how ignorant are you?

[BrianR]

I do not understand anyone remotely female.

I cannot keep any plant other than weeds alive. Why they should remain alive and even thrive when I cannot keep a simple geranium alive for more than a week is beyond me too.

I no longer understand how my computer works. I understand this is a function of my advancing years.

I simply cannot make and use dough. I can cook anything else, but not dough, yeast or otherwise. I always burn it or it comes out tasteless. Yecch!

I am currently being outsmarted by a squirrel.

The list goes on but there's a message size limit here.

Brian

[russotto]

CDs, DVDs, and vinyl records are stamped. CD's and DVDs additionally have a layer of aluminum sputtered over the stamped surface, then laquered. Cassette tapes are molded in multiple pieces, the tape attached to the reels, then snapped together. VHS tapes the same thing.

Do I at least get a one night stand for this useless information?

[Catwoman]

Stamped with what? Laquered with what? What is this mysterious substance that makes sounds? And while we're on the subject, how do the tape players/CD lasers interpret this information?

If you can answer these questions I will stand on you one night.

[glatt]

When you were a kid, did you ever make a "telephone" with two tin cans and a long length of string stretched tight between them? You speak into one can, and you voice causes vibrations in the wall of the can. Those vibrations travel down the tight string (it has to be pulled tight) to the other can and vibrate the other can's wall. Then the vibrations make the air vibrate a little, and sound (pretty quiet sound at this point) travels to your ear.

With a vinyl record, the first record players and recorders were basically just a big cone attached to a needle. Someone would talk or sing into a big cone. The cone would vibrate, and the vibrations would be transferred to the needle. The needle would wiggle back and forth into a soft spinning disk (wax I think) and that would make squiggly lines. Then that wax disk would be used as a mold to make in vinyl of the completed record. You could play the record by putting the needle into the groove, and the cone would vibrate. The vibrations would make sound. Pretty cool. I've listened to these old players and they sound surprisingly loud.

Then the players were made electronic to make the music louder. The needle in a record player still fillows the squiggly groove and vibrates, but that vibration makes an electric signal that varies (sort of like vibrating) the signal is strengthened with an electronic amplifier and sent to the speakers. The speakers are coils of wire wrapped around a magnet, with paper cones attached to the wire coil. As the signal goes through the wire coil, the coil moves back and forth in relation to the magnet. This pulls on the paper cone and creates the sound you hear.

Tapes have the electic signal saved to them in a magnetic dust that is applied to the tape. Special heads can read the electric signal (which is a fluctuation in the strength of the magnetic field on the tape) and translate tht into an electric signal that can go to the speakers.

CDs and DVDs put that signal into a digital format of pits in a aluminum foil in a plastic disk. Then a digital processor translates that into an electric signal that goes to the speakers.

I hope this all made some amount of sense to you. :p

[Katkeeper]

Lots of people area outsmarted by squirrels. Is this one getting into your house (I had that problem once - they drove the cat nuts too as he could hear them, smell thm, but could not get at them) or is it stealing the food in the bird feeder?

I do not understand the devoted fascination of bird watchers. I watch the ones in my yard, but can't understand those who go to the ends of the world to seek out species that they have not seen before, or those who just spend time looking through their binoculars trying to find a white tail feather or a spot behind the eye that makes the bird a different type. I like to walk in the woods,enjoy hearing birds singing or flitting through the trees, but that is enough. Bird watchers also have an annoying habit of making everyone they are with stop and remain quiet and motionless when they spot birds.

[LabRat]

I went to lunch by myself yesterday at one of my favorite restaurants, The Bread Garden. World's best homemade soups, breads (panara, eat your heart out), and sandwiches. I ordered the min-ih-strone-ee soup please. The chef, without even a grin, corrected me; mean-eh-strone. Whatever, just give me a bowl of it and extra bread. {soup nazi} No tip for you! {soup nazi}

I have a terrible time pronouncing things, am woefully ignorant about politics, the stock market, computers, and hate history. I also can't read people, and have a horrible time judging character. I never fail to trust those who end up screwing me, and blow off those who would have been loyal friends. So, I have no 'best' friends I have known forever. My husband is the only one I have really gotten close to, but I like it when he screws me

[glatt]

When my wife and I got married, the menu the caterer gave us suggested "vegetable crudite" as one of the things we could have at the reception. She explained that it was a raw vegetable platter, and my fiance explained to me that it was pronounced "crew di tay" not "crud dite." Since then, my wife and I have a long running joke of calling the thing "crud dite" and I sometimes forget myself and think it really is pronounced that way.

[Catwoman]

glatt I have now read your post twice.

the answer to the first question is 'yes', but it never worked.

what I don't get is how movement translates into sound? is sound a movement? are sound waves tangible?

how do sqiggly lines on vinyl make the receiver play an EXACT replica? they'd have to be incredibly precise.

Originally Posted by glatt

Tapes have the electic signal saved to them in a magnetic dust that is applied to the tape

How?? How is the signal saved in magnetic dust? Do you just get a pile of crushed magnets and sing into them?

all this being said you are closest in line for being stood on in the near future

[OnyxCougar]

DMB is Dave Matthews Band, Wolf.

Which I happen to like, but not enough to go to a concert.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Catwoman

what I don't get is how movement translates into sound? is sound a movement? are sound waves tangible?

Yes, and yes. You hear sound when the tight skin across your eardrum vibrates in response to the movement (vibrations) of air entering your ear.

how do sqiggly lines on vinyl make the receiver play an EXACT replica? they'd have to be incredibly precise.

They are analog, rather than digital, so they are like "tracing" a sound. When a record is recorded, the sound entering the recorder causes the blade to vibrate in a certain pattern on the prototype disc. When the disc is played, the needle traces that pattern and vibrates the speaker in the same way the original microphone vibrated during recording, which duplicates the sound. (This is how grammophones worked. More modern record players have levels of indirection involving electric current, but the principle is the same.)

[smoothmoniker]

Originally Posted by Catwoman

what I don't get is how movement translates into sound? is sound a movement? are sound waves tangible?

Yes!

In a manner of speaking. Picture a stone dropped in a flat pond of water. The stone sends out waves of water in circles from it's impact point. The waves are alternating zones of high water level and low water level. Make sense?

Sound functions in much the same way. Instead of a stone in a pond, picture a person clapping in a room. Waves of air pressure move out from the hand clap. The waves are alternating zones of high air pressure and low air pressure. This happens very, very quickly - hundreds of times per second for most sounds.

The more times per second that the air changes pressure, the higher the pitch of the sound. The bigger the difference in pressure between the high and low point, the lounder the sound.

I'll skip records, someone else can probably answer that more accurately than I can. I was born too late :-)

How?? How is the signal saved in magnetic dust? Do you just get a pile of crushed magnets and sing into them?

A microphone takes that wave information from the air pressure (high and low pressure) and converts it into high and low levels of electricity running through a circuit (that's a whole new topic ... ), and that circuit runs into a small electromagnet (the tape head). Electromagnets have higher or lower strengths based on how much electricity is being run through them.

The magnetic dust on the tape reel is pulled past the electromagnet, and the dust picks up the strength of the electromagnet, and stores it as it's own magnetic field information. The stronger the electromagnet was at the time the tape went past it, the stronger the dust's magnetic field will be at that spot.

So now, follow the chain of events. You clap, sending out waves of high and low air pressure. A microphone changes this in to waves of high and low electricity in a circuit. The electromagnet creates a higher or lower magnetic fields based on the amount of electricity. The tape dust being pulled past saves an imprint of the strenght of the magnetic field from the tape head (electromagnet).

To play it back, you do the exact opposite. The tape moves past a much weaker electromagnet, so weak that the dust from the tape changes the strength of the electromagnet (tape head). This translates into changes in the electrical circuit moving through the tape head. This runs into an amplifier to increase the energy level, while preserving the wave information. Finally, the elctricity pushes your speaker cones in and out, which creates high and low waves of pressure in the air around them, which you hear as sound!

whew. You just got my first 3 lectures of each semester for free! don't worry, my students don't get it either.

-sm

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Catwoman

How?? How is the signal saved in magnetic dust? Do you just get a pile of crushed magnets and sing into them?

It gets complicated, and my explanations are an over-simplification, but here goes:

If you understand how a speaker works, a microphone works basically the same way, but in reverse.

Sound waves from your voice hit a paper cone or membrane which is attached to a coil of wire. That wire is in a magnetic field. The membrane vibrates when your voice's sound waves hit it, and so does the wire coil. When the wire coil moves through the magnetic field, a current is created. I don't know why a current is created when a wire is moved through a magnetic field, it just does. That's how generators work, incidentally. The coil vibrates in a certain way, and the resulting current has a pattern to it. A signal. That signal goes through bunch of circuitry, but basically it goes to the recording "head" on the tape recorder. The recording head is like an electromagnet.

An electromagnet is a loop of wires that has electricity passing through it which causes a magnetic field. They use huge versions of these things in junkyards to pick up cars with cranes and move them around and drop them. Anyway, the recording head, which is basically an electromagnet, pulses a magnetic field that varies in intensity with the strength of the electric signal that comes from the microphone. This pulsing field rearranges the magnetic dust on the tape as the tape slowly travels by. You end up with a tape that has a pattern of strong magnetism and weak magnetism in different areas.

When you want to play the tape back, another head which is basically also just an electromagnet will read it. This electromagnet is turned off so that it can pick up the signal. The magnetic signal on the tape goes past the "coil" of wires that is the playback head, it is a mganet that moves in relation to the coil, and it creates a signal. That signal goes to the amplifyer and then to the speakers.

As you can see, there are two basic principles at play here. The idea that you can create electricity by passing a looped wire through a magnetic field and it's inverse, that you can create a magnetic field by passing electricity through a looped wire. Most of what we do with electricity in this world comes from these principles.

I'm just typing this stuff off the top of my head, so I hope it makes sense. There are probably better places to go that will explain this. LikeHow stuff works

Edit: I type too slow.
Edit again: You can stand on sm. He knows more about this than I do, I didn't know the playback head had electricity passing through it. I thought it was probably totally passive.

[OnyxCougar]

I just looked up what Jingoistic means. (I didn't know)

jin·go·ism n.
Extreme nationalism characterized especially by a belligerent foreign policy; chauvinistic patriotism.

[wolf]

Originally Posted by LabRat

I ordered the min-ih-strone-ee soup please. The chef, without even a grin, corrected me; mean-eh-strone.

You're right, and so is the chef, but ONLY if he is hard core, old world Italian. Or Sout' Philly Italian.

One of the ones who calls sauce Gravy.

And pronounces the ham as pro-SHOOT. And the Cheese as ri-GOHTT.

[mrnoodle]

Originally Posted by glatt

..it just does

That's good enough for me, today.

Did you ever deeply regret starting a thread? I can't process all the new information I'm getting. minuh stronee isn't right?

re: magnetic dust lacquered onto lasers or whateverthefuck -- O.o what?

re:sound -- when you are hearing two tones simultaneously, are the vibrations of each tone occupying the same space simultaneously? and if they are, why don't the vibrations interfere with each other and change the tones? How can the two frequencies coexist? If you drop a stone in the water, and then drop a bigger stone, the bigger vibration trumps the little one.

yeah,

it just does

works for me. Catwoman, will you stand on me for a couple minutes? Sympathy standing, so to speak?