explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:2736: Only Serifs

2023-02-11T13:47:25Z

172.70.114.198: News related?

first two letters are "A" and "R" I think [[Special:Contributions/172.71.167.10|172.71.167.10]] 04:35, 11 February 2023 (UTC)Bumpf

It's AaBbCcDd. Most likely in Caslon, based on the uppercase A. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.149|172.68.174.149]] 04:54, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

So much for a hidden message. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.238.22|172.68.238.22]] 05:05, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

If we've come to this page for an explanation, we probably don't know what a "solum-serif font" is. update the transcript with something more widely known? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.65.224|172.69.65.224]] 05:42, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
:Agreed, enthusiastically! Someone trying to show off, Google doesn't even know what it means, it found ONE result, which is a font of curved corners someone made (when I put "solum-serif" in quotes, to not allow Google to just search one or the other). But while I was Googling someone fixed it before I could, LOL! Which is weird as it's past midnight here in the Eastern time zone. :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:56, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

There was a whole thing on Wikipedia about formatting the f symbol for an arbitrary function. One camp held that f is just f, it always is and always was and if you italicize f in a san-serif font, you get an oblique ''f'' but if you italicize f in a serif font, you get a proper italic version, which I'm not sure how to display here. The italic f resembles ƒ, a character called the "hooked f," which is technically an oblique f with a descender ("hook"). That symbol has been used for florins, but sometimes it is also used to imitate the italic f to represent functions, because it has the descender in all environments. But Wikipedia uses a san-serif script, while most mathematical literature uses a serif script. However, it renders expressions in LaTeX with serif fonts and therefore these equations get an f with a descender. So some people were arguing that given this environment, the ƒ character was practically superior, even if it was conceptually wrong, because it most closely resembled the formatted LaTeX expressions. And on and on with the back and forth. I'm glad they eventually settled on just using f for f, like they use g for g and h for h, but still, it was amusingly nitpicky. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.100.50|172.70.100.50]] 07:58, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
:What you listed as resembling italic f looks on my system like ⨍. There are lots of fun variations (some unrelated, just similar looking): ∫⨎ʄ∮∬∰⨏ƒʆᶘᔑ [[User:Fabian42|Fabian42]] ([[User talk:Fabian42|talk]]) 08:48, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

The title text teases the idea of a font made by adding the Times New Roman serifs to Comic Sans, and now I actually want to see such a cursed font. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.241.237|108.162.241.237]] 11:03, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

I think Caslon is correct:
[https://ibb.co/J2WhP1g Caslon] [https://ibb.co/MG77JMX Overlay] [https://ibb.co/3yQtqbN Low Opacity Overlay]
via [http://www.identifont.com/identify?58+.+5J+1JU+3YB+3RZ+35YX+94+JIA+58C+97+22X+8R8+1JY+2Z3A+6ZR+3Q+5BU+9J+1L0+76P+8Z+1QN+7UF+DG+5QE+J+JPK+8C+99+PAE+2AA6+2ZI+8X+8W+8J+1KS+JI6+2Z36+79+8E+53K+2E+1KI+8N+7VS+7S+2C6+1U6+8A+8R0+8F+3WO+2ZGL+1LA+7G+1QY+8B+A0 questions] in Identifont. If someone can add these to the wiki, please do. [[User:DragonDave|DragonDave]] ([[User talk:DragonDave|talk]]) 12:55 11 February 2023 (UTC)

I wonder if this is related to the US State Department dropping Times Roman in favor of Calibri, under the argument that the latter is easier to read. --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.198|172.70.114.198]] 13:47, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Talk:2734: Electron Color

2023-02-11T05:11:30Z

172.70.114.198:

Electrons have no color?! BUt lIgHTnIng strIKeS aRe YEllOw, aND LigHTNing IS MaDe uP of eLECTrOns.[[Special:Contributions/172.71.254.115|172.71.254.115]] 22:43, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
: Actually most colors are emitted by electrons orbiting atoms after absorbing light. The color electrons emit depend on their kinetic energy and available places they can travel, a tiny bit similar to how things change color as they get hotter, but more extreme and general. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.198|172.70.114.198]]
: I'm pretty sure lighting strikes are white. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 20:58, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

It may refer to the Greek etymology of the word "electron". Originally it meant amber, a yellow gem. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.118.146|172.68.118.146]] 23:20, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
:But amber isn't yellow - it's... amber. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.222|172.70.85.222]] 10:40, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

I can't do formatting, I'm new. Sorry! {{unsigned|No Idea If There's A Character Limit LMAO}}

To me, this is 1000% building on the idea of debating the colors of school subjects. I've added a bit of explanation to the text about it. I used my own color associations & reasons (science = green, history = red) as an example, and I'm sure people will disagree with me. Leave your color/subject associations in a reply to this comment, could be a fun little debate! (also, English = blue)
[[User:Zman350x|Zman350x]] ([[User talk:Zman350x|talk]]) 23:50, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
: SocStud is yellow, Math is red, Science is green?, ELA is gray, French is blue, and orange is my least favorite subject out of the rest. I have gotten into many arguments with my friends.
:[[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.157|172.70.230.157]] 00:10, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
:: Science = Green (green flask bubbling)
:: Social Studies = Blue (blue and green globe, green is taking)
:: Math = Red (math is reliable, red is a strong color so i associate it with reliability)

:: English = Yellow (all other colors are taken)
:: Also electrons are blue
::[[User:Iffy|Iffy]] ([[User talk:Iffy|talk]]) 23:53, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
::: Hm! I've never heard of school subjects having any assigned colors; much less any debate about it! If we're identifying them by the folders they're kept in, my favorite subject was Ferrari & my least favorite was Porsche.
::: [[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 04:41, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
:::: I don't recall colour-coded (UK) schoolbooks, in particular (except the "red pirate, green pirate, blue pirate, etc" stories for young kids, the red pirate like only rubies, the green one emeralds, the blue probably sapphires, and had clothing/etc that matched, naturally), but I had (have still, somewhere!) a collection of Usborne Encyclopaedias at home with a veritable rainbow of colours. Mathematics was yellow, I think, Computers a shade of blue, one of the Red or off-Red (slightly pinker, but still deep red) might have been Physics (had geophysics in it, IIRC), I think History was a light-green. I'm sure I never had the whole set, but I had enough to arrange in as close to Richard Of York order as I felt most content to do, when on the bookshelf.
::::: ''Insert: moot now, but I dug them up. Pinky-Red: Science; Red: Universe; Orange: Prehistoric Life; Yellow(-verging on amber, but faded): History; Yellow(-unfaded): Mathematics; Light-Green: Geography; Green-Blue: Nature; Dark-Blue: Computers And Electronics. Not all have publication dates in them, but (e.g.) the latter is 1983. So you can imagine how up-to-date the contents are not... ;) '' [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.17|172.70.91.17]] 16:15, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
:::: Obviously there ''were'' colours involved with the school stuff. I'm sure different levels of SPMG (Scottish Primary Maths Group?) workbooks were colour-coded, perhaps more for the benefit of the teacher, though the later {{w|School Mathematics Project|SMP}} ones were probably more just identified as "13a", "5b", etc, to work through various sub-subjects and the increasingly advanced techniques thereof, perhaps coloured with highlights only to not be boring black-on-white monochrome covers.
:::: And there's so many other colour-classifications that I instituted for myself, over the years, showing just how useful a hue can be to represent and differentiate a class of something, such as various 3M-style "post-it"-like arrow stickers stuck into the pages of a book for quick reference to all instances of one particular thing or another. For which I suppose I'm grateful to not having any notable form of colour-blindness, to limit my options. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.114|172.70.91.114]] 08:20, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
:::: Personally, I've always thought that English is red, Math is blue, Sciences are green, History is yellow, and "personal events" are orange.
::::::This is completely BS. This is about the diagrams used for drawing atoms where colors are used for different elementary particles. And Randall clearly explains that they do not have real color. And the jokes that people still have feelings for what colors are chosen based on the conventions used where people first learned about atoms. Have removed the color on subjects completely as it has nothing to do with this comic. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:43, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
::::::PS you cannot be more than 100% on anything :-D --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:46, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

I believe this comic was made in response to a book talk Randall did in Seattle, where this question was actually asked to him in person! If you want to hear it yourself, someone recorded the talk here: https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/xjuc4i/a_recording_and_autotranscript_of_randalls_latest/
[[Special:Contributions/172.71.142.6|172.71.142.6]] 00:45, 7 February 2023 (UTC) A random new user
: Was it the dorky randall with red hair or the photogenic one with brown hair and blue eyes or am I going wildly mad? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.198|172.70.114.198]] 00:51, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Am I crazy, I always thought of electrons as blue to contrast with the protons which are red[[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.89|172.70.211.89]] 04:47, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
:You're all crazy! Elections are 2817.9am & protons are 1.5am. "Yellow" is over 557,000,000,000am! Maybe you've all got your displays' color gamut set too low? ;S
:[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 09:18, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
::I have also seen protons as red and neutons as white and electron as blue in the diagrams I remember. Never yellow electrons. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:43, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
:::I'm not entirely sure about proton and electrons, but neutrons were black. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 20:58, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

"This comic appears to "elevate" that discussion to the college level." - considering that the students are considerably smaller than the teacher (notice the heads), I seriously doubt this is meant to be set in a college classroom - high school at most, IMHO. Also, "One common debate among schoolchildren is over the "color" of various subjects. Because of the brightly colored folders commonly used to separate subjects in the binder of a young student, the students tend to associate those colors with the subject." - well, not in any school I ever attended, nor with any school class I've ever worked with. I'd be inclined to dispute that this is at all common. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.46.85|172.70.46.85]]
: I agree that this is probably not supposed to be college-level, but the color-subject coordination is definitely real (albeit not a very common topic of debate). [[Special:Contributions/162.158.90.38|162.158.90.38]] 08:01, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
::I find it hard to believe Randall is referencing colors of school subjects without alluding to them in any way; to the contrary, I feel fairly certain he's directly referencing the various colors assigned to electrons, protons, quarks, etc, in diagrammatic illustrations of atomic structure. I think the whole first paragraph is way off base (though interesting tangentially).
::[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 09:18, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
:::I agree with all above here and have corrected the explanation to school class and pupils and diagram colors removing school subject color completely! --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:43, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
::::Was it also worth removing the synesthesia bit? Entirely unrelated to school-subject organisation-by-colour that I also think was an {{w|Red herring|incarnadine ''clupea harengus''}}, but very possibly relevent to "but I happen think it's obvious that <concept> is a <hue> thing!"... For consideration, or as a side-note, whether or not you restore that possible reference. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.203|172.71.242.203]] 10:42, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Electrons are blue, right? In all my textbooks (Germany) electrons are blue. Is this a generally accepted addition? [[Special:Contributions/198.41.242.166|198.41.242.166]] 07:13, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
: I stopped the explanation saying that electrons were (by implication, ''solely'') yellow. If green is used for a nucleon (neutron? red being proton?), they might choose blue for an electron, as contrast. Or black dot or white (black-outlined) small circle to contrast with whatever the nucleons are with their much bigger circles clumped in the middle.
: But, given other regular colour-conventions, I could imagine yellow as a popular 'electron' colour. Either in its own right (influencing the choices given to the other things depicted) or as the main obviously remaining option (the other things having been decided upon first). Horses for courses. And I can imagine cultural/national differences (e.g. what colours your household wiring was set up as, at least before EU standardisation but then red and black still exists in the mindset, despite blue and brown, or whatever it might have been) if not localised 'linguistic puns' to make some choices more 'obvious' than others. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.114|172.70.91.114]] 08:20, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
::Indeed, yellow is sometimes indicative of electrical hazard, as opposed to red for flame... So many ways to draw associations!
::[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 09:18, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
:::Yes blue electrons, red protons and white neutrons are probably common on Europe, it is in Denmark. I'm a physicist and word with radioactive isotopes and teach about them. My drawings are red protons and white neutrons and blue electrons. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:43, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

I don’t know what Ms. Lenhart is talking about. Electrons are blue, protons are red, and neutrons are definitely grey. Not sure how to sign my comment tho. Oh well {{unsigned ip|172.70.174.115|13:00, 7 February 2023}}
:(You sign your comments with a string of <code><nowiki>~~~~</nowiki></code> (as suggested by the comment at the top of many a comic-discussion page, when you start to edit it)... or you wait for someone else to do what I just did for you, but that's more effort than the four tildes on your part.)
:For what it's worth, I'm mostly with you. Red and grey/dark-grey/black in the centre, as you say. Light blue (or yer actual electric blue?) or (bluish?) white electrons. Depends what colour-pallettes are available to the illustrator/modeller, I imagine, and what else needs a distinct colour alongside the basic trio (e.g. yellow fission/fusion "sparky-flame energy things" or general labelling stuff). [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.246|162.158.158.246]] 13:15, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
::I did some data collection on image searches for atom diagrams, and yes, the defacto color standard is protons red, neutrons grey (less commonly yellow or green), and electrons blue.
::I like this because it gives opposing colors to the opposing positive and negative charges, (the same color choices as the traditional magnet north and south ends, likely not coincidentally,) and a neutral color to the uncharged neutron.
::Which makes me think that when Lenhart says "electrons are yellow" she does not mean in the diagram sense, but rather in the sense "if you make an electron big enough to see, it is yellow".
::[[User:SomeDee|SomeDee]] ([[User talk:SomeDee|talk]]) 16:58, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
:electrons are green. y'all are trippin [[Special:Contributions/172.71.154.159|172.71.154.159]] 17:27, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
::definitely green. Have none of you ever used a transmission electron microscope? Or an oscilloscope? Green shine everywhere! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.95.22|162.158.95.22]] 09:01, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

I made a survey for this: https://forms.gle/Pu5mkEtBZPUZ6dbb8
[[User:RamenChef|RamenChef]] ([[User talk:RamenChef|talk]]) 18:03, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Electrons are yellow, protons are red, and neutrons are gray. End of discussion.
:What about roses and violets? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.172|172.71.242.172]] 10:49, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

{{w|Quark_(dairy_product)|Quark}} is white, or off-white.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.96|172.70.85.96]] 10:47, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
:I find this comic puzzling. Virtually all colors we see are due to electrons (transitions between different states in atoms, molecules, and solids), so saying they are "too small to interact with visible light" is quite incorrect. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.130|172.69.134.130]] 18:48, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
::Yeah. They totally interact with visible light. But only with light of specific frequency matching the energy difference between some electron and free higher orbit it can move to. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 19:00, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

light is insensitive to features which are much smaller than the optical wavelength.

((Snipped))
: What language is this? This is and English site, so please write in English. Google Translate detects it as Hungarian, but leaves almost all of the words untranslated. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.90.38|162.158.90.38]] 04:31, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
:: It's just a past troll. Who has several times said they've finished trolling, or promised to finish trolling in a given instance if only someone would include some word or other in their next edit. (Spoiler: they never stopped, so we just have to deal with it and carry on.)
:: The 'language' was worked out (it's a conlang that's a mix of actual non-English root words and 'cod Latin'-type transforms, essentially) but I'm not wasting braincells on its inanity or going to make it a 'mainstream thing'. They do worse things to vandalise the site, but that doesn't mean that the above can be left unchallenged as relatively benign.
:: My advice is to ignore it (or revert it away, if nobody else does that quickly enough). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.222|172.70.162.222]] 09:14, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
:::What is a conlang and what is cod Latin? [[Special:Contributions/172.68.34.45|172.68.34.45]] 15:12, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
:::: "Conlang" means a {{w|Constructed language}}. And I think they actually meant {{w|Dog Latin}} or (more likely, in context) {{w|Pig Latin}}, though "Cod" does {{wiktionary|cod#Etymology_3|sometimes mean}} a fake/imitation of something, so Pig Latin might perhaps be described as a cod-Latin. Or confusingly misrefered to as such, by accident... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.222|172.70.162.222]] - ooo... I'm routing through the ''exact'' same IP, which is rare enough when I edit my own submissions. Above editor is probably with the same ISP as me. ;)

The might not have a color not even a quark color, but they do have a flavour. The are quantum flavoured: Electro
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.94.200|162.158.94.200]] 16:06, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Ohoh, Ms. Lenhart, where were you in undergrad? Whenevery you notice that something has interacted with light, it's electrons. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.86.135|162.158.86.135]] 09:01, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

The consensus on Quora points toward the colour of electrons being neutral. [https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-colour-of-an-electron] --[[User:Annatars Gift|Annatars Gift]] ([[User talk:Annatars Gift|talk]]) 10:46, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Talk:2734: Electron Color

2023-02-07T00:51:39Z

172.70.114.198:

2723: Outdated Periodic Table

2023-01-12T03:04:39Z

172.70.114.198:

{{comic
| number = 2723
| date = January 11, 2023
| title = Outdated Periodic Table
| image = outdated_periodic_table_2x.png
| imagesize = 360x350px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Researchers claim to have synthesized six additional elements in the second row, temporarily named 'pentium' through 'unnilium'.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by BERYLLIUM-BASED LIFE - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
Some {{w|Chemical elements|elements}} do not occur naturally on earth and have to be {{w|Synthetic element|synthesized}}. Those elements are generally excluded from {{w|periodic table|the periodic table}} until they have been synthesized (and are no longer theoretical). At the beginning of the universe, the temperature, and thus the kinetic energy, was too high for matter to form big nuclei. It took some time (how long is not accurately defined) before parts of the universe had cooled down sufficiently for further elements to form naturally. In the first minutes after the Big Bang, only hydrogen, deuterium, helium and lithium nuclei were present. If a scientific textbook had somehow been written at that time (which is highly unlikely, as paper and ink consist of heavier elements such as carbon), it would be able to describe only a very few elements based on observations.

Because scientific textbooks do not update themselves after being published,{{citation needed}} one can determine the age of a scientific textbook by checking how many elements are present in the textbook's periodic table.

Interestingly, despite helium being one of the first elements to exist, it did not appear in the earliest period tables. Because the noble gasses do not react chemically, they were unknown to human scientists until the late 19th century.

The title text refers to how yet-undiscovered elements are given a {{w|Systematic element name|temporary name according to how many protons they have}}, consisting of Greek and Latin roots. Here the numbers are very low ("pentium" being based on "pent" which means "five") because only four elements had been discovered at the time of publication. {{w|Pentium}} is also the name of a series of microprocessors launched by Intel in the 1990s. The term "unnilium" is a description of the digits of ten, i.e. 1 0, using the numerical roots established by convention. In reality, had neon once been a hypothetical element, it would more likely have been called something along the lines of "decium". Of course, how the early life created particle accelerators is unknown.

The title text also suggests that there were scientists half an hour after the Big Bang who managed to synthesize these heavier elements. However, said scientists probably didn't use the same naming system as us.{{citation needed}}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:Figure 6.14
:The periodic table of the elements
:H Hydrogen
:He Helium
:Li Lithium
:Be Beryllium
:[Caption below the panel]:
:You can spot an outdated science textbook by checking the bottom of the periodic table for missing elements. For example, mine was published half an hour after the Big Bang.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Chemistry]]
[[Category:Cosmology]]

2722: Etymonline

2023-01-10T00:58:09Z

172.70.114.198:

{{comic
| number = 2722
| date = January 9, 2023
| title = Etymonline
| image = etymonline_2x.png
| imagesize = 458x280px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = NOTE TO FUTURE ETYMONLINGUISTS: Our best guess is that 'blimp' is onomatopoeia. The 'B-Limp' thing is a folk etymology.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BLIMP - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This comic appears to be an entry from a dictionary posted in the far future (at least the year 2384 based on the textual reference). The entry defines the term "etymonline" in a way that makes it clear that it has simply supplanted the word "etymology" in the intervening centuries. This is a reference to the internet service known as [https://www.etymonline.com/ Etymonline] or the Online Etymology Dictionary, and implies that Etymonline as a source became synonymous with the concept of etymology. This may have been because Etymonline grew into such a comprehensive and reputable source that it truly deserved the all-encompassing identification with the concept of etymology; alternatively, humans' efficiency of language removed the original term in favor of the name for the tool they used when they needed to learn a word's origin. All we know is that the origin of the "modern" term is simply cited as a modification of a more archaic English form, without any mention of the digital resource. This is a mild failure on the part of the dictionary entry, since the suffix "online" should at least have been noted as the modifier resulting in the current form, even if a discussion of the specific internet service was not relevant in the entry.

The title text plays with this (replacing "etymologist" with the derived term "etymonlinguist"). It is a comment from some present-day scholar attempting to communicate with the author of the futuristic entry by clarifying what they know about the etymology of the word "blimp". The comment references two theories of the etymology (that it is simply onomatopoeia or that it was constructed from the phrase "Type B - Limp") and rejects the latter as a folk etymology (consistent with the explanation on [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/blimp wiktionary]). It is interesting to note that the current [https://www.etymonline.com/word/blimp Etymonline entry] only lists the B-Limp origin and does not mention onomatopoeia, though it does at least acknowledge that the origin is "obscure".

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

[picture of what appears to be a dictionary definition, askew in the frame to imply that it is printed on physical paper rather than a digital resource. The text reads as follows]

'''etymonline''' [pronunciation guide]
The history and derivation of a word. Altered form of English ''etymology'', from Old French ''ethimologie'', from Latin ''etymologia''. Quotation: "Before it came to refer to Jupiter's sky-cities, the term 'blimp' was used for 20th century Earth airships, but its etymonline before that is unknown." –''Jovian Blimps: A History'' (2384)

[Caption below comic]
Ironically, the popularity of Etymonline eventually caused the loss of the word "etymology" from English

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Language]]

Talk:2712: Gravity

2022-12-17T03:40:32Z

172.70.114.198:

Whatever image is supposed to be in the center isn't showing up for me! D: Tried on both Safari and Chrome but it gives me the little broken picture icon. Hopefully it's fixed soon! (The comic's been up for about 10 minutes going by when the bot updated this page.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.117|172.70.126.117]] 22:28, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

: The center image is trying to load this link, but there's nothing there: https://xkcd.com/tile/ship1/ship_gliding_2x.png. I hope that gets fixed soon. The "ship" seems to rotate a bit unpredictably over time. At first I thought it was responding to my mouse movements, but I don't think so anymore. [[User:Orion205|Orion205]] ([[User talk:Orion205|talk]]) 22:34, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

: Ah, the center image is controlled by the javascript, of course: https://xkcd.com/2712/comic.js. So this is some sort of interactive comic? [[User:Orion205|Orion205]] ([[User talk:Orion205|talk]]) 22:36, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

: Okay, left/right arrow keys seem to control the rotation. I'll check back in later in hopes of seeing the ship so I have some idea what the point of it all is. [[User:Orion205|Orion205]] ([[User talk:Orion205|talk]]) 22:39, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

: And now it's working. You fly a little spaceship around the little planet. Luckily you have shields if you slam into the ground too hard. [[User:Orion205|Orion205]] ([[User talk:Orion205|talk]]) 22:43, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

: Catch the cannonball for a spaceship upgrade. Also, not so easy to find a stable orbit around this little planet. [[User:Orion205|Orion205]] ([[User talk:Orion205|talk]]) 22:49, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

You can transform the ship into a different (seems faster to me) one by running into the last cannon ball.
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.241.249|108.162.241.249]]

Rough summary: The comic is an interactive space flight game, starting landed on an origin planet. The planet is static, and the player starts in a ship controlled by WASD or Directional keys. The ship can go up and down, and rotate left and right. Game simulates orbits and gravity, making navigation tricky. Around the player ship there are dots which indicate nearby planets - there are numurous planets, each with what seem to be drawings related to the What If book. Within the browser, planets are loaded in PNG format by chunk, names formatted as "planet_0_0" with numbers incrementing as grid co-ordinates. Planets and objects found: "origin" "europa", "road", "b612". NOTE: Several hazards exist, such as a field of black holes - if flown into, the ship can become stuck if let to be pulled close to the surface, locking in place. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.230|172.70.110.230]] 23:13, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

: Within browser dev console exists the objects "Ship" and "Comic", the latter containing a list of all objects and coordinates, as well as various setting for the game physics and settings. Comic contains the sub-object "Voyager", which contains the details and settings for the player ship, including location, speed, etc. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.230|172.70.110.230]] 23:13, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

:: There are 5 ship types in the game code, each with their own consumable transformative found in the world. The ship alternatives are (ship1, ship2, ship-tintin, ship-figure, ship-soccerball). These can be changed with console command [Comic.ship = "ship1"]. Note: At current, "ship-soccerball" returns an error and does not load correctly. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.230|172.70.110.230]] 23:13, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

:: The "ship.shields" is a boolean value that defaults to true, and when set to false, makes the game behave in a lunar lander mode (bad landing black screens the whole page). The "ship.engine" types I see in the code are "warp" (very fast speeds) and "infinite improbability drive" (teleports to 'improbable' places). Default engine is "standard", but it seems any value that is not the former two has the same effect. --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.254.165|172.70.254.165]] 23:32, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

: In addition to Europa, the space road, and B-612, there is the "Edge of the Universe" (complete with Milliways restaurant nearby), a... tree (which is extremely hard to land on), a planet populated by the characters from Dinosaur Comics (and the main cast of Jurassic Park), the USS Enterprice (NCC 1701-C), and likely quite a bit more. Orbital mechanics make it tough to land on the smaller targets. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.254.46|172.71.254.46]] 23:07, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

:: Plus what appears to be Earth, complete with the LHC. There's a 2nd "cannonball" there for an additional ship upgrade, but at the time I found it, that graphic was unavailable. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.232|172.70.126.232]] 23:15, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

: I went out a long ways away, and eventually found The Great Attractor. It attracts really hard. I couldn't leave the surface. (I wasn't able to leave the center of Europa either, though, so, not saying much.) There are also some terrifying black holes (a binary system?), though something's weird about their gravity; you kinda bounce off of them a quarter screen away or so? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.77|108.162.216.77]] 23:10, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
:: I *think* thats a wormhole, you go in one and then out the other. I got stuck right between them. Speaking of getting stuck, there is a bug where if you hit a planet with enough gravity fast enough, the ship is inside the planet. Holding W makes you go backwards (or at least towards the center maybe?) and you can get all the way to the other end of the planet where you slow down a lot, but can eventually leave. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.82.166|172.70.82.166]] 23:19, 16 December 2022 (UTC)Bumpf

::There's one planet that's supposed to be the "remnant of the sun", is that what you mean with The Great Attractor? (It has a bridge on it with a coin(?) blocking part of the way, and a space ship actively crashing into its surface, drawn as several frames.) You can leave that by skidding over the surface like a skipping stone to gather momentum - it's tricky, due to various obstacles, but possible! (It's possible you need two ship power-ups?! If they're indeed power-ups and not just aesthetic changes, I didn't pay attention.)

:::No, it's labeled "The Great Attractor". It's big and white and has strong gravity. Lemme see if I have a screenshot. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.25|108.162.216.25]] 00:20, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
:::Here: https://github.com/Erhannis/random_garbage/blob/main/Screenshot%20from%202022-12-16%2017-47-48.png [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.25|108.162.216.25]] 00:24, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

::Screenshot of [https://imgur.com/a/NZulBlb the Enterprise] and [https://imgur.com/2VSZYp7 Dinosaur Comics planet]. Sorry for the broken image in the middle, I picked up two powerups and [https://xkcd.com/2712/tile/ship-soccerball/ship_landing_down_2x.png my current ship image is broken]. -(pinkgothic) [[Special:Contributions/172.68.110.143|172.68.110.143]] 23:22, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
:::[https://i.imgur.com/fLU1cWy.png Dog Park planet] [[Special:Contributions/172.71.254.114|172.71.254.114]] 23:28, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Using a tablet (no keyboard, but seems to respond to touch), controls are confusing. Presuming that touching bottom left activates left-rotate and touching bottom right does right-rotate (can't see the presumably white-lije controls over the white planet) but I can't get ''thrust'' anything but 'reverse' into the planet centre. No obvious top-edge hotspots, either. Maybe I need to do a "You will not go to space today" and then reverse ''upward''... BRB, after a bit more testing, though... [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.185|172.69.79.185]] 23:39, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
:Ok, the next go went 'better'. The browser keeps wanting to load "simplified content", but if I ignore that I can get full-screen, at one point I changed rocket-type (no idea how, can't do it again) and I ''easily'' get off the planet (hard to thrust just enough to get to the Hooke comment/cannon), with plenty of targets coming in range (but cannot slow down enough to not have it glitch and rebuild a totally new set of targets that I never can reach). Will try desktop version when I'm next on a suitable one... Looks to be a lot of interesting content. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.30|162.158.74.30]] 23:53, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Using the developer console, the ship can be teleported to different coordinates via console command [Comic.voyager.pos.x = 0, Comic.voyager.pos.y = -1461], provided here with start location coordinates. This can be used for manual navigation to known coordinates. List of locations per game code added below, append landing X,Y to each as determined. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.230|172.70.110.230]] 23:42, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

b612: [5280,-7601] dogplanet: [2598,-23168] earth: [33803,-32974] enterprise: [1898,-61215] europa: [24930,8022] goodhart: [-23372,5928] greatattractor: [-594782,248510] japanmoon: [x,y] maw1: [x,y] maw2: [x,y] maw3: [x,y] maw4: [x,y] maw5: [x,y] maw6: [x,y] maw7: [x,y] maw8: [x,y] maw9: [x,y] maw10: [x,y] maw11: [x,y] maw13: [x,y] maw14: [x,y] nojapan: [x,y] origin: [0, -1461] peeler: [x,y] pigeons: [x,y] present: [x,y] remnant: [x,y] roads: [x,y] soupiter: [x,y] steerswoman: [x,y] sun: [x,y]

Note: For ease of teleportation, reference the ''Comic.planetRects'' array and use the first two numbers as X,Y. This will get the ship close enough to the object to then land and determine a landed location, via ''Comic.voyager.pos''

In your developer console, enter <code>window.ship.engines = 'infinite improbability drive'</code> and pressing up will randomly teleport you to interesting places.
<code>window.ship.engines = 'warp'</code> will let you escape normally inescapable objects.

Unfortunately, the infinite improbability drive will sometimes result in an object's image and geometry failing to load. The same bug can occur with a manual teleportation too close to an object. For convenience, here are a list of coordinates which put you relatively close to various locations, but far enough away to trigger the object's loading:
'''Major Locations:''' origin: (0, -1500); dogplanet: (2480, -23484); earth: (28720, -36912); europa: (26360, 984); goodhart: (-26600, 2424); greatattractor: (-594000, 247952); qwantz: (22120, -51788); remnant: (39240, -9648); soupiter: (-16000, 16032); steerswoman: (-70140, 2952); sun: (-29900, -32352); Bubble Universe: (5000,21000);
'''Smaller Locations:''' b612: (5220, -8424); japanmoon: (-11860, 10576); nojapan: (-15360, 10676); enterprise: (2020, -61904); outside: (250,28500); peeler: (-18540, -2264); pigeons: (-18040, 3956); present: (45640, 36816); roads: (26480, 23500); light mode toggle: (1500,-200000)
'''Black Holes:''' maw1: (-63152, 17130); maw2: (-60422, 16638); maw3: (-55950, 15508); maw4: (-59092, 14918); maw5: (-59582, 14238); maw6: (-58656, 14126); maw7: (-59400, 13828); maw8: (-58330, 13296); maw9: (-61544, 12796); maw10: (-59032, 11618); maw11: (-58762, 11472); maw12: (-53664, 10832); maw13: (-63486, 8424); maw14: (-52142, 20624);

Also, I found the following javascript function helpful for teleporting around. <code>function tp(x,y){ Comic.voyager.pos.x = x; Comic.voyager.pos.y = y; Comic.voyager.pos.vx = 0; Comic.voyager.pos.vy = 0;}</code> --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.233|172.70.126.233]] 03:06, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

If anyone wants to download the planet images, they're at https://xkcd.com/2712/tile/<name>_i_j.png, for i,j = 0, 1, ..., going as high as needed for the planet size. For example, https://xkcd.com/2712/tile/origin_3_3.png gives the bottom-right part of the start planet.

; Proposal
It seems the most explanatory thing we can do is replace the blank starfield with the starting image screenshot, and label its four corners with their x and y coordiates, and then make a table of all the objects with their coordinates, a screenshot, and a description of their behaviors. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.206.204|172.70.206.204]] 23:55, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
: A map with insets would be better than coordinates since the frame rotates. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.158.231|172.71.158.231]] 00:17, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Got images for all the locations: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CVADHsRgBtDPYca-gdfVwNW_nEsrJ-zj?usp=share_link [[User:Clam|Clam]] ([[User talk:Clam|talk]]) 00:03, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Looks like I was beat to the punch, but here's another way to access the raw images (on a dark background): https://aeromancer.dev/xkcd_2712/ [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.90|172.70.211.90]] 01:15, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

I’ve been able to glitch into the center of planets, but the ones with lower gravity I can get out of. I did this unintentionally by going headfirst into one really fast.

[https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11pP8VbYkJDDWUOIFhUHO_DZmEbd9_E56 Here's] a version of the images on the starfields! Figured it would be the closest thing. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.111.29|172.70.111.29]] 02:23, 17 December 2022 (UTC)