Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2012 April 27

Welcome to the Wikipedia Science Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

April 27

Mean motion orbital resonances discrete?

I mean, for instance, is the Pluto-Neptune resonance really 2:3, as opposed (say) to 2:2.999999621739? Or perhaps the answer is "They are as nearly discrete as anything in Nature is"?—PaulTanenbaum (talk) 00:52, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that it is discrete like that, since the planets are continually continually changing their momentum. They are very slowly moving further out from the Sun, just like the Moon is moving further away from the Earth. I think that most recent measurements indicated that we're losing the Moon at a rate of 5 cm per 370 days. Plasmic Physics (talk) 01:34, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

The resonance is exactly 2:3 when averaged over a long period of time. Over the short term, perturbations from many sources (ranging from other planets to the solar wind) will change the ratio of the orbital periods, while gravitational effects between the two work to eliminate those perturbations. --Carnildo (talk) 01:59, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Most orbital resonances aren't stable, which implies that in those cases, the ratio of the orbital periods is only ever roughly close to a ratio of integers. Even when the orbital resonances are stable, in the short term the ratio of the orbital periods will oscillate a bit around the equilibrium ratio. And in the long term, if for example it takes about 2n and 3n orbits for the apsidal precession of the orbiting bodies to precess all the way around the central body once, the ratio of the number of orbits of the two bodies during that time will actually be around (2n+1)/(3n+1) for some large n instead of 2/3 during that time period. However, the ratio of orbital periods in a stable orbital resonance will in the long term approach an average that's an exact ratio of integers if you're counting anomalistic periods instead of sidereal periods. Red Act (talk) 04:35, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Monk's hood oil feeling

After seeing Monks Hood from the series Brother Cadfael by Ellis Peters, I wondered how it actually felt to have my skin massaged by monk's hood oil. Being seemingly interested in being a herbalist, at my young age, I was really wondering if anyone knows. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.56.22.80 (talk) 01:11, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Have you see Aconitum#Traditional_and_Modern_Medicinal_uses

Molecular sieves

Is it possible to use molecular sieves to precisely refractionate individual hot-fractions of crude oil? Plasmic Physics (talk) 01:42, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I can't find species "Aphenops cronei" that was mentioned by Dobzhansky

For a 40th anniversary review, I'm trying to fact check a comment Theodosius Dobzhansky made in 1973 about this beetle species, Aphenops cronei. He said it is found only in some limestone caves in southern France. Fact-checking this has been difficult since the Internet appears to have no description of this particular species. A beetle genera Aphaenops (also perhaps Aphoenops) exists, but a cronei species is not listed anywhere online. I've searched the Encyclopedia of Life, Google Books, and Wikispecies, along with the entire Web. All I can see implies that the web only contains Dobzhansky's mention of this species, so I cannot verify his claim. Any thoughts? Bob Enyart, Denver radio host at KGOV (talk) 04:32, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm also finding no record of a sp. cronei, but this article, if you can get access to it, may be helpful—its abstract says that "other taxa are compared when necessary to eliminate the confusion accumulated by old records in the literature." Deor (talk) 11:39, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Available also at Ingentaconnect if anyone has an account. SpinningSpark 14:19, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! That link, and your search result matching mine, both are very helpful. This is my first visit to the Ref Desk. I appreciate you guys! Bob Enyart, Denver radio host at KGOV (talk) 18:04, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Event horizon of universe

Our visible universe is roughly 26 billion ly's if the universe is infinite then there could be infinite matter/energy outside our visible universe. Could this be the explanation of dark matter/energy? Wouldn't the gravitational effects of infinite matter outside our event horizon affect us even though the light doesnt reach us?165.212.189.187 (talk) 14:12, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

No. Gravity travels at the same speed as light, so if its light hasn't reached us, then likely its gravity hasn't either (not necessarily true, but close.) Goodbye Galaxy (talk) 14:45, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

OK but if gravity of an object 20 bl ly away can affect us and gravity from another object 20 bl ly farther away from that can affect that then isnt the farther object vicariously affecting us too? please also clarify your statement in parentheses.165.212.189.187 (talk) 15:25, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, an object 20 billion lightyears away has entirely negligible gravitational effects on us. The fact that the universe is expanding cannot be accounted for by the pull of hypothetical mass outside the edge of the observable horizon. The fact is that gravity makes things contract, not expand. As for the parenthetical statement, I was thinking of dark matter, which has gravitational effects but emits no light. Goodbye Galaxy (talk) 15:41, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes ONE object probably does have negligible effect but infinite objects surely dont!165.212.189.187 (talk) 15:53, 27 April 2012 (UTC) When you say "hypothetical" mass youre automatically assuming that we are in the exact middle of the universe. Duh gravitation effects but emits no light kind of like my vicarious allusion.165.212.189.187 (talk) 15:51, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Nope. It doesn't matter how much mass there is beyond the observable universe. Anything that's not within our observable universe CANNOT affect us (until it is within our observable universe, which may never happen, given the accelerated expansion of the universe), and we can't even see its effects on the most distant galaxies either, because light travels at the same speed. I probably should have made that more clear. - Goodbye Galaxy (talk) 16:26, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

You are ignorant to the fact that objects outside our observable universe are affecting objects inside our observable universe (at the far reaches).165.212.189.187 (talk) 16:38, 27 April 2012 (UTC) A affects B, B affects C, eg A affects C or B does not affect C?165.212.189.187 (talk) 16:40, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

You're ignoring the speed of light and gravity. If the sun were to magically vanish, we would both remain in orbit and see the sun shining for 8~ minutes until the light and gravity reach us at the same time. Likewise, if something is pulling on a distant galaxy, and we can measure it, then it is necessarily within our observable universe, otherwise we wouldn't see the effect. So because we can measure the effects of dark energy, it is necessarily within our observable universe. It cannot be outside it. See light cone. - Goodbye Galaxy (talk) 16:59, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

The objects we see are not only far away, but also far back in time since the light and gravity from them takes a long time to reach us. If something is far away from us, then the only things that can have affected it (up to the point at which we see it) must have been close to it. In very rough terms, if the universe is 13.7 billion years old, and we observe an object that is 13 billion years old, then only other objects within about 700 million light years could have impacted it up until the point at which it is currently affecting us. Transitivity doesn't allow you extend beyond the visible universe. (There are some caveats to this associated with inflationary epoch and the global geometry of the universe, but for the current discussion those are less important.) Dragons flight (talk) 17:05, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

(EC x 2) It's important to keep track of when one object has an effect on another object, because objects aren't affected by other objects instantaneously. How soon one object can affect another object is limited by the speed of light. It's also important to keep track of when one object is inside of another object's visible universe, because objects near the boundary of the visible universe wind up leaving the visible universe, due to the metric expansion of space. The boundary of the visible universe is defined by where and when the metric expansion of space has overtaken the speed of light. B may be currently being affected by what A was doing long ago, and C may be currently being affected by what B was doing long ago, but C will never be affected by what A was doing long ago indirectly via B, if what B is doing now will never affect C because B has left the future C's visible universe. Red Act (talk) 17:35, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

OK, but couldn't there still be a possibility of this happening with say a-z objects each within the 700 mi ly range in a long chain? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.212.189.187 (talk) 19:36, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

No. If a gravitational wave or burst of light from object a originating at time t can never have any effect on us directly due to the metric expansion of space expanding space faster than can be kept up with even by travelling at the speed of light, then that gravitational wave or burst of light isn't going to have any easier time affecting us by adding some extra links in the causal chain along the way to us. Causality, i.e. information, just can't travel faster than the speed of light; making intermediate stops along the way can only hurt. Red Act (talk) 22:28, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I think your argument about transitive causality is reasonable and it's basically correct, except that you need to think fourth-dimensionally. If objects A and B are separated by 700 Mly, then A now is affected by B from 700 Myr ago and vice versa. You can continue this relationship transitively—(A now) and (B 700 Myr ago) are both affected by (C 1400 Myr ago), and so on—but as the times and distances get larger you have to take general relativity into account, and eventually (about 14 Gyr back) you reach the limit of current understanding of cosmology. What you can't do is construct a causal chain out to the edge of the present-day visible universe.

That said, we already know the distribution of dark matter and dark energy. It's the one thing that we do know about them. And they are distributed uniformly (at cosmological scales) throughout the visible universe, not concentrated at the edge. So your suggestion is a non-starter. -- BenRG (talk) 05:17, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

As I understand it, the question of whether the universe is open or closed is basically a question of whether it is within its own event horizon. Am I mistaken? Wnt (talk) 13:23, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Unranked taxa

What does "unranked" mean in taxonomy, such as in wasabi or Tulipa gesneriana?--176.241.247.17 (talk) 14:28, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

It just means that the given group is not a taxonomic rank. For instance, the wasabi example indicates that "Angiosperm" is unranked. The reasoning and history behind this lack of rank is explained at Angiosperm#History_of_classification (probably in more detail than you want). Many unranked grouping were previously ranked, but lost that distinction due to later developments. We still use them though, because it is very handy to use "angiosperms" as a word for flowering plants. The fact that it isn't a ranked taxonomic term is only important if you happen to be a taxonomist, and/or researching plant systematics. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:38, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

The term is somewhat akin to a classification like Monkey. That is, there are some terms which have historical reasons for getting carried through common English, but which are not recognized by actual taxonomists as a valid classification, for various reasons. Taxonomists use the term monophyletic to describe a group that shares a single ancestor, and where all decendants of that group are decended from that single ancestor, in other words a complete branch of the "family tree". This is also called a clade. It is not certain that angiosperms are a true monophyletic grouping. It is certain that monkeys are not. --Jayron32 22:06, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Suppose we have a Magic Mosquito Genocide Contraption

Flick a switch, and all blood-sucking mosquitoes on the planet are spontaneously killed. What effects would this have on the biosphere, and would it be of overall benefit or detriment to humanity? Goodbye Galaxy (talk) 14:49, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

You'd have a pretty drastic effect on pond ecosystems throughout any area where mosquitoes are endemic. Mosquito larvae happen to be important (sometimes the exclusive) food source for young fish in such ecosystems. Someguy1221 (talk) 15:01, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I believe there are places where they were virtually wiped out, for a time, during health campaigns. I believe the building of the Panama Canal was one such case. It definitely seemed to benefit humanity. Any adverse effects on the biosphere didn't much make it up to humans. Considering that millions of people die each year from mosquito-borne illnesses, it's difficult to imagine how they could provide a bigger benefit. StuRat (talk) 21:56, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Not exactly a scientific source, but Cracked claims that mosquitos are essential to the food chain: because they can carry large amounts blood, they are an invaluable source of protein for many species. This slightly more authoritative source agrees. -RunningOnBrains^(talk) 22:10, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

And according to Nature there are mixed opinions. Scientists agree that they are a vital part of the food chain, but some believe mosquitoes could easily be replaced by other (non-disease-spreading) species. -RunningOnBrains^(talk)

Decision-making - Can we actually make decisions?

Obviously there are some parts of human behavior which are uncontrollable, such as autonomic behavior. Is there a part of our behavior that we can control, and if so, what? This is important question to answer if we want to become competent decision makers - If we wish to figure out how to behave and live our lives, we must first find out what parts of our behavior, if any, we can actually control. Free will probably doesn't exist, but nonetheless Steven Pinker has pointed out that there is a useful distinction between controllable and uncontrollable behavior. Widener (talk) 16:17, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Of course there are behaviors you can control. Unless you suffer from a disability like Tourette syndrome, you should be able to control what you say, for example. There are also other behaviors which are largely automatic, but which can also be controlled, to an extent, like blinking your eyes or breathing. StuRat (talk) 17:37, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I believe that when you ask "Is there a part of our behavior that we can control", the word "we" hides an implicit dualism, and the most useful answer is to make the dualism explicit. Where you go from there depends on your attitude toward dualism. Looie496 (talk) 17:45, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Or one could just accept that we're algorithms run on a machine (the brain). No pecisely specifed algorithm can have real free will (at most an illusion of free will. However, there are a huge number of algorithms that could represent you, given what you experience at some moment. Neural networks are involved in pattern recognition; the pattern that is recgnized contains far less information than the elements that form the pattern. A slightly different neural network could have led to the same pattern being recognized.

Then given the enormous amount of neurons in the brain, there must exist a huge number of different possible neural networks that are all slightly different, which would have led to the same subjective "you". If the fundamental nature of reality is purely mathematical, then all these algorithms really exist (and they all find themselves embeded in some physical world that looks identical to them). So, you should then identify yourself with an ensemble of algorithms that will start to evolve differently after some time and lead to different "you's". Count Iblis (talk) 19:57, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think we know enough about the brain to say that free will is an illusion. Of course, this also requires that one precisely define "free will"; obviously there is a difference between things I choose not to do and things I am unable to do (or, conversely, things I choose to do and things I can not stop myself from doing). And obviously there will be a gigantic gray area where those things overlap; I could choose not to bite my nails if I tried very hard but it's not worth the effort involved to break the habit. Heck, maybe the whole thing is gray area. We know that a sufficiently complex "program" can exhibit the illusion of free will, but as we have never built a computer even close to as complex as the human brain, so how can we say that free will is not genuine? -RunningOnBrains^(talk) 20:11, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree with running on this. Certainly, if the entire functioning of the brain were determinable from an initial state, we might feel comfortable saying that there is no free will. But we don't know that that's true. We know that the basal rate of pre-synaptic vesicle release is a stochastic, rather than deterministic, event. But then, no one knows if such vesicular release has any actual impact on neuronal function. But the point is, it is a reasonable hypothesis that the output (thought) of the human brain, even given a known initial state and a controlled external environment, is not deterministic, but stochastic. Even if that were true, however, it's still a far cry from proving the existence of free will. Instead of saying someone's thoughts are pre-determined, you would be saying that their thoughts are random. Anyway, conclusion: we don't frickin' know. Someguy1221 (talk) 20:50, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Re Sturat: That's not obvious at all. How do you know that I can control what I say? Widener (talk) 01:01, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

If you can't control what you say, then you probably can't control what you type, either, and neither can I, making any answer rather pointless, in a universe devoid of free will. StuRat (talk) 21:45, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

You may find Game theory sheds some light on decisions. I find it fascinating, personally, and it sheds light on decision making that comes from a mathematical perspective. --TammyMoet (talk) 09:15, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

(warning: fringe ideas ;) ) I think what people truly want when they talk about "free will" is neither predetermined will according to some computational algorithm, nor random will that is just a toss of the dice. What seems to me to be implied is will without causality, i.e. causality violation - will which is not determined by past events, even random events. So to me the origin of free will seems tied up with the notion of the time travel of information, i.e. precognition. Only the existence of a fixed, immutable future makes genuine free will possible in the present. See also [1]. Wnt (talk) 00:21, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Steve is speaking about the Mind–body problem, he argues for monism/against dualism. You will also be interested in free will and determinism. While I do believe I was determined to write this as I know of nothing which has the ability to actively choose (for humans, all their actions are merely responses to stimuli, ergo they do not actively choose), there is no doubt I have the illusion of choice and that I am responsible for all my choices. Unique Ubiquitous (talk) 01:04, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

You may also be interested in randomness as if true randomness does exist as some quantum mechanics studiers believe, this could mean determinism is false. Though this would have no bearing on whether humans have control over themselves as humans have no control over the randomness of molecules, their actions would then simply be at the pleasure of both external stimuli and randomness. Unique Ubiquitous (talk) 01:19, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I actually had a flash of insight last night, a realization that in essence yields a "Theory of Everything" (namely: every property in the universe, including conciousness, is a natural progression of patterns arising from subtraction over the integers) that finally, at least in my mind, answers that question once and for all. I won't bore you with the details, but in a nutshell: the universe is at once both completely deterministic and yet, due to it's infiniteness (and thus limitless in possibility), *entirely* guided by free will. Initially that may sound a little cliched, but with a bit of introspection it actually makes quite a bit of sense. No, really. :) Sebastian Garth (talk) 04:04, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I have been interested in the writing of Dan Dennett and Sam Harris on this subject. I bought Sam's new short book actually called "Free Will", but have not read it yet. I recommend these two authors to anyone who is really interested in the topic. Vespine (talk) 00:11, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

photoelectric effect - electron from K shell why?

i asked this question before on 24th April..well at that time i didnt had credible source to support my doubt...

Ques: isnt photoelectric effect in any way connected to Auger effect. In Wiki's article under Discovery section "High-energy X-rays were applied to ionize gas particles and observe PHOTOELECTRIC electrons." So it is true that electron in photoelectric effect is knocked out of K shell rather than OUTERMOST SHELL ( as written in Photoelectric effect article)....thanks--Myownid420 (talk) 17:12, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

The photoslectric effect can be caused by any photon with enough energy. Higher energy photons can dislodge the inner electrons, perhaps from the K shell, but the UV photon is more likely to only have enough energy to take out an outer electron. FOr high enough energy photons the inner electron will have a greater relative cross section. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:08, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

That's a novel one: photoseletric effect. Plasmic Physics (talk) 09:31, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

If you were to pick one decade that the telephone became 'mainstream'...

... what would it be? I had a look at a couple articles on the telephone and Timeline of the telephone but couldn't really find an answer. Thanks. Vranak (talk) 18:06, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

A good estimate for decade of widespread popularity/ market penetration will vary wildly by country and region. That is, long after most households had a phone in the USA, they were still a high luxury in other parts of the world. So, can you tell us what regions your are interested in? SemanticMantis (talk) 18:12, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

USA. Vranak (talk) 18:30, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I found this graph of technology adoption on a blog, so it's not necessarily an authoritative source, and I'm not sure if it's referring to the US specifically. From a glance, it looks like it could reasonably describe the US. Certainly not the world--I wouldn't say half of the world had internet access in 2000. So according to the graph, I'd say the 50s, if you were to name a specific decade; that looks like when adoption broke the 50% mark. Perhaps the late 40s. By the 60s, it looks like it was reasonable to assume a given person had a phone. Short answer: the 50s, give or take a decade. --BDD (talk) 18:42, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. Vranak (talk) 18:43, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Resolved

The vertical axis label is slightly cut off, but it looks like it says "Percent of US households", so I'm pretty sure it is referring to the US specifically. --Tango (talk) 19:18, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

That depends a bit on how one defines 'mainstream', as well. Is it 'knows what a telephone is', or 'would be able to use a telephone if handed one', or 'has one in one's workplace', or 'has one in one's own home'? That last definition is probably the most restrictive, though one could certainly argue that the telephone became 'mainstream' once most businesses had one (something that likely happened long before they were in most homes). Historic U.S. census data says that in 1960, 21.5% of households did not have a telephone. (That falls to 13% in 1970, and all the way to just 2.4% in 2000.) On the other hand, the 1960 data also show significant state-to-state variation. Larger states with poorer or more remote populations tended to have vastly lower levels of home telephone ownership—55% of Mississipians and 41% of Alaskans were without telephones, whereas just 9% of Connecticuters were phoneless. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a source of similar numbers for pre-1960. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:33, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Public perception may be more important than the actual statistics of ownership. A technology may be culturally normalized and 'mainstream' long before a majority of the population has access to it. By the 1930's, telephones were ubiquitous in films, and most people saw films. Hence, the idea of the telephone would have been more or less universally known and regarded as normal, even if it remained out of the hands of most people. Even while the majority were still phoneless, they might have begun to feel themselves unusual or behind the times in this regard. LANTZY^TALK 19:53, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I'd go a couple decades before when the majority of homes had their own telephone, as there was a period when they were rather expensive, so people had party lines or shared phones, where maybe there was one phone in the hall of the apartment building, and everybody used it. You can see this from movies from this period (heck, even in college I shared a phone with the student next door). So, they were still using telephones, even if they didn't have one in their home. StuRat (talk) 20:28, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I'd go with the 1930s too. There were payphones back then (the article states that by 1925, New York City alone had 25,000). Of course, that was advance preparation for the arrival of one special illegal immigrant. Clarityfiend (talk) 20:51, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

It was so very confidently predicted that Thomas E. Dewey would beat Harry S. Truman in the United States presidential election, 1948, that the Chicago-Tribune put out its edition without waiting for the actual results, with the now famous headline "Dewey Defeats Truman". The result, of course, was the reverse. Our article says:

• "Part of the reason Truman's victory came as such a shock was because of as-yet uncorrected flaws in the emerging craft of public opinion polling. A political theory supported by many pollsters (and largely discredited by the 1948 election) held that voters had already decided who they would support by the time the political conventions ended during the summer, and that few voters were swayed by the campaigning done during the autumn. As a result many pollsters were so confident of Dewey's victory that they simply stopped polling voters weeks before the election, and thus missed a last-minute surge of support for the Democrats."

But another reason I’ve been told is that the polling was done mainly by phone, and this led to skewed results since a statistically significant number of Americans still did not have their own phone at that time. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 22:47, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

This wouldn't be a problem if phone owners and non-owners were evenly distributed. However, those without phones were more likely to be poor and vote for the Democratic Party, so that does skew the results towards predicting a Republican Party victory. StuRat (talk) 23:17, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

A magazine called The Literary Digest made an even worse assessment of one of FDR's campaigns. Their survey, thanks to flawed polling techniques, indicated FDR would lose big in 1936. Instead, FDR won in a landslide, and the magazine went bust. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:02, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

~ Health-Related Questions: For Only Knowledge & Experienced People of Excellence Only ~ [NOT SLOVED]

1) what is the most reputable rankings for Maternity Hospitals?

2) what are the 1-2 most reputable ranking for each section on mastersinhospitaladministration.com/2011/hospital-rankings-in-the-usa-the-ultimate-list/ -- include one sentence as to why

3) what is the average adult hip size, or average range of hip sizes?

4) what is the average adult waist size, or average range of waist sizes?

Thingstofollow (talk) 20:59, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

collapsing off-topic digression — Lomn
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Pardon me. You've no right to demand that only persons of specific (but unstated) ability or knowledge respond to your query. You've no right to require that our answers should be of a particular length. And in three of your four questions, you have failed to give us enough information about the area you are interested in. You are not entitled to any sort of answer whatever. And you can't spell "solved". AlexTiefling (talk) 21:48, 27 April 2012 (UTC) Wow, you really need to strike that and apologize. 65.95.23.172 (talk) 22:13, 27 April 2012 (UTC) I consider myself a "Knowledge & Experienced People of Excellence". But would you rather trust a random stranger on the internet or these people who have done extensive research on the topic? Statistics for USA Statistics for Japan -RunningOnBrains(talk) 22:24, 27 April 2012 (UTC) I really need no such thing. The OP has been peremptory and demanding, and gave us an incomplete question. I don't expect an apology from them, and they needn't expect one from me. AlexTiefling (talk) 22:33, 27 April 2012 (UTC) Your response was reasonable. No need to strike. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:51, 27 April 2012 (UTC) Thanks - I have no intention of striking. AlexTiefling (talk) 23:06, 27 April 2012 (UTC) Insulting an IP for a spelling mistake, how pathetic. 65.95.23.172 (talk) 22:52, 27 April 2012 (UTC) The OP isn't an IP user; they're registered. And I picked on the spelling mistake because of its position, the rudeness of the query, and the juxtaposition of the error with the demand for answers only from the learned. I generally try to be civil here, but there's no absolute reason why being a schmuck should earn you immunity from being called a schmuck. AlexTiefling (talk) 23:06, 27 April 2012 (UTC) Particularly when there's no question that we all understand the OP's intent, there's no need for this sort of discussion on the RD proper. Feel free to ignore questions you find insulting, demanding, childish, malformed, or otherwise bad -- I do it all the time. It's remarkably effective. — Lomn 23:28, 27 April 2012 (UTC) Feel free to stop being a nanny. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:10, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

For those with eyes to see, look at Q.2 and tell me if this isn't a classic homework question. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 22:28, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I thought so, but the whole thing is so asinine I'm trying to work out what educational institution would set such an exercise. AlexTiefling (talk) 22:33, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I numbered the questions, but won't answer, because I might not be a "person of excellence". StuRat (talk) 22:41, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

You're obviously not a person of excellence because you inserted spaces at the start of your lines, rendering the text mainly unreadable. I've corrected your shocking errors. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 22:44, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm trying to figure out what "sloved" means. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:51, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

It will have to remain an unsloved mystery. AlexTiefling (talk) 23:06, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Maybe a slove is a portmanteau of a "slithy tove". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:10, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

only if it 'twas brillig... --Jayron32 04:18, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

For the last, here is a CDC page from 2008 with waist sizes, and many other physical dimensions, broken down by gender, age, and ethnicity, with the average, standard deviations, and various percentiles provided. Hip sizes could be pretty well estimated by multiplying waist sizes by around 1.1 for men and around 1.3 for women. — Lomn 23:41, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Since my constructive (if slightly snarky) response was archived with the above, I'm going to repeat it here:

I consider myself a "Knowledge & Experienced People of Excellence". But would you rather trust a random stranger on the internet or these people who have done extensive research on the topic? Statistics for USA Statistics for Japan -RunningOnBrains^(talk) 02:26, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Apologies, Running, I somehow missed those links when archiving the rest of that digression, and did not mean to hide useful answers. — Lomn 20:02, 28 April 2012 (UTC)