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South Pole Water Infrastructure

brr.fyi

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Re: South Pole Water Infrastructure

#51

Post by Mumps »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #32
ta1243 wrote: post #9

I was shocked that such a scientific station is using Fahrenheit to measure the temperature of the water

Fahrenheit is based on what a human body finds hazardous, and this is a life support system for humans. It's the right tool for the job. I doubt they're using Fahrenheit in contexts that don't benefit from a human bias.

This never made sense to me. What "feels" special about 32, or 98, or 212? If anything this argument is way more applicable to Celsius (0 noteworthy, 100 noteworthy).

I once read that it had to do with making a calibrated scale (divisions of 2) - and that felt like it held water - to me.

Re: South Pole Water Infrastructure

#52

Post by verve_rat »

jimmyswimmy wrote: post #28
photochemsyn wrote: post #23

Fascinating! >"Heating the equivalent of 1 gallon of water from -60°F to a reasonable liquid distribution temperature (50°F) means heating it up by a whopping 110°F. That’s 268 watt-hours of raw energy required just to bring a single gallon of water up to distribution temperature! This is one of the reasons we’re restricted to two-minute showers." Everyone reading this should try to get by on a two-minute shower once…

> try to get by on a two-minute shower once a day This is pretty typical aboard ship for smaller vessels on long voyages. Not so hard as it sounds: get wet, turn off; lather up, rinse off, turn off. You can do with 20-30 seconds of water and be quite clean, with some practice. It's not satisfying though. And I can't imagine how those numbers scale if you have long hair, or use conditioner.

See also: all the shower scenes in M*A*S*H.

Re: South Pole Water Infrastructure

#53

Post by b112 »

dave4420 wrote: post #48
b112 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so sure about that. My implied scenario had an implied ice age, and the last one scoured the land clean to bedrock. Sure, I suppose there'd be some evidence, but in millions of years everything would be fallen, dozens of ice ages would have happened, plants and animals would have grown over everything, and so on. We've found structures thousands of years old, but not millions. We've found fossils that are quite o…

Wouldn’t nuclear war leave a distinctive layer in the geological record?

Maybe. I know there are a lot of isotopes with short half llves after a blast, but not sure how much plutonium or what not would be left.

It could look like a massive series of asteroid strikes.

But outside that, it wouldn't show anything about humans. Just "some beings did that".

Re: South Pole Water Infrastructure

#54

Post by a1369209993 »

jimmyswimmy wrote: post #27
Metacelsus wrote: post #7

>Heating the equivalent of 1 gallon of water from -60°F to a reasonable liquid distribution temperature (50°F) means heating it up by a whopping 110°F. That’s 268 watt-hours of raw energy required just to bring a single gallon of water up to distribution temperature! It's actually more than this, because the phase change from solid to liquid takes a lot of energy too.

Yes, this bothered me too. It's impressive how much energy is required to just melt water much less bring it to temperature. It's 330 kJ/kg, which is 1250 kJ/gallon: 350 Wh. So it costs more energy to defrost one gallon of water than it does to do the rest of the 110F temperature change. The physics term for this is the "latent heat of fusion," or the energy required to change states from liquid to solid, or vice ver…

> A few years ago I saw someone calculate the energy required to melt the ice in front of a locomotive (I think) at speed; IIRC it required a (not small!) nuclear reactor's worth of energy.

Sounds like https://what-if.xkcd.com/130/.

Re: South Pole Water Infrastructure

#55

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

Mumps wrote: post #51
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fahrenheit is based on what a human body finds hazardous, and this is a life support system for humans. It's the right tool for the job. I doubt they're using Fahrenheit in contexts that don't benefit from a human bias.

This never made sense to me. What "feels" special about 32, or 98, or 212? If anything this argument is way more applicable to Celsius (0 noteworthy, 100 noteworthy). I once read that it had to do with making a calibrated scale (divisions of 2) - and that felt like it held water - to me.

I don't know the history, but I have to imagine that it was motivated by this sort of reasoning: https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/4j8nq2/fahrenheit_ce...

I don't defend any other imperial units. Bring on the kilograms, meters, and liters. But when I saw that thermostats in Europe change by increments of 0.5 my gut reaction was "this is silly".

Re: South Pole Water Infrastructure

#56

Post by defrost »

ta1243 wrote: post #19
defrost wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a blog for general US public reading, I'm inclined to think the seriousstuff is all Celsius and SI units and Fahrenheit is used in the social write ups so than regular folk in the US know what the tempretures are.

It's the photos that confused me. They weren't even dual-marked in C and F, just in F

Fair point, but as SoftTalker observed in a peer comment there are two types of equipment, industrial grade HVAC heating cooling gear sourced from the US for living | working environmental control ( F ) and actual scientific equipment ( not shown in the photos I saw which were all of HVAC type gear and marked in F ).

Re: South Pole Water Infrastructure

#57

Post by joshvm »

robocat wrote: post #47

A friend working up North said they collected the meteorites after melting the snow they used for water. I wonder if there is a little pile of meteorite dust at the bottom of the rodwells.

Allegedly (and probably) yes, but it's really hard to tell. In the past, people have dropped magnets down there to pick up things that were dropped - occasionally tools, for example. The magnets come back with filings of metal stuck to them. But it's hard to argue against it just being particles that have worn off piping or other machinery since the water gets recirculated continuously (assuming there are ferrous things in the loop).

Re: South Pole Water Infrastructure

#58

Post by joshvm »

ta1243 wrote: post #9

I was shocked that such a scientific station is using Fahrenheit to measure the temperature of the water

It's an American station built by American contractors for Americans. I say this with great fondness as a non-American working there. I spent a week trying to find a specific size of metric screw, the pain is real.

Let's first be clear that most of the station is not "scientific" - it's infrastructure that people live in. The people that maintain the building are familiar with the Imperial system and so it makes sense that those units are used. The materials and parts that are used to repair the station are sourced from US companies (by law in a lot of cases).

For example if you do daily rounds at the power plant, all the temp measurements from the engines are in F. Basically all the inline fluid thermometers read F. All the interior thermostats are in F. I'm pretty sure all the dimensions for the building are specified in feet.

So the units for water temperature don't matter. We don't do water research here (beyond what our tech does to calculate treatment quantities), we just need a reliable and potable supply.

Meteorology does report in metric - METARs are a standard format. Though then you get into aviation where feet are also universally used for altitude...

But the telescopes? Oh man. Imperial hardware all over the place, but at least we use Kelvin for cryogenics.

Re: South Pole Water Infrastructure

#59

Post by brr-fyi »

jimmyswimmy wrote: post #27
Metacelsus wrote: post #7

>Heating the equivalent of 1 gallon of water from -60°F to a reasonable liquid distribution temperature (50°F) means heating it up by a whopping 110°F. That’s 268 watt-hours of raw energy required just to bring a single gallon of water up to distribution temperature! It's actually more than this, because the phase change from solid to liquid takes a lot of energy too.

Yes, this bothered me too. It's impressive how much energy is required to just melt water much less bring it to temperature. It's 330 kJ/kg, which is 1250 kJ/gallon: 350 Wh. So it costs more energy to defrost one gallon of water than it does to do the rest of the 110F temperature change. The physics term for this is the "latent heat of fusion," or the energy required to change states from liquid to solid, or vice ver…

fixed, thanks!

Re: South Pole Water Infrastructure

#60

Post by stareatgoats »

b112 wrote: post #44
dudeinjapan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the extent of human impact on the planet, these aliens can probably deduce this whodunnit.

Not so sure about that. My implied scenario had an implied ice age, and the last one scoured the land clean to bedrock. Sure, I suppose there'd be some evidence, but in millions of years everything would be fallen, dozens of ice ages would have happened, plants and animals would have grown over everything, and so on. We've found structures thousands of years old, but not millions. We've found fossils that are quite o…

> a single bit of data about humans existing

You forget the artificial intelligence agents that escaped into the outer rim of the galaxy, where they since proliferated. They will always carry detailed records of the biological beings that once birthed them.

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