explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:3194: 16 Part Epoxy

2026-01-15T09:36:07Z

Viliml:

Woah, just reloaded it and new comic! Sick... I should probably read it now. [[User:Willintendo|Willintendo]] ([[User talk:Willintendo|talk]]) 20:02, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

Paint bucket fill tool strikes again. --[[User:Lycheefoxpup|Lycheefoxpup]] ([[User talk:Lycheefoxpup|talk]]) 20:18, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

TABLES! TABLES! TABLES! WOOOOOO!!!!!! --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBaal44|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User Talk:DollarStoreBaal44|Converse]]''''' 20:21, 14 January 2026 (UTC)
:Table created. However, I am a teenager and do not work in construction, so the explanations may need some work. --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBaal44|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User Talk:DollarStoreBaal44|Converse]]''''' 20:56, 14 January 2026 (UTC)
::Every item in this table is real. Ask me how I know. [[Special:Contributions/64.201.132.210|64.201.132.210]] 21:34, 14 January 2026 (UTC)
:::How does the placebo work? Does it just kinda mind control you?--'''''[[User:DollarStoreBaal44|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User Talk:DollarStoreBaal44|Converse]]''''' 21:42, 14 January 2026 (UTC)
:Robert'); DROP TABLE Epoxy;--
:Did it work? [[Special:Contributions/2001:1998:3500:42C:0:0:0:534|2001:1998:3500:42C:0:0:0:534]] 23:27, 14 January 2026 (UTC)
Thought for placebo adhesive: Water between two microscope slides. It'll stick real good, but it's not really glue, more... fancy pressure physics. [[Special:Contributions/142.165.161.48|142.165.161.48]] 22:28, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

"Duck" tape, not "duct". Come on Randall, you know better than that. [[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 00:08, 15 January 2026 (UTC)
:Both spellings are used. One is trademarked. [[Special:Contributions/76.187.17.7|76.187.17.7]] 03:46, 15 January 2026 (UTC)
:Read this: https://archive.is/Fq5Js [[User:Viliml|Viliml]] ([[User talk:Viliml|talk]]) 09:36, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

Now I'm wondering what the properties of a powdered bar magnet would even be, if each individual piece continued to be magnetic. [[Special:Contributions/2405:201:E010:1029:2C1E:1669:FA92:85DE|2405:201:E010:1029:2C1E:1669:FA92:85DE]] 00:44, 15 January 2026 (UTC)
:A magnetic powder stops being diamagnetic. All the north poles clamp onto a south pole, so the magnetic fields essentially all cancel. You end up with "lump of magnetic powder", not "one big magnet" or "powder you can disperse in a liquid." [[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 03:32, 15 January 2026 (UTC)
:: But all the little pieces of magnets are still full magnets with a north and a south pole. Magnetic monopoles have, so far, not been observed in practice. --[[User:Coconut Galaxy|Coconut Galaxy]] ([[User talk:Coconut Galaxy|talk]]) 06:32, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

So, the 2-poly(etc) seems to me to suggest that instead of being "-vinyl-ethyl-vinyl-ethyly-" polimerisation, with the links between both 'ethyl-like' backbone subcomponents being from opposite ends of the respective subunit carbon-pairing, it'd more likely now be considered as a polymethyl-group with a methyl (or methylene) group as the now unused onward '1-'site, hanging free of the new polychain. I'd have to check the bond-geometries, though to see if it would even work. (Ignoring the obvious problem with the made up name.) [[Special:Contributions/92.23.2.208|92.23.2.208]] 01:44, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

I feel like the Polyethylvinylesteracetate is a joke about how polymer names are often long and gibberish-sounding. [[User:Potatocakethrow|Potatocakethrow]] ([[User talk:Potatocakethrow|talk]])

Rosin is also used soldering, which might be relevant to adhesives. Soldering is used to join pipes, among other things. [[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 03:32, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

:>"Rosin is also used soldering, ...to join pipes" Plumbing (pipes) soldering more often uses "acid flux" (Zinc Chloride and similar), not rosin which is used in electronics and jewelry. --[[User:PRR|PRR]] ([[User talk:PRR|talk]]) 05:48, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

While it's less common in glues than other animal products (such as skin, bones, or cheese), blood-based glues are (or historically were) a thing. Citation: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/blood-glue
Gorillas would not be a suitable source of this blood, though.

Talk:2788: Musical Scales

2023-06-13T20:25:23Z

Viliml:

The page says it was last edited about four hours from now. I'm wondering wether the lineage of in the hall... is worth mentioning. ie Grieg composed it for an Ibsen play. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.175.178|172.70.175.178]] 23:06, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
:(It's server time. Which is set as UTC. Currently matches central European summer time, I guess, but is one hour behind me (using BST in ordinary life), but matches me nicely when I'm back on GMT. If I read you right, I'm guessing you're on the US east-coast TZ (or equivalent, elsewhere in the Americas), and if you're on DST right now you'll find you have to mentally adjust by ''five'' whenever you're not. I imagine that logged-in people can configure dynamic time displays to local time (for themselves), but 'hard written records like on these signatures probably aren't converted 'live' (no good way to not mess up with false-changes/false-nonchanges) so there's probably no point doing that anyway. Just realise that you need to remember that it's an offset of four/five/whatever-it-might-be for your current time and place and rejoice that (with a spherical Earth, not somehow unified under one global political system that can tell all people to work with ever stranger hours of daylight, therefore with necessarily disjointed timezones) at least there's no possibility of falling off the 'edge' and perhaps into the jaws of the world-serpent. There are plenty of other problems, but not that! ...and no doubt there was discussion as to whether to align with Randall's habitual locale, instead, but more people know how to convert between their local UTC±whatever and straight UTC (or don't have to) than might be expected to reliably cross convert between two different ± values, correctly and accounting for whether either or both are DST at the moment. So I don't just say I'm happy with the situation because (for half a year) it matches my own TZ, I think it's just best all round. And doubtless various Europeans think so too (especially the other half of the year!). With apologies to Kiwis, Hawaiians and everyone else for the minor (but predictable) time-shifts they pretty kuch always have to consider, but still would even if you were happily aligned by circumstance... ;) ) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.220|141.101.98.220]] 09:42, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

::No, central European summer time is TWO hours away from UTC. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 20:06, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Now I have to re-listen to In the Hall…; I think there are some errors here.[[Special:Contributions/172.71.146.212|172.71.146.212]] 01:23, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Can someone make a midi of Hall of the Mountain King but with an exponential time scale to "compensate" for the log transform? I want to hear a version that both starts and ends at 200 bpm. Is there any music that actually uses mathematically varying tempos? [[User:Quantum7|Quantum7]] ([[User talk:Quantum7|talk]]) 06:35, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
: I can't make a midi but I can make an mp3: https://voca.ro/17QJDbYxNnlh [[User:Viliml|Viliml]] ([[User talk:Viliml|talk]]) 20:25, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Ein belegtes Brot mit Schinken, ein belegtes Brot mit Ei...(Germans will understand.) [[Special:Contributions/198.41.242.94|198.41.242.94]] 06:50, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
: das sind zwei belegte Brote, eins mit Schinken und eins mit Ei. [[User:Bischoff|Bischoff]] ([[User talk:Bischoff|talk]]) 07:28, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
:: But what does that have to do with dead pants?? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.26.254|172.71.26.254]] 13:36, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Why "mistakenly"? Sure there are some-half notes in there, but it's generally linear in the sense that every 7 steps correspond to a doubling of the frequency no matter where you start from {{unsigned ip|172.68.51.197|07:30, 13 June 2023}}
::For the line spacing it doesn't matter much. A true linear-scale staff which takes half-steps into account would have spacings of 0.9, 1.8, 4 and 8. The one glaring discrepancy is that on a true linear scale, the note E5 (659 Hz) would be closer to F5 (698 Hz) than to D5 (587 Hz). [[User:Rick4|Rick4]] ([[User talk:Rick4|talk]]) 14:29, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Most sheet music is not truly linear in time to begin with. It's pseudo-logarithmic but in the sense that the shorter notes (8ths and 16ths and heaven forbid 32nds for us da**ed drummers) are given MORE space relative to the (fixed) size of the note heads compared to quarter, half, and full notes. This then affects the on-page length of measures: measures with faster notes are longer (as measurable with a small ruler) than those with longer/slower notes, even though -- assuming a fixed tempo -- their play speed (time duration) stays the same. And then you get modifiers like "rit(ardando)", "rall(entando)", "accel(erando)", "piu mosso", "meno mosso", and the like which modify tempo and throw the whole page-space-to-time relation out the window as if the page of sheet music itself (or the audience) sped to near-light speeds. Randall's going off the deep end trying to make this insane notation fit into fixed science rules; best to leave it to us crazy musicians and just enjoy the music. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.65.46|172.69.65.46]] 10:44, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

"Randall seems to have mistakenly assumed" what? no, the entire point of the comic is that Randall knows standard staves do *not* represent a linear increase in frequency. A treble clef is centered on G4, which has a frequency of 392 Hz, F4 has a frequency of 349, and E4 has a frequency of 330. The drawn stave has one line between E4 and F4, corresponding to a jump of about 19 Hz. Two lines between F4 and G4, and we're assuming a linear scale, so that's about right to get to 392. The size of the games grows geometrically, as you expect. Again, this is the entire point of the comic.