Wikipedia:Reference Desk archive 4

This is part of the Wikipedia:Reference Desk archive. See Wikipedia:Reference Desk for current questions.

User:Juuitchan wants to know the difference between straw and hay; in particular, how to tell them apart.

I think straw is dried wheat and hay is dried grass in general. --Menchi 21:10 22 May 2003 (UTC)

I don't think I've ever seen real hay, but I'm under the impression that it is a more delicate material than straw. Hay is animal feed, but from what I know of straw, most animals would balk if it were put in their feed troughs. -Smack

Ship buffs: I wanted to know the power rating of a nice, powerful nuclear power plant, presumably from an aircraft carrier, and perhaps one from a submarine too, to add as an example for orders of magnitude (power), but I've been through pretty nearly all the U.S. aircraft carrier pages, checked the ships' own websites when they had external links, and haven't come up with a thing other than "two A4W reactors". Is the information classified or something? I wouldn't have thought so. If not, does one of you have a power rating of at least one aircraft carrier/submarine in any of your references? -- John Owens 21:06 22 May 2003 (UTC)

While I'm at it, on the off chance one of the ship people pops a head in here, check my recent addition of the volume definition of ton. I'm not quite clear on just when it measures volume of displacement, volume of capacity, and plain old mass. -- John Owens 12:37 24 May 2003 (UTC)

And here I didn't even know I was supposed to be watching this page! :-) Googling '"aircraft carrier" horsepower' turns up a random assertion that Nimitz'es are 260,000 hp, and http://www.dresser-rand.com/newsroom/pr/archives/nptnews.asp says "more than a quarter-million". On ton, there have been different systems in the past, but these days it's volume of displacement, assuming 35 cu ft / ton of water. Stan 07:46 27 May 2003 (UTC)

Each of the A4W/1G reactor power plants produces approx. 97 MW power. Therefore the ship has an total power output of 194 MW for the two engines. The new A1B power plant from Bettis (Bechtel) is said to produce 150 MW; two of those would provide the next-generation CVN-21 with 300 MW. It sounds as if it may be be a far more "electric ship" with electromagnetic catapults and other energy-consuming requirements. Petercorless 16:52, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Library Reference Desk! I have a HISTORY reference question: where might I find detailed county-by-county results for past U.S. Presidential elections? My specific question is New Jersey Counties in the 1860 Lincoln/Douglas contest, but I'm sure I will have other uses for the answer to the originla question. I'll even make an article on it, if I can find out where to get the info. Many thanks in advance... ArloBee 20:12 25 May 2003 (UTC)

here's a first try...[1] says that 109 of 147 counties in the Mid-Atlantic states voted Republican. You could email webmaster@harpweek.com and find out where they got the numbers Kingturtle 20:32 25 May 2003 (UTC)

Thanks Kt. I just queried the Lib of Cong site a couple of ways and found:

Dubin, Michael J. United States presidential elections, 1788-1860 : the official results by county and state / Michael J. Dubin. Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co., c2002. xxv, 225 p. : maps ; 29 cm. CALL NUMBER: JK524 .D778 2002 Alc The U of Penn library has it and I will go up there tomorrow for that (1 hour away). But if there turns outto be an online source somewhere, that would be pretty great. I guess I can copy some measure of facts out of that book without violating copyright? But I'll feel safer if there is a neighboring book of greater vintage that I can mine from for wiki. ArloBee 20:49 25 May 2003 (UTC)

Did a little more poking around: this is a body of and enormous amount of original research. I will be respecting his copyright! :-) ArloBee 21:21 25 May 2003 (UTC)

In an aqueous solution of, say, a lead compound, why don't all the lead ions sink to the bottom? I suppose that lead is only denser than water because the atoms in solid or liquid lead are packed tighter than the molecules in water, but to me it seems unlikely that all the ions and molecules in a solution have exactly the same density. What is it that keeps them all afloat? -- Heron

Water is a polar molecule so it forms relatively strong intermolecular bonds with ions. Water molecules essentially attach to the ions and act as one large ion/water thingamajing. Basically the same thing soap molecules do to grease. This is the reason that ions are formed in the first place, the polar water molecules attach to the atoms in an ionic compound and pull them apart. Iammaxus 20:48 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I see. Thanks. So the 'ion/water thingamajing' has the same density as water. -- Heron 21:03 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

nope, it'll be denser. This is why you float on the Dead sea: high concentration of ion/water thingamajing, only in that case the ions are Na+ Cl- -- Tarquin 21:57 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

its denser than water, but the entire solution is denser than water, thats why the ions float Iammaxus 02:07 11 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Heron originally asked "why don't all the lead ions sink to the bottom". Off the top of my head, I would say diffusion. Random thermal motion of the lead particles tends to make them evenly mixed throughout the sample, and swamps the gravitational effect. It's the same reason the air in a room doesn't settle to the floor, leaving vacuum at the top. If the lead ions were much, much heavier, they would sink towards the bottom. The bottom would become positively charged, eventually repelling additional lead ions. -- Tim Starling 08:05 11 Jun 2003 (UTC)

as heard on US tv shows, what are "cooties"?

Lice. --Menchi 20:40 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

It's a derisive term used by children toward other children who are odd or strange, a sort of social mechanism by which the "in" crowd can identify the "out" crowd: The "out" crowd is said to "have cooties". Most children will not understand the origin of the term, only that it's a bad thing, and that "cooties" are contagious: if you hang around with other children considered to have "cooties", you'll wind up with "cooties" (and therefore in the out group) too. The origin is in head lice, for which "cooties" was a slang term when they were more prevalent. -- Someone else 20:44 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Was also used by grade-school boys speaking of girls and (I think) vice-versa, irrespective of in-ness and out-ness, sometimes qualified as "girl cooties". We didn't know what cooties really were (must have been a sanitary bunch), but a single touch was considered sufficient to pass them on, which led to variants of tag-type games. Stan 21:14 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I'd see this as a manifestation of 'outness': for boys of certain ages, girls are intrinsically "out"<G>. I imagine girls might also use the term of boys... -- Someone else 21:25 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Circular saw inventor[edit]

The circular saw is persistently listed on timeline of inventions as being invented by Samuel Miller. And yet I have a distinct memory of reading that it was invented by someone of the female persuasion, in some religious utopian community or other. Can't find my source, and it is driving me crazy. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo stick 17:52 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

About a dozen Googles say it's Sister Tabitha Babbitt of the Harvard Shakers's work in 1810:

After watching the brothers sawing, she concluded that their back and forth motion wasted half their effort, and mounted a notched metal disc on her spinning wheel to demonstrate her proposed improvements.... Sister Tabitha intended the blade to be turned by water power.

Source: Alic, Margaret (1986). Hypatia's Heritage: A History of Women in Science From Antiquity to the Late 19th Century, London, The Women's Press.

Hypatia's Heritage is 230-page. Apparently, the author is not a historian, but a biochemist. And she claims that Moses and his wife operated a medical school in Egypt. The Amazon has 2 reviews (a hating man, and an adoring woman. Both American).

Despite it being written in sto.. I mean, book, its authencity is still questionable.

--Menchi 09:20 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Oddly enough, the year in which Ms. Babbitt is supposed to have invented the circular saw is 33 years after the date ascribed to Mr. Miller. Interpret that as you will. -Smack 16:03 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

What is this all about[edit]

Hi im a little confused on what this page is for, can i ask any guestion or only guestions regarding world events and or common knowledge. JS

Any question at all, since Wikipedia aims to be a summary of human knowledge. See Wikipedia for more. Of course, the answer to many questions is "We don't have any information at this time." :) -- Stephen Gilbert 20:47 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)