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posted by martyb on Tuesday August 16 2016, @09:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the buzzy-bunch-needs-new-home dept.

El Reg reports

20,000 [...] bees were found in the exhaust nozzle of an F-22 Raptor engine following flight operations at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, on June 11, 2016.

Rather than kill the bees--America is badly affected by hive collapse, the base decided to call on a beekeeper to take them away.

Andy Westrich, US Navy retiree, was the apiarist known to the on-base entomologist (the Air Force keeps insect experts on its bases, apparently). Westrich used vacuum hoses to trap the bees, and he calculated the swarm size from the weight of the captured bees--eight pounds, or in modern numbers, 3.6 kilos.

From the USAF release: "Westrich suspected that the swarm of bees were on their way to a new location to build a hive for their queen. [...] Westrich believes she landed on the F-22 to rest. Honey bees do not leave the queen, so they swarmed around the F-22 and eventually landed there."

wordlessTech has a good photo.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Tuesday August 16 2016, @04:27PM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Tuesday August 16 2016, @04:27PM (#388710) Journal

    Centigrade degrees are too large - you either wind up using fractions (which I've never seen anyone do) or else your integers contain more margin than they should.

    I disagree. Maybe you believe that the finer scale matters, because you are used to use it. But I'm pretty sure I do not feel the difference of a fraction of a degree Celsius. Indeed, the different in perception of the exact same temperature in different circumstances is much larger than the difference in perception of a degree Celsius difference.

    The only place where finer differences matter is when measuring body temperature; and there a digit after the decimal point is always used (I see no reason to use something as complicated as actual fractions there).

    The Fahrenheit system was designed for daily life

    No, it wasn't. In particular, the zero point is ridiculously low. While for Celsius, the zero point is at the most important temperature for weather: The freezing point of water.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday August 16 2016, @05:17PM

    by Arik (4543) on Tuesday August 16 2016, @05:17PM (#388738) Journal
    As to the scale, we don't need to throw around dueling opinions, there's plenty of scholarly work on it. The threshold amount actually depends on several variables, for instance the threshold to perceive a decrease will be smaller than for an increase, and sudden change in temperature is easier to detect than gradual, but for the scenario that would fit the discussion, a sudden increase in air temperature felt on the skin, it's clearly a good deal less than a centigrade degree. Scholarpedia puts it at 0.20 °C which is actually less than a Fahrenheit degree. Which means that a a centigrade degree is clearly over-large by that measure. Half a degree is a little smaller than I usually care about, and a whole degree a good bit larger. It's not impossible to use, of course, but it is an awkwardly sized unit for daily life. If I were to seriously attempt to use it in my daily life I'd have to get a half-degree thermometer though, and a thermostat that only took centigrade integers would just not be usable.

    "In particular, the zero point is ridiculously low."

    For the tropics, perhaps. It was designed around the normal range of temperatures in northern Europe, after all. It's a historical accident but in the end it doesn't really matter how or why a measure was originated, what matters is how useful it is to those who use it.

    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    • (Score: 2) by tfried on Tuesday August 16 2016, @07:43PM

      by tfried (5534) on Tuesday August 16 2016, @07:43PM (#388806)

      Well, yeah, the threshold to perceive a temperature difference is lower than a degree C and - as you point out - lower than a degree F, too. But in practice that will rarely matter, anyway, in particular for your initial example of "how you should dress." For answering that question on this scale, you'd definitely have to factor in humidity and wind, and assume static weather conditions, including static sunshine, everywhere. (Point taken for adjusting the thermostat at home, but even that it rarely "I want the temperature at exactly X degrees, wherever I dwell", but rather "this feels a bit cold, let's adjust upwards one notch.")

      But actually, I agree, temperature is not a domain where either system is clearly better than the other. However, the one truly ingenious idea behind the metric system (besides scaling most units - besides time - in decimal powers) is rooting the kilo at the weight of one litre of water at room temperature. With many every-day liquids (and even some solids) sharing roughly the same density as water, this is a real life-saver in the kitchen, meaning you can convert between arbitrary (metric) units of volume or mass, trivially. Whatever the units in the recipe, whatever the precision required, a good quality kitchen scale is generally the only measurement tool you'll need in cooking. But actually, if you're into measuring your ingredients by volume, having a straight-forward relation between conventional measures of volume and measures of length is definitely a nice plus, too. Estimating volumes is tricky enough, but with the metric system, at least you stand a chance...

      • (Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:32AM

        by Arik (4543) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:32AM (#388941) Journal
        "But actually, I agree, temperature is not a domain where either system is clearly better than the other. However, the one truly ingenious idea behind the metric system (besides scaling most units - besides time - in decimal powers) is rooting the kilo at the weight of one litre of water at room temperature."

        How precisely is that better than the extremely similiar correlation in our traditional metric system - one pint of water weighs one pound?

        --
        If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
        • (Score: 2) by tfried on Wednesday August 17 2016, @07:48PM

          by tfried (5534) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @07:48PM (#389267)

          How precisely is that better than the extremely similiar correlation in our traditional metric system - one pint of water weighs one pound?

          a) It isn't just roughly correct, but correct. Because it's by design, not by coincidence...
          b) It does hold the world around, as opposed to for only one out of three common definitions of a pint, of which the US, amazingly, has two.
          c) As both metric units of volume and metric units of mass are trivially convertible thanks to decimal scaling, the relation can easily be mapped to any other common - metric - measure. One cubic meter of water at room temperature is a (metric) ton, one millilitre/cubic centimeter is a gram, etc. (Again, note the neat mapping to length, at the same time).

          • (Score: 1) by Arik on Wednesday August 17 2016, @09:31PM

            by Arik (4543) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @09:31PM (#389308) Journal
            a) They're both roughly correct, and by design not coïncidence.
            b) There are several pints but only one that is commonly used and fairly assumed when unmodified.
            c) Please, please please quit misusing the word 'metric' like this. It's an adjective, equivalent to 'measuring' - there is no such thing as 'the metric system' there are many many metric systems, and the persistent chauvinistic claim for your french imperial metric system as 'the metric' system is at the same time so grating, so offensive to logic, and to the English language itself, so obviously and unashamedly fraudulent that it demands prompt correction.
            --
            If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?