Moments the boys were wrong...

[volvicpower]

Ricky saying, "If speed and distance don't change, time has to." This makes no sense and my head bleeds every time I hear it.

What show was this in and what was he explaining?

It was when Karl brings up the topic of someone in a spacerocket aging slower than someone on Earth. Karl says something like, "Why does speed affect how a watch works", and he also says to Smerch, "You were having problems there, Steve" when Steve tried to convince Karl it wasn't the time or place to discuss such topics. Can't remember the exact episode though. It just annoys me when Ricky thinks he can breeze through the concept of time dilation, which I did for 2 months at university, with the statement, "If speed and distance don't change, time has to."

[ScottHanson]

Can you give us a concise explanation that explains how speed changes how a watch works?

[ScottHanson]

Well, Speed = Distance/Time, naturally, but I presumed there was more to it than that.

[Tattoostan]

Doing a degree in chemistry (haha, it seems like such obvious 'bragging' but i'm really not') i was really surprised when Ricky and Steve thought the Hindenberg was filled with helium. Especially with Ricky having a scientific background!

[volvicpower]

Can you give us a concise explanation that explains how speed changes how a watch works?

It's all to do with the speed of light and how, from anyone's perspective, the speed of light is constant. I.e. if you're stationary in the darkness with a torch and you switch it on, the speed with which the light moves away from you is exactly the same as it would move away from you if you were at the nose of a rocket holding a torch in the direction of the rocket's movement... which seems mental when you think about it. So, if there's 2 people; one holding a torch at the tip of a rocket, and one person stationary on Earth, watching, the person in the rocket will witness the torch's light moving away from himself the same as if he was standing still on Earth with the torch, however the person on Earth will witness the speed the light moves away from the person in the rocket to be slower because the rocket is moving in the same direction as the light from the torch.

Without diagrams, that may be a bit confusing, but even if my explanation hasn't helped, I apologise for turning a perfectly good thread into a bloody science class :0

[Hippopotenuse]

Can you give us a concise explanation that explains how speed changes how a watch works?

A guy I live with is a General Relativity Theorist, so I'll plug his site trying to explain special relativity: http://www.black-holes.org/relativity3.html . It's all a bit confusing though until you make the diagrams and work though the maths.

What annoys me is Ricky's arrogance in saying Karl you're an idiot heres how it is, but being completely wrong himself. It's not trivial to explain or understand, I'm not surprised Karl was confused. Physicists still get confused about it too, although typically with subtle aspects.

[O. Piddle-Trent-Hide]

I had a massive argument with one of my friends about this.

You wouldnt know "which one you were" in my opinion. I'm on Karls side! You might be the clone, if you knew that each of you had the same memories.

Exactly. After Ricky just says "oh, well identical twins then!" flippantly. But that is completely different. Twins are different people. The question was if you were to meet YOURSELF.
ie, you would have to have been brought up the same and experienced the same things otherwise you would be a different person. So it would follow that both the "real" karl and the "fake" karl would both think that they live in that house with Suzanne. I think it is an interesting point by karl, but he maybe articulated it badly.

But simply by your position in the room you would know which was the original and therefore always know.

[it's_a_foodage]

I had a massive argument with one of my friends about this.

You wouldnt know "which one you were" in my opinion. I'm on Karls side! You might be the clone, if you knew that each of you had the same memories.

Exactly. After Ricky just says "oh, well identical twins then!" flippantly. But that is completely different. Twins are different people. The question was if you were to meet YOURSELF.
ie, you would have to have been brought up the same and experienced the same things otherwise you would be a different person. So it would follow that both the "real" karl and the "fake" karl would both think that they live in that house with Suzanne. I think it is an interesting point by karl, but he maybe articulated it badly.

But simply by your position in the room you would know which was the original and therefore always know.

What do you mean? There are things that are not specified in the question. It depends how the real karl and the fake karl meet. If they just happen to meet each other somehow then there is no way of knowing, as they both believe that they are the real Karl. They would obviousley know if the fake karl was "created" and someone explained to him that he was a duplicate of a real person. But it would take a third person to let them know who was real and who was fake at some point.

[Jesenk]

When Ricky and Steve confuse Iceland and Greenland. Really baffles me.

[j_a_m_e_s]

This isn't a moment where Steve is "wrong" (maybe I’m the one that’s wrong), but there are times when he seems to completely misinterpret comments made by other people. For example, when he's recalling a session he heard on the radio where the DJ said "that sounded great", Steve seems to think the DJ is complimenting the sound technician, rather than the artist. Surely this is not the case? Another moment is when Steve, in response to a comment Ricky makes about Chris Campling's article on the show, says something like "I love that, complimenting him on his grammar". Surely, when someone says "it was a really well written article”, they’re complimenting the quality of writing as a whole.

^^ That makes me sound like such nerdlinger, but I’m curious to see if anyone else agrees with me.

[Leftfoot]

Ricky saying that gravity works at the speed of light is more ridiculous than ANYTHING Karl ever said.

[ScottHanson]

I guess it's all relative, when Ricky tries to explain infinity, how gravity works, the theory of relativity, most science, he inevitably gets into trouble, when Karl tries to explain... I don't know... how old he is or how he met Suzanne, for example, it inevitably comes out garbled.

[O. Piddle-Trent-Hide]

Ricky saying that gravity works at the speed of light is more ridiculous than ANYTHING Karl ever said.

doesn't it? It's not instantaneous and there is no speed faster than the speed of light, know to man.

[ScottHanson]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2639043.stm

[O. Piddle-Trent-Hide]

So Ricky was, as ever, correct.