• darthelmet@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      Tbf, it’s not like physics stuff is always obvious, especially when dealing with relativity or quantum mechanics. It just feels obvious if you’ve already learned about the research that’s already been done.

      It isn’t even remotely intuitive that light should have a max speed that can’t be added to by moving its source relative to other things. Plus, light does interact with matter, but it can only be slowed down by it.

      So less a stupid question and more just one that isn’t educated about something.

      • carl_dungeon@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        Yeah yeah, I know. I was mostly just kidding. Everything is magic if you’re ignorant and we shouldn’t shit on people for not knowing something and props to them for asking and seeking knowledge and all that.

        But it’s really sad that very basic science like radio waves which are introduced in 5th or 6th grade could be some completely misunderstood.

        I remember my 6th grade science class having a lively 15 minute discussion about whether or not rockets can work in space since there’s no air…. We’re looking at videos of rockets working in space and then debating whether or not they do. 🙄

        • pixelscript@lemm.ee
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          17 days ago

          I remember my 6th grade science class having a lively 15 minute discussion about whether or not rockets can work in space since there’s no air…. We’re looking at videos of rockets working in space and then debating whether or not they do. 🙄

          This feels a tad different than the person in the screenshot. Screenshot person fundamentally misunderstood how radio waves worked. Meanwhile, 6th grade you absolutely understood how rockets worked, at least to the level of understanding that they need air to work. Because you were right the whole time, those kinds of rockets can’t work in space without air. The slightly absurd solution that you wouldn’t readily know without a deeper understanding of how the rocket is built is that a rocket literally brings its own air with it!

    • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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      17 days ago

      On the contrary, given the premise its a smart observation from an unknownledged person.

      “Wifi is waves in the air” is very very wrong but as it appears it’s what this person was thought to believe. Given that they trust this information the conclusion makes perfect sense.

      The only “dumb” here is whoever explain wifi like this to them.

      So what the post really amounts to is. “I applied actual reasoning to the information i was provided as fact and my conclusion seemed strange, so i will ask on no stupid questions to figure out whats really going on”

      More intelligent than the majority of internet users.

      • Dabundis@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        “I don’t know, can anyone help me learn?” gets so much respect from me. Incredibly powerful mindset.

    • Zwiebel@feddit.org
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      17 days ago

      I mean technically the weather influences your ping, since the waves travel faster at higher air pressure

      • henfredemars@infosec.pub
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        17 days ago

        I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic but this is not true. Electromagnetic waves travel fastest in a vacuum, so the presence of air would slow it down very slightly and I would expect higher air pressure would slow it down further again only incredibly slightly because the electromagnetic waves would be traveling through a medium less efficient and more different than a vacuum.

        Of course I’m making an assumption that you were using wireless signals. For all I know, you could have some weird acoustic link in which case you’d be absolutely right.

        • Gork@lemm.ee
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          17 days ago

          Internet via carrier pigeon. A strong headwind will reduce your effective transmission time.

      • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        They would travel slower at high pressure and high temperature due to more interactions. Low temp and low pressure are the opposite. Sound is faster with high pressure and more complicated on temperature.

    • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
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      17 days ago

      This is not stupid at all. If Wi-Fi used matter instead of magnetic fields to propagate (like sound waves), a fan would affect it. Understanding magnetic fields is anything but intuitive.

  • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    Depends on the direction the fan is facing. If it’s blowing towards you, that increases air pressure in front of it, which means more things for photons to interact with and a lower speed of light, thus slower wifi. Away from you would decrease the pressure and result in faster wifi due to the increased speed of light. Theoretically at least. I don’t think this effect is measurable.

    Edit: thinking about it, the electromagnetic noise from a fan motor would likely be worse than the benefit. You might even be able to detect that

  • cmhe@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    Yes, but only in one direction and if you use UDP instead of TCP. Also your MTU needs to be small enough for the packages to fit between the blades of the fan, otherwise that causes package fragmentation.

    /s

  • oleorun@real.lemmy.fan
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    17 days ago

    I was an adjunct instructor at a local technical college teaching computer hardware courses. One student asked me if a hard drive that was full weighed more than a hard drive that was empty.

    • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      17 days ago

      I learned more from the internet than everything that public school taught me. That’s not to say we should stop funding school, but in fact, we should fund it better, and have more qualified teachers.

      If I make an analogy between a wikipedia article, and the knowledge I learned. I would say that public school taught the eqivalent of the summary paragraph at the top of a wikipedia page, while the internet taught me the rest of the page. That’s how much school just don’t teach.

      Example, School didn’t teach: (This is the USA btw)

      • Ranked Choice voting (or any alternative voting method, for that matter)
      • National Popular Vote Interstate Compact
      • Citizen’s United ruling
      • Although they did teach 5th & 6th amendments and Miranda Warning, they didn’t be specific and teach the fact that you have to specifically invoke your right to silence. Just remaining silent itself can be used as evidence of guilt.

      Amonst many things

      School definitely doesn’t teach how wifi works (and to be honest, I thought about the wifi/fan thing too), or even how technology works in general. School never taugh about the fact that you shouldn’t ignore HTTPS warnings. I’m pretty sure like 99% of my school would just instictively click pass an HTTPS warning and just get their info stolen, although we do have HSTS now so we should be better now, but still, there are many other phishing that almost all of my school-mates would fall for, and they wouldn’t even think to scan the sender address or do any verification that its legit.

  • Rooty@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    No, the fan will blow the packets all over the place, which is fine for UDP, but any TCP/IP connection will suffer. Place the fan in front of the router so that the blades will catch any dropped packets and throw them back into the datastream.

    • DogWater@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      Interestingly, this could be true and you could never find out experimentally iirc.

      I watched a veritasium video about the 1 way speed of light vs 2 way that talked about it.

      • antimongo@lemmy.world
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        16 days ago

        I watched the same video!

        I was right about to disagree and type “wait this only applies to light” but then I remembered: radio is light.

        Crazy to think about that!

        • DogWater@lemmy.world
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          16 days ago

          It is nuts. It goes to show how far science goes proving things through deductions rather than direct observation. So much science is done that way.

          I think that there would be some infinite energy glitches if it was actually true that light was faster 1 direction than another, so I think the assumption is a good one. But still fun facts

  • Narauko@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    Yes, but the tailwind becomes a headwind on the way back to the router so you won’t see any actual speed changes. Putting a fan on both ends will cancel each other out too.

    You need to change all the gaseous air out for either liquid or a solid as waves propagate faster through them. You should start with filling your house with liquid oxygen as a nice half step so you still have something to breathe easily, as solids are a bit more tricky.

    • svenkw@lemmy.world
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      16 days ago

      The general idea is correct, but since we’re dealing with electronagnetic waves, they travel slower in any medium. So pumping out all the air of the room would technically make your wifi faster.

      Liquid oxygen has (I think) a refractive index of about 1.2, so it would make the signals 20% slower (still very fast)

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    The Wifi isn’t waves made of air, the wifi is waves of the electromagnetic spectrum, similar to visible light, and they travel faster than you can perceive.

    So no.

    But you can do something similar with a microwave oven. It’s just that any signal making it through the radiation of the oven would be disfigured and useless.