Research Brag and Rag Thread.

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Research Brag and Rag Thread.

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1LShelby
Dec 27, 2013, 1:29 pm

Authors, tell us the most trouble you've gone to in attempting to discover some obscure fact for use in one of your books.

Readers, tells us of some of the factual errors that you have caught authors making.

2RandyHarper
Edited: Dec 28, 2013, 12:05 pm

Ahhh, you are looking for the "oh, my goodness my grandfather's birth certificate burned with the Town Hall in 1907" and trying to rediscover enough facts that will allow him to get a social security card so he can retire and collect (3 and a half months of digging).
But wait, maybe you mean "oh, dear me no, we buried the family Bible with Uncle Burt when he died and that's where the record of Aunt Josie's birth is. Now how do we find out when she was born. There wasn't even a town here back then (about six months work and still some estimating and conflict with her grave stone)
Genealogy's obscure facts are sometime never uncovered but finally are substantiated through intimation and surrounding facts, and that's why it is so intriguing, very much the same as when Holmes liked it when "The game was afoot!"

3HarryMacDonald
Dec 28, 2013, 2:38 pm

O my goodness, where to start, at-least as regards others' errors? In one of my specialty fields of music-history, I frequently find stuff passing through the scrutiny of supposed specialist-editors all the time. Examples: Oxford University Press allowed the author of The Devil's music master to establish a non-existent diurect genealogical connection btw Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, also to express his mystification why the original Prussian Iron Cross should have a French-language inscription. Likewise the University of Illinois managed to allow the author of its otherwise exemplary bio Charles Martin Loeffler to credit the Russian master Glinka with an opera he'd never written.
In writing my own work Harmony Junction, there was a big flap-doodle when I was comparing notes with several Yiddish-speakers about the word "faygele". I thought I had it under control, and was well aware that it could set people off -- as indeed it does, and is supposed-to in my story. But the linguistic and psychological complexity of the word, acc. to users' perspective, surpassed my wildest expectations.
I know there are some more everyday answers, but I am enduring post-Christmas brain-freeze.
Good thread: let's keep spinning.

4LShelby
Dec 29, 2013, 9:25 am

>2 RandyHarper: Yes, exactly those kinds of stories. Post 'em all.

They remind me of my dad's story of how he searched all over for the full name of his grandfather -- who he was named after! But my father's name was the commonly accepted short form of his grandfather's name. Everyone knew that in his grandfather's case, it really stood for something longer... but what exactly did it stand for? The great-aunts -- his own sisters -- couldn't agree. My dad searched for years for documentation that had the full name, but there was no birth certificate, and either the shortened version or initials seemed to be used everywhere else. Finally my dad found a signature that used the full name on the Homestead records.

And he said, "Good, grief. No WONDER he never used it. I'm glad I only got handed the short form!"

>3 HarryMacDonald: I've no expertise in the field of music history, but I do play a less-well-known instrument, and as a result:
No, dear regency romance author, the ragged performer standing on a street corner in regency London couldn't possibly be holding a concertina. They won't be invented for about another decade. (And even after they are invented, he's not likely to be able to afford one.) :)

5drardavis
Jan 10, 2014, 4:37 pm

I needed to figure out what would happen if a spherical portion of space suddenly ceased to exist. Would the rest of reality collapse and create sound waves or what? The only information I could find involved some microscopic use for vacuums! I wanted something more "earth shattering". : - )

6zjakkelien
Jan 11, 2014, 4:41 am

5: Sound waves? In space? Or do you mean this spherical portion of space would be on earth? I can't figure out what you mean exactly, but perhaps you don't mean that space ceases to exist, but that whatever was in that space disappears?

7LShelby
Jan 11, 2014, 7:45 am

5: If you removed an empty space, wouldn't it simply create another empty space of the exact same dimensions?

8drardavis
Feb 5, 2014, 11:05 am

Sorry for the vague explanation. : - ( I am writing sci-fi, so ... I was removing a sphere of space from the space-time continuum. However, an approximation would be removing a sphere of matter by creating an instant spherical vacuum. In that case, where I removed the sphere would make a difference. But even in space there is matter, so removing it suddenly should do something. Since "nature abhors a vacuum" I was looking for equations that would describe the collapse of a sphere of known mass. I imagine that when it reached the center point there should be some reaction and energy released?

I settled for knowing that two billiard balls colliding will bounce back with a sound, so ... the sudden vacuums would cause explosions ... big enough to destroy civilization when I needed it.

9LShelby
Feb 6, 2014, 12:40 pm

>8 drardavis: Yes, I followed that. You removed a piece of space from the universe.

You assume that all the surrounding matter will rush into the "hole" and collide violently.

I'm dubious. I would assume that if your hole is in an area where the matter is composed largely of "free range" molecues/atoms (which is the case for open space), the surrounding matter would gradually diffuse into the area until it once again had an average density for that area of space.

Diffusion doesn't work by a molecule/atom saying "oh look, there's a hole, I'd better go fill it!" it works by molecules/atoms going in a relatively straight line, until they bump into something and bounce off, and then they whiz off at roughly the same speed in some other direction. So as soon as you've made your hole, molecules that are already headed toward the hole, will continue on and on and on and on, until they find something to bump into again, presumably on the other side of the hole, since the hole itself is mostly empty. At that point they will change direction and very likely bounce back into the hole at a different angle. Eventually so many molecules have bounced into the hole that is it no longer a hole, there are just as many potential molecules/atoms to bounce off of inside the hole as outside of it, and space has returned to normal.

These molecules/atoms are not accelerating, so it doesn't matter how far they go before hitting another atom/molecule. When the collision happens they aren't going to hit each other any harder than they did previous to the existence of the hole. And since you removed all the molecules/atoms in that hole, they've actually got less to hit than they did a few seconds before. So there are fewer collisions now than there was before you made your hole.

If you want "earth shattering", I think you're going to have to make your hole INSIDE the earth.

10Bryan_Romer
Feb 7, 2014, 4:28 am

Removing part (or all) of a sun? That would have an interesting effect on that unfortunate solar system :)

You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find out what English captains of the 17th century actually said when they were commanding their ships. You can easily find names for each sail, part of the ship, canons, crewmen, and so forth. But what did the Captain or Master actually say to the First Mate (in complete sentences)?

11LShelby
Feb 7, 2014, 7:30 am

>10 Bryan_Romer: Are you sure they used complete sentences? >;)

I found a book once written by a guy who had actually worked on a "tall ship" (although much more recently than the 17th century). I remember that he was describing in delightful detail what was involved with being one of a gun crew.... but I can't remember him saying anything much about the captain. :(

"Removing part (or all) of a sun?"
That does sound like an excellent way to cause havoc. :)

12LShelby
Feb 7, 2014, 11:05 am

...Or maybe if by removing a section of space/time itself rather than just everything in it, you could create a black hole? Or, if you must have explosions, why couldn't something from wherever you are removing stuff to, leak back into the gap left behind? Anti-matter has always been a popular source of fireworks. This could either be a variation on that, or something else that works on the same principal?

13drardavis
Mar 6, 2014, 11:05 am

>9 LShelby: LShelby thanks for the ideas. I hadn't considered the diffusion approach. I can definitely figure out some formulas for that, but as you said it won't give me the big bangs I need. Suddenly I feel like the fuse to my bomb has burned out! : - )