discussing chemical molecules which do not require the level of detail provided by more advanced models, with atoms represented as small, hard, round balls connected by sticks representing chemical bonds.

;Plum pudding model
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the study of these "atom" things faced a crisis: where would the newly discovered "{{w|electron}}s" go? In 1904, physicist {{w|J. J. Thomson}}, who discovered electrons, had an idea: maybe the electrons were small point charges moving around in a big mass of positive charge. This was the "{{w|plum pudding model}}", the second model on the comic, called this because people imagined the positively charged mass as a "{{w|Christmas pudding|plum pudding}}". (The title text references Thomson as well, along with the humorous observation that plum puddings themselves are made of atoms.) The problem with this approach is that same charges generally repel, resulting in the more mobile or unbalanced charges forming a surface shell around the others, attempting to escape, rather than being content to being randomly distributed among them.

;Tiny bird model
There were many competing ideas in the formative years of what-are-atoms-made-of-ology, [[Randall]] makes up a 1907 "tiny bird model."

;Rutherford model
Ultimately, the tentative winner in the battle was the model of Thomson's student {{w|Ernest Rutherford}}, who discovered from electrostatic scattering experiments that the positive charge seemed to be concentrated in the center of the atom, and proposed his {{w|Rutherford model}}, or "planetary model", in 1911, where electrons orbit a very concentrated positive charge. This model has often been compared to the orbit of the planets around the sun, with the electrostatic attraction of the electrons and protons shaping the orbits, rather than gravity. This is the fourth model in the comic.

;Bohr model
The Rutherford model could not explain the discrete spectral lines in absorption and emission spectra. It also did not explain why electrons did not spiral in to the nucleus. {{w|Niels Bohr}} patched the model up by proposing that electrons could only exist in distinct "energy levels" at discrete distances from the nucleus. The 1913 "{{w|Bohr model}}", the fifth model shown here, was part of beginning quantum mechanics. Physics behaves differently at the small scale of atoms than the large scales we are more familiar with.

;Nunchuck model
Randall facetiously suggests a "{{w|Nunchaku|nunchuck}} model", the sixth model shown, of a packet of protons swinging a packet of electrons around. One can imagine a handle filled with electrons bonded by the strong nuclear force to a chain made of neutrons, bonded again by the strong nuclear force to a handle made of protons. The heavier protonic handle acts loosely as an orbital center as the electron-filled opposite handle swings wildly around it, attempting to resolve its electrostatic attraction within the restraints of its chain.

;Chadwick model
The next refinement was in the structure of the nucleus. Note that at this time, nobody thought of splitting up the nucleus into {{w|proton}}s and {{w|neutron}}s. But pretty soon people noticed that protons and neutrons existed; {{w|James Chadwick}}, who discovered the neutron, figured that the atom had a nucleus of neutrons and protons, along with a bunch of electrons orbiting around it in a Bohrish manner. This is what the layman today often thinks of as an atom, and is the seventh model shown here.

;538 Model
The eighth model shown is a made up "538 model," in 2008. {{w|FiveThirtyEight|538}} is a statistical analysis website that gained fame in 2008 for predicting every race but 2 correctly in the {{w|2008 United States presidential election|US presidential election}} and predicting every state and Obama's win in the 2012 election. Unlike most other media and polling institutes it saw a rather high probability of 29% for Trump to win the 2016 election by summing up the uncertainties in all the battle states. It has since been known for making mathematical models for everything; the model jokingly suggests that 538 has modeled and presumably made predictions about the atom. The {{w|pie chart}} shows the statistical composition of neutrons, protons and electrons, 38%, 31%, and 31% respectively. This could either be the average of a massive body with several isotopes or represent gallium-69, the most abundant {{w|Isotopes of gallium|isotope of gallium}}, with 31 protons, 31 electrons and 38 neutrons. FiveThirtyEight has previously been mentioned in several xkcd comics, including in [[477: Typewriter]], [[500: Election]], [[635: Locke and Demosthenes]], [[1130: Poll Watching]], [[1779: 2017]], and [[2002: LeBron James and Stephen Curry]]. It's appropriate to list the 538 model as a precursor to the quantum model, as it is a step towards considering the likelihood of different quantities of subatomic particles to be in different volumes of space, rather than considering them as strictly kinematic particles. The comic moves this development into 2008 in support of this joke, when it was actually made much earlier.

;Quantum model
But is the Chadwick model what scientists endorse today? No!
{{w|Maxwell's equations|The theory of electromagnetism}} says that accelerated charges, like the electrons circling, would lose energy emitted as electromagnetic waves and would quickly orbit into the nucleus. Bohr only postulated that this would not happen, but his model could not explain why. Another problem{{Citation needed}} is that atoms, even the hydrogen atom are not flat - which they would be, if a single electron orbited in a circular or elliptical trajectory (the circular motion of charge results in a magnetic moment; Otto Stern and Walter Gerlach {{w|Stern–Gerlach experiment|showed}} that independent from the direction of the measurement the angular momentum - for certain elements - always has the maximum positive or negative value, i.e. not only the radius, but also the angular momentum is quantized - and never zero. You cannot 'look at' the atom from above and 'see' the orbital circle. It always 'seems', as if you 'looked' from the side and would measure the full magnetic dipole. Stern and Gerlach actually saw the spin of an electron of the silver atom instead of the angular momentum, which is according to quantum mechanics 0).
Today (i.e. actually since 1926, 29 years after the discovery of the electron) physicists subscribe to a quantum model, which is the ninth model shown here. Instead of electrons with definite location and momentum (~speed), the parts of the atom are described by probability fields of possible locations and momentums. The changes in momentum probability normally cancel each other out, so there is no electromagnetic radiation. This is very abstract, and in the last model, the model is postulated to get so abstract that it is just a "small hard ball surrounded by math" model, the last model shown. This then is remarkably similar to the model we started out from, the "small hard ball model" (without the math).

;“Small hard ball surrounded by math” model
The picture for the "small ball surrounded by math" depicts a circle with several numbers around it. While the numbers seem to symbolize the "surrounding math" in a general sense, some of them suggest constants used in actual mathematical equations or other numbers related to the quantum model. The shapes and densities of the atomic orbitals are calculated with the {{w|Schrödinger equation}}, which is complex and difficult to solve. For this reason atoms are generally precisely considered in only very simple simulations, and the details of interactions of many atoms at large scales that form our daily lives are incredibly hard to precisely understand and predict on an atomic level. It comes down to "these roundish things we call atoms are moving around in these approximate ways obeying this complex equation with too many numbers involved in most situations to accurately model, so let's use a different, empirically derived formula that describes the behavior of the system in general."

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Number !! Explanation
|-
| 18 || Maximum number of electrons in the third (M) {{w|electron shell}}
|-
| 0.1 || 1/10th, a simple decimal. Could be the atomic radius in nm of elements like phosphorus, sulfur, and chlorine. Also part of the definition of the {{w|Decibel#Field_quantities_and_root-power_quantities|Decibel}} which is sometimes used when measuring fields
|-
| π || The {{w|Pi|number pi}} ratio of circumference of a circle to half its diameter. Pi is present in many physics equations, often as its double value (2π); also in the definition of the {{w|Planck_constant#Value|reduced Planck constant ħ (h bar)}} present in quantum-mechanical equations.
|-
| 173 || Could be the mass of the top quark in GeV/c². Or it could be the atomic number from which point {{w|Extended periodic table|supercritical atoms}} (the innermost electron shells of those supercritical atoms have such high binding energies that they {{w|Pair production|create electron-positron pairs from the vaccum}} and thus cannot be fully ionized) start. This atomic number can be calculated by a mathematical term and does not fit to a typical fundamental physical theory. Alternatively, a typo, and it should be 137, referring to the fine structure constant which value is approximately 1/137. As an interesting aside, the start of the supercritical atoms would be exactly the fine-structure-constant 137, if the nucleus is assumed to have zero size, and in the Bohr model of such an atom the speed of the innermost electron would reach light speed.
|-
| √2 || An irrational constant, the square root of two, which comes up frequently
|-
| 4i || A simple complex number; i is the principal square root of -1, 4i is the principal square root of -16
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[One large panel with a caption centered on top and ten small drawings in two rows. Each drawing has a description below it.]

:'''Models of the Atom'''
:over time

:[A somewhat imperfectly drawn circle.]
:1810 Small hard ball model

:[A rounded-corners trapezoid inside which there are four small plus signs and four small circles with minus signs inside them.]
:1904 Plum pudding model

:[A bigger circle, with four birds on the surface and music notes above.]
:1907 Tiny bird model

:[A small circle with dots circling around it, drawn with paths.]
:1911 Rutherford model

:[A circle with a plus sign with three circles around it, each with a dot.]
:1913 Bohr model

:[A nunchuck swinging, with the left stick filled with circles with plus signs and the right stick filled with circles with minus signs.]
:1928 Nunchuck model

:[A nucleus with three circles around it, each with a dot.]
:1932 Chadwick model

:[A pie chart, where a part of it has a circle, a part of it has a circle with a minus sign and a part of it has a circle with a plus sign.]
:2008 538 model

:[A small circle with clover-like orbitals around it and surrounded by two outer partly dashed circles.]
:Today Quantum model

:[A circle surrounded with numbers.]
:Numbers: 18, 0.1, π, 173, √2, 4i
:Future "Small hard ball surrounded by math" model

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]] 
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Animals]]

Talk:1994: Repairs

2018-05-18T06:50:06Z

172.68.146.134:

I think the bot on here and xkcd OS might be broken[[Special:Contributions/172.69.22.200|172.69.22.200]] 04:46, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

The 2x version (found in srcset attribute) is complete though - https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/repairs_2x.png [[Special:Contributions/162.158.2.16|162.158.2.16]] 05:08, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

This comic almost seems meta. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.142.64|162.158.142.64]] 05:15, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

The improperly-sized version is probably intentional, given the changes indicated in the "2x" version and the results. The link to the "2x" version should be included in the explanation. Dissassembling the "original" version before moving it to trash would be likely to increase rather than decrease the size of the file in trash. [[User:The Dining Logician|The Dining Logician]] ([[User talk:The Dining Logician|talk]]) 06:02, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

The way I'm reading the graph, I think the dashed lines represent how Randall hoped things would go at each point in the repair effort, whereas the solid line represents the actual repair progress (or rather the lack of it). [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 12:55, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

This is the fifth comic in a row to need a trivia section in the explanation, starting from [[1990: Driving Cars]]. Has that happened before, and should it be mentioned in the trivia section? [[User:Herobrine|Herobrine]] ([[User talk:Herobrine|talk]]) 13:06, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
:Meta trivia? I don't feel that's needed... [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 16:07, 16 May 2018 (UTC)'

Sure, you risk breaking it permanently, but it is so worth it if you get the nobel prize.[[User:Linker|Linker]] ([[User talk:Linker|talk]]) 16:15, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

This graph illustrates why, except for general maintenance, I don't attempt repairs unless the thing is already in the doesn't work part of the vertical axis. That way the only way is up and failure is just the status quo. BTW the same graph applies to software as well as hardware, except the words, cut wires becomes "hack system files". [[User:RIIW - Ponder it|RIIW - Ponder it]] ([[User talk:RIIW - Ponder it|talk]]) 22:15, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Hey... I have a Captcha! --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.93.57|162.158.93.57]] 18:04, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

This comic is the story of my life [[Special:Contributions/172.68.86.46|172.68.86.46]] 00:33, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

: I have to agree! I have been on literally every branch of this chart at one time or another, sometimes multiple branches with the same repair. I must admit I have trouble accepting when I've reached the lower-right end of the chart though. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 01:04, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Added the incomplete comic joke. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.146.134|172.68.146.134]] 06:50, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

1994: Repairs

2018-05-18T06:48:08Z

172.68.146.134: /* Explanation */ In construction joke, and testing the re-captcha

{{comic
| number = 1994
| date = May 16, 2018
| title = Repairs
| image = repairs.png
| titletext = I was just disassembling it over the course of five hours so it would fit in the trash more efficiently.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete| CURRENTLY BEING REPAIRED. Lacks cross references/ analogies to similar cartoons, and the ups and downs in the graph need to be explained individually.}}

A graph depicts the sentiment created by the act of repairing something, depending on the time it took (x-axis) and ensuing result (y-axis). The degree of triumph and exultation (expressed in sentences in quotes inside the graph) is strongly enhanced by the time the operation takes, and is also positively correlated with the result (if any). Actions during the repair process are described in sentences without quotes.
The conclusions are rather optimistic; the most negative feeling expressed (after the maximum time of repair with minimum degree of success) is a threat against other objects that might have plans to break.

The graph shows a main path most of his fixes apparently usually take (solid line) along with some variations they sometimes take (dotted lines). Projects usually start out with items that mostly work, but have minor problems. Occasionally they just need a cleaning (first dotted line). If that doesn't work, he takes them partly apart, and then there are times he's able to put them back together and get them to either work completely (one branch of a dotted line) or get it back to the condition it started out in (other branch of a dotted line), at which point he doesn't tempt fate by continuing, knowing what's likely to happen if he continues messing with it. When it's still not working, he takes it apart more completely, starts doing less reversible things like cutting wires, and finally starts watching YouTube videos hopefully showing the right way to fix it, or at least how others fixed it. After all that, there can be several results: One dotted line shows it's fully fixed and he feels victorious and proud that all the hard work payed off. The next dotted line is when he gets it partially working again, and gives up, satisfied to at least not have completely destroyed it. The third, main path result is total failure, which he could take as a personal failure but to which he instead responds with humor by admonishing the rest of his possessions to not break otherwise the same total destruction might happen to them.

The title text shows another excuse for failure. Nobody would spend five hours being a trash compactor.

A similar sentiment was expressed in [[349: Success]].

==Transcript==
:[Caption above the diagram:]
:'''<big>How well something works</big>'''
:After I decide to fix it

:[The comic shows a graph with a solid curve that decreases in 8 different sized steps from the top left to the bottom right. The X-axis shows time passes and gives the time from zero to five hours with 6 ticks with labels beneath. The Y-axis shows how well something works with 8 ticks, but only four of them labeled.]

:Works great
:Has minor problems
:Doesn't work

:Will never work again

:0 hours   1 hour   2 hours   3 hours   4 hours   5 hours

:[The solid line has six labels with eight arrow pointing to different sections, two times the same label has two arrows pointing to different sections the first two places where the lines takes a step down, and the second to two plateaus on either side of a step. In total the arrows point four times on both steps and plateaus. Both the first and final plateau has a dot has added to the line, and the arrows point to those. Above the solid line there are three dotted lines going up from three plateaus just before the solid line takes a step down, the last two of these lines split up in two, with one going higher. At the end of each of these five dotted lines there is a sentence spoken. The solid line begins at the 2nd tick on the Y-Axis and finishes at the last. The three dotted lines going up ends up at the 1. tick on the Y-axis, for the last two there are also a line ending at the 2nd tick and 3rd tick respectively. Only the first label being above the first tick on the X-axis but the last three labels are all above the last tick on the X-Axis. Here is a list of all the labels in chronological order according to the position on the X-axis. For those that has the same time stamp the top one will be mentioned first. Those at the end of a line are indented:]
:I start trying to fix it
::"It just needed cleaning!"
:Take it apart
::"Fixed it!"
::"Well, at least it's not ''more'' broken than when I started."
:Take it apart more
:Watch YouTube instructional videos
:Take a deep breath and cut wires
::"That was heroic and I deserve a Nobel prize."
::"Well, it ''sort'' of works now."
:(Turn to other possessions)
::"...And let that be a lesson to you."

==Trivia==

The initial version of the normal sized image at xkcd was [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/archive/d/de/20180516052839%21repairs.png broken]. This was later repaired, with the result that this comic now works great.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Line graphs]]