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I'm probably a bit more sane than the people around me

10 (8.9%)

I'm pretty much normal but I like to indulge in crazy things/activities

33 (29.5%)

I'm on the fringe, I have wacky ideas and most people don't get it

52 (46.4%)

I'm off my rocker, I have trouble acting 'normal' in public

13 (11.6%)

I'm so alone I cut myself at night

4 (3.6%)

Total Members Voted: 82

[dennis]

jhocking:
Oh, I think I misunderstood you the first time then. Thanks for correcting.

How can radiation be given off? At absolute 0, there is no energy, so the atom cannot emit radiation because it has no energy to spare.
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/phy05/phy05142.htm
Sorry if that's not a clickable link, I have no clue how to do those unless the forum has a system that does it for me.

Absolute zero isn't an attainable state, but yes if you *were* too cool an a material to 0K, you would see no radiation. However, realize that as long as there is a temperature differential, it's not a stable state.

In any case, the caesium isotope used in atomic clocks isn't radioactive, anyway.

The radiation they're talking about in an atomic clock are microwave frequency oscillations (i.e. electromagnetic, not nuclear) that are a fundamental property of caesium atoms. You can tune a matter circuit to those oscillations and it basically works like a pendulum in a grandfather clock or the quartz crystal in an electric clock. You still have to put energy into the clock itself.

[StreetSpirit]

SCIENCE!

[est]

Man, science is for nerds.

[KvP]

Get 'em, Ogre!

[jhocking]

Man, science is for nerds.

[Blue Kitty]

Thank you for using that one instead of this one

[Dal]

Zero out of zero normal.

is that some SquidDNA in this thread?

[himynameisjulien]

something goes here (resized for readability)

Absolute zero isn't an attainable state, but yes if you *were* too cool an a material to 0K, you would see no radiation. However, realize that as long as there is a temperature differential, it's not a stable state.

In any case, the caesium isotope used in atomic clocks isn't radioactive, anyway.

The radiation they're talking about in an atomic clock are microwave frequency oscillations (i.e. electromagnetic, not nuclear) that are a fundamental property of caesium atoms. You can tune a matter circuit to those oscillations and it basically works like a pendulum in a grandfather clock or the quartz crystal in an electric clock. You still have to put energy into the clock itself.

Ah, ok then.
Something slightly off-topic: Do you happen to know how the radiation of this particular isotope of this particular element (caesium) was chosen to represent the second? There are millions, if not billions of other things which could have been chosen; people must have had to go through countless different methods/substances/etc. Was one just picked out of an educated guess and it happened to fit? Is the wavelength of this radiation so universally small that any element could be picked and still work, with an appropriately changed number of cycles?

[Vendetagainst]

Thank you for using that one instead of this one

I was almost sure that was a rickroll. I wonder if I should worry that I could totally see myself dressing like that on a whim.


Also, at the risk of sounding generic and whatnot I'd like to say that normality is a standard that, although very real, is very different from the "normality" that society holds as a standard. The slight social differentiations that people embrace are largely if not entirely arbitrary, regardless of societal reaction, and are not a valid reflection of a person's mental processes. People largely follow the same trains of thought in any given situation, and that they reach different conclusions is the result primarily of chance (such as in the "banality of evil"). I mean, yes I believe that each individual is unique, but I think that it is not because we think markedly differently but because each of our decisions is biased by it's predecessors and we gradually place ourselves in situations unique to ourselves.

[ThisIsOriginal]

somewhere between on the fringe and off my rocker.


I'll let you guys figure out where exactly that is.