User:LuckyThracian/Questions

Women on the stage
When did women first perform on the stage in Britain? I know that they were excluded during the late 16th Century, but was this a permanent or cyclical thing? Does this exclusion explain all the gender-bending plots in Shakespeare's plays? And, JackofOz, are you serious or just having a stir? LuckyThracian 01:33, 9 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Most certainly not having a stir. See Shakespeare authorship question for starters.  Whether it was de Vere or someone else, imo it sure as hell wasn't Will Shakspere from Stratford.  "As far as is known and can be proved, Shakspere never wrote a complete sentence in his life" (Mark Anderson, "Shakespeare by Another Name", Gotham Books, 2005; p. xxxii) --  JackofOz 01:40, 9 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Coming soon on the Reference Desk: why Paul is dead, why the moon landings never happened, and how Diana was killed by Prince Philip in a white Fiat Uno... Malcolm Starkey 07:27, 9 November 2007 (UTC)


 * This isn't the place to debate this, but I'll happily do so elsewhere with anyone who is interested enough to read the literature and make intelligent comment on it, whether for or against. --  JackofOz 10:48, 9 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Mary Saunderson was the first woman to play female Shakespeare roles professionally. Wrad 02:37, 9 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Puritan attitudes (and fear of political satire) saw all theatre banned under the Commonwealth. That seems to be the divide; before the Civil War, there are no actresses; after the Restoration, there are. FiggyBee 05:40, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Okay, thanks Jack, I believe you're in earnest. As to what you believe, I'll look at the references you gave. As the cops say (but rarely practice): Your mind is like a parachute - it works best when it's open.

Thanks to Wrad and FiggyBee. As a clarification: I may have led the wrong way by mentioning "the stage" and Shakespeare. I had the idea that women performed in travelling troupes of players in Medieval times (in Passion plays, pantomimes, etc.). The Romans permitted actresses (didn't they?), so I'm trying to peg at which point and why they were prohibited. (And, by the way, was this a uniquely British thing?) LuckyThracian 00:55, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Cardinal/Ordinal patterns in English
I was looking at these patterns:


 * One, two, three.
 * First, second, third.
 * Single, double, triple.(or unique, double, treble?)
 * Solo, duo, trio.
 * Unitary, binary, trinary.

I wondered what the pattern is that contains "pair" and what the first is for ..diptych, triptych.

LuckyThracian (talk) 02:02, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


 * There's also ".... ternary, quaternary ...", but I don't know the names for the first two words. --  JackofOz (talk) 02:09, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * 'unary' and 'binary' start that (Latin, more or less) sequence. Algebraist 02:47, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


 * monoptych, i guess &mdash;Tamfang (talk) 04:36, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * That would be the natural word to invent, and going by Google at least one person has done so before. On the 'pair' front, the OED gives it as coming originally from the latin par, 'equal', rather than a word for 2, so I doubt it falls into a pattern. Algebraist 04:46, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Properly, there should be no monoptych. The Greek ptych element in these words means "folded", or "layered", so only with n > 1 can an n-ptych be defined. (Neat, huh?) OED says that the others are modeled on diptych: "1. Anything folded, so as to have two leaves;[...]". It gives only diptych, triptych, tetraptych, pentaptych, and polyptych. Others could be constructed on the same model: hexaptych, heptaptych, and so on. No doubt Google will find such things.
 * As for pair, OED has a second division in its entry that seems to connect more directly with Latin par (mentioned by Algebraist), meaning "equal" but not limited to two equal items:
 * "II. A set, not limited to two. 6. a. A set of separate things or parts forming a collective whole; e.g. a set (of gallows, harness, numbles, etc.); a suit (of armour); a string (of beads); a pack (of cards); a complex musical instrument, as ‘a pair of organs, clavichords, virginals, bagpipes’; a chest (of drawers). a pair of arrows, a set of three arrows (Cent. Dict. 1890). All Obs., or only dial. (But see b, c.)[...] b. pair of stairs: a flight of stairs. Often used as equivalent to floor or storey, as two pair of stairs, or shortly, two pair, the second floor or storey. Also attrib., as in a one (or two) pair (of stairs) lodging, room, window, etc.[...] c. pair of steps: a flight of steps; also, a portable set of steps used in a library, etc.[...]"
 * –&thinsp; Noetica ♬♩&thinsp;Talk 05:20, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Singleton, pair, triplet. --Lambiam 05:44, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * The word, and the form, n-tuplet is common among philosophers and associated luminaries. SOED has it, in the entry "-tuplet".–&thinsp; Noetica ♬♩&thinsp;Talk 06:17, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

LuckyThracian (talk) 00:45, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
 * The answer on the n-ptychs is definitive, I think. As to pair, it obviously varies according to context.
 * Thankyou all for your contributions.


 * There's also the pattern primary, secondary, tertiary .... Odd how the little word "one" is related to such diverse words as first, primary, single, solo, unary, unit, and unitary.  --  JackofOz (talk) 22:24, 8 January 2008 (UTC)


 * And yet..."One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do.."  LuckyThracian (talk) 01:22, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Batteries heating up
I bought a cheap portable fan yesterday which operates on two AA size batteries. I noticed after operating it for about 10 minutes that the batteries became red hot.They worked okay in a torch that I used them in previously, so I don't think they're defective. I have only seen this once before, in a TV remote control, in which the batteries heated up and died. The next set worked fine and no problems since. As to the fan, I let the batteries cool and they worked but the problem repeated. Is the fan likely to be the problem or the batteries? LuckyThracian (Talk) 01:06, 7 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Neither. Anytime you draw large current (usually when powering motors) the batteries will heat up, a lot. It might be possible that the fan is drawing too much current because parts of its motor winding is shorting out, but this is unlikly.--Dacium (talk) 01:41, 7 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Dacium. I don't have much savvy on matters electrical so I don't understand how a motor can control what current is drawn. LuckyThracian (Talk) 01:51, 7 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Any time you ask an electrical device for physical movement, you're going to use relatively big power. AA batteries can light a few LEDs or beep a peizo element till the cows come home, but a motor is a whole nother animal. In fact, if you stop the motor with your hand, the battery sees basically a length of copper wire to ground and will heat up pronto. Dacium is right that you can expect the batteries to get pretty warm (read "hot"), but I would say that "red hot" is too hot (I know that that was an exaggeration, but, still). Rarely is a non-rechargeable battery bad in such a way that it gets hot, although your anecdote about the remote control seems to be that. It's more likely to my mind that the fan is poorly designed or defective. --Milkbreath (talk) 02:17, 7 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, they became literally too hot to hold (if not red)! Okay, so the fan is likely the problem. What I can't understand is why the motor's defect affects the batteries. If it ran slowly or not at all it would make sense to me, but to run at the right speed and heat the batteries? Is it that the inductive coils in the motor determine the rate of rotation of the shaft by their length and force the batteries to discharge at an excessive rate? LuckyThracian (Talk) 02:40, 7 February 2008 (UTC)


 * What sort of motor is it and how big is the fan? Does it say what power rating it is? Most likly any batteries you put in it are going to get hot (do you have a thermometer?). Batteries are usually used for low current, but a fan motor is high current. If the motor is defective, it will draw excess current. A motor is basically a coil of wire. If the motor did not spin, a huge amount of current would just flow through the wire (this is why you never stop the fan spinning with your hand and hold it there, as the motor will burn out as large amount of current is flowing). As the fan spins up a back emf forms and reduces the current draw. If the motor is defective (in that some of the windings are shorted out) then the back emf will be reduced and the resistance of the motor will be reduced and excess current will be drawn, which heats the battery. Personally I don't think you have anything to worry about. I would imagine the fan needs quite a lot of current and batteries getting hot is normal.--Dacium (talk) 02:54, 7 February 2008 (UTC)


 * The fan's only a tiddler with plastic casing and "blade". It's made in the shape of a standard desk-top fan but it's only got an 8cm diameter fan-blade and stands about 18cm in height. I was just intrigued by the heating effect - I only paid $3.00 for it and the motor is just the sort you'd find in a lot of small appliances, about 4cm long. Thanks for your time..I'm going to read up on EMF etc. This seems to be one of the hardest things in applied science to get one's head round. LuckyThracian (Talk) 03:21, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

You took some good steps trying to figure this out, by testing the batteries in a tourch and by noting that the fan only cost $3. Some other questions to ask are, did the fan ever work well, or is it only with these batteries that it draws too much power? Normally, I'd suggest trying different batteries, but considering how cheap the fan is, and that it is likely to be no good, and how expensive batteries are these days, I'm not sure I'd bother trying new batteries. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 07:57, 7 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Here's how to think about the current consumed by an ordinary DC motor: The motor, when spinning, also acts like a generator, generating a voltage that opposes that flow of electric current that the batteries would normally cause. (This is called a "counter EMF".) But the generator isn't 100% efficient so if the motor is running on (say) 3 volts and turning n RPMs, the generator only manages to generate (say) 2.5 volts. That leaves 0.5 volts to flow through the resistance of the motor's copper windings.


 * What this means is that a free-spinning motor draws relatively little current because its virtual generator manages to generate a counter EMF that pretty-closely approaches the voltage applied to the motor. But as you add load to the motor and the motor turns more slowly, the output voltage of the virtual generator also drops, and there's more voltage left to appear across the resistance of the motor. Stop the motor dead, and the virtual generator output stops entirely; the motor now draws current equal to V/R and the batteries die quickly.


 * Your fan is probably putting a pretty heavy load on the motor and so the motor is turning a lot more slowly than it would turn if it were not loaded at all.


 * Atlant (talk) 18:38, 7 February 2008 (UTC)


 * As mentioned earlier, there might be a short in the motor, or the motor and fan might have excess friction. Does it spin freely without the power on, or does it take some effort to turn it? Small batteries have operated a portable cassette recorder for quite a long time, and it has a motor. I personally would measure the current draw and compare it to the amp-hour rating of the batteries. If they are getting too hot to touch, they will probably be discharged in minutes rather than hours. Edison (talk) 01:12, 8 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I was off-wiki for a couple of days and just read the further comments. Thankyou all for your assistance. LuckyThracian (Talk) 04:25, 11 February 2008 (UTC)