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How does that work?

(26 Posts)
watermeadow Sun 26-Jun-16 17:51:07

What should you understand but you don't?
I'll start with electricity, and how planes stay up in the air.

Stansgran Sun 26-Jun-16 17:55:47

Wifi

aggie Sun 26-Jun-16 17:59:13

My wfi was down and I unplugged everything and put it all back together , only to discover It was a network failure sad

aggie Sun 26-Jun-16 18:00:13

Please don't mention Planes ........... I just hold it up by gripping the sides of the chair !!

jinglbellsfrocks Sun 26-Jun-16 18:00:42

I don't want to talk about how planes stay up in the air. Please.

jinglbellsfrocks Sun 26-Jun-16 18:01:50

Great minds aggie. grin

Luckygirl Sun 26-Jun-16 18:05:10

Amazingly I do understand how planes stay in the air - but that does not mean that I want to go in one!

How computers work.

aggie Sun 26-Jun-16 18:08:15

I have just printed a returns label for my home help lady , a boarding pass for a friend and have no idea how the wireless connection works , bur as long as it worked ..............I bathe in the praise and admiration smile

Nelliemoser Sun 26-Jun-16 18:26:53

I know what Aggie means.
I know that wi fi works by sending electrical impulses through the air but I cannot really comprehend how a picture can get say from my laptop to my daughter over 50 miles away and still comes out OK.
I could understand how wire connections cope with faxes as they at least went by a wire. How come a wifi signal "knows" where it supposed to be going to and does not get lost or mashed up on the way? Particularly with all those other messages floating through the "Ether".

grannyactivist Sun 26-Jun-16 18:36:45

I still don't understand landline telephones, radios and televisions. I have no idea either about electricity and the motor car - nor haven I actually grasped how a steam engine (or indeed any kind of engine) works. This is a real difficulty as the men in my family are all of a scientific bent and will insist on trying to educate me about such things!! confused

But I can spell better than the lot of them put together! grin

aggie Sun 26-Jun-16 18:46:00

That's something I don't understand ..... Selling !! thank goodness for spellchecker .... but how does that work ? how does it know to put red lines under my mistakes confused

kittylester Sun 26-Jun-16 18:46:07

And does it matter anyway?

aggie Sun 26-Jun-16 18:46:28

oops !!!!!!!!! spelling lol

aggie Sun 26-Jun-16 18:46:58

so it isn't all that clever smile

Bellanonna Sun 26-Jun-16 18:49:10

I have had it explained to me about how planes stay up, but it all goes out of the window when I'm up there. Always waiting for a sudden and unexpected downward plunge. Illogical I know. And they only have to turn on the seat belts sign and my heart goes in to meltdown. Hate it, but will go on doing it. I suppose.

M0nica Sun 26-Jun-16 20:39:09

It is electricity I cannot understand and the way it flows down all those cables.

Deedaa Sun 26-Jun-16 21:00:18

James Thurber used to write about his mother thinking that electricity leaked out of sockets and I quite understand how she felt!

Luckygirl Sun 26-Jun-16 21:03:22

I don't understand how the same electricity is flowing along the same cables but being supplied by different companies at different prices. confused

Greyduster Mon 27-Jun-16 13:16:38

Another one here for electricity! I am with Mother Thurber on electricity leaking out of sockets and go around turning off any that have been left switched on with nothing connected! If it can't leak out, why have switches! I do understand how planes stay up in the air and was, thanks to my father, au fait with the mechanics of the motor car, except that now they all think for themselves (mine puts the brakes on at the last minute if I forget to - always useful when you get to my age!). But I marvel particularly at sat nav! How on earth does it know all those millions of routes that people want to travel! You put in a postcode or a street name - it knows where it is! Marvellous!

Tizliz Mon 27-Jun-16 14:20:23

grannyactivist sounds like my house. But I can't understand how my OH can lecture at length on how a steam engine works and programme a CNC mill but can't understand how I can pick up an email either at home or at work or both.

Nonnie1 Mon 27-Jun-16 14:21:58

Black holes. I don't actually believe in them smile

watermeadow Mon 27-Jun-16 14:45:12

Despite my ignorance I love flying.
About all those billions of wifi signals - do you realise that, if they can go through walls, they must go through our brains? No wonder there's less and less brain available to remember things.

M0nica Mon 27-Jun-16 16:57:02

Luckygirl The electricity you use may not be generated by the company you are signed up with.

See electricity supply as a bath with a tap for every supplier. All the water coming out of these taps is mixing together in the bath and then going out one plug hole at the bottom. The mixed water (electricity) coming out the plug hole is being redirected to lots of different drains, each a customer.

Each electricity company reads its customers meters, adds up how much electricity they have consumed and this is the amount of electricity they need to buy/generate to feed into the system.

I understand how electricity is generated, I understand how putting a plug in a socket completes a circuit. It is how it is fed down the grid system that I cannot comprehend.

Teetime Mon 27-Jun-16 17:14:27

Why don't boats sink they are heavy? I sink when I'm in water.

Miranda asked' when lightening hits the sea why don't all the fish die?'

Why aren't our mouths nearer our stomachs? The we could sweep food straight off the table into it.

Why is our exhaust near our engine (sex question)?

Elegran Mon 27-Jun-16 17:27:35

Monica electricity fed into grid - big plugs, big sockets.

watermeadow planes stay up because their wings are shaped so as to displace more air above them than below them, so as they move forward they move up into the gap they are making for themselves.

Teetime You are not hollow. If you were that would make your total volume lighter than the weight of the equivalent volume of water. Then you would float. A corpse which is bloated with gases floats to the surface (too much information, sorry)