Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Title text: If you fire a Portal gun through the door of the wardrobe, space and time knot together, which leads to a frustrated Aslan trying to impart Christian morality to the Space sphere.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a book in which four children accidentally wander into a world known as Narnia through a wardrobe that only allows passage through to Narnia when you aren't looking for it. In the comic, someone connects an anchor to the wardrobe and throws it into the ocean. The formula describes the flow of water through the open doors, which means that a steady stream of water at an approximate velocity of 200 meters per second will flow into Narnia.
The evil White Witch, who has made it "always winter, and never Christmas," could not have anticipated that the wardrobe portal would suddenly begin spewing approximately 400,000 liters of water per second into Narnia which would presumably freeze very quickly and make the whole world very slick.
Delta-P is a mathematical expression for the difference in pressure. Here the difference is between the depths of the ocean and the open air of a forest that creates the flow of water.
The title text references the video game "Portal" in which you fire a portal gun into walls and etc. to make "portals" that can open holes in other places so that you may portal through. In the game you cannot shoot a portal through a portal, but Randall is saying that if you try to create a portal with the portal gun through the wardrobe, space and time knot together. Aslan, the lion in the title, was written by Lewis to be an actual representation (scroll to the section "Is Narnia an allegory?") of Jesus Christ. The Space Core is a Personality Core from Portal 2 that doesn't care about anything but wanting to go to space.
This is a classic xkcd based on the intersection of literature, math and video games.
- [A wardrobe, with a boat anchor attached to one corner, falling towards water.]
- Q = A * sqrt(2 * g * d)
- Q = flow rate
- A = area of opening
- d = ocean depth (2 km)
- g = Earth gravity
- Flow: ~400,000 liters/s
- Water jet velocity: ~200 m/s
- The White Witch didn't know what hit her.
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First, it is worth noting that water jet velocity = (Q/A) = sqrt(2 * g * d).
As such, it is not dependent on the opening size of the wardrobe.
The figures given appear to assume the wardrobe is 2 square meters, which is probably fairly large.
Second, there is also the matter of momentum.
The water mass is ~400,000 kg/sec, at ~200 m/sec, for a net of 80,000,000 kg meter/sec.
If the receiving portal is subject to conservation momentum and is another wardrobe, it will be traveling at over 99% of the water jet speed.
(The reduction would actually be less than the adjustment for the correct gravitational force.)
So part of what the white queen would have to worry about is this wardrobe darting all over the place at ~700 km/hour or ~440 miles/hour.
Of course, the sending wardrobe will be zipping around the ocean as well, which might make "Glass Half Empty" relevant.
Divad27182 (talk) 15:39, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
- Two wardrobes? 184.108.40.206 05:14, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
Well, the suction of the vacuum might increase the momentum of the wardrobe AND the jet.--Jimmy C (talk) 15:01, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
I have a feeling that the inconstant passage of time, between the two realms, should factor into this somehow. At the start, Lucy is in Narnia for a whole evening, and returns moments later. By the end the whole group stay for many years and are hardly away for much longer (while the 'tour' is still passing). So the amount of water that leaves Earth's oceans in a short time can probably afford to trickle out into the Lantern Wastes at a much lower volume/time.
In reverse, would the passive thermal energy of Narnia (even during its snowbound period) over a long Narnian period now be exiting Earthside in a compressed form (if not in frequency, certainly in rate) making the open wardrobe door furnace, like?
Or, given the above, and that nobody seems to notice any strange dilation effects during transition, and the fact that Edmund enters shortly after Lucy yet is not several days later in arriving (though possibly up to an hour or two) there may be a "time lock" facility, which means that one or more transitional areas betwixt Earth and Narnia are sealed shut behind one traveller while they start travelling further into (or out of) the furs/firs hybrid areas. We already know that the 'normal' wardrobe back can present itself at times when transit isn't required, so who knows whether it's an active compartmentalising, or just passively not wormholing betwixt the relevent domains.
And for my next essay, I shall be discussing how to automate the use of the rings made by the original Magician (the Professor's Uncle) in order to transfer spent nuclear waste to Charn, or some other, similar dead world. (And the security measures needed to ensure that Jadis does not obtain the necessary material to make radiologically-active weaponry in her conquests of other worlds brought into being by Aslan.) 220.127.116.11 16:24, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
Why do you suppose that so called Nuclear Waste needs drastic measures to deal with it?
You should know by now that vested interests are making silly money out of merely collecting it. They don't need to even ensure it is kept safely if silly minions are so easily controlled by stupid initiatives.
If they had a pressing need to dispose of it carefully and immediately I am pretty sure that competent engineers could readily be found to ensure that they do so. Stop frightening yourself into believing you need to give rich people money. You don't. I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait (talk) 20:04, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
After the loooong trip mentioned above, the owner of the wardrobe (the Magicians Nephew) explains that they should not expect to ever get back into Narnia again through the Wardrobe. It will of course only open for children, and not for anyone throwing it into the ocean or for anyone shooting a portal gun through the door. So nothing would be hitting the witch! ;-) Who by the way is dead at that time. Time passes in Narnia so it fits with what is needed for the children to be the right place at the right time. But nice spotted though that it would be a problem if the portal was indeed always open.
However, if the door could be kept open and the witch was still alive... There is not a connecting wardrobe in Narnia, but just a forest - the fur skins in the wardrobe suddenly turns into threes. So there would be no wardrobe shooting around.
Finally - if the earth oceans would be transferred to Narnia - the whole Narnia world would be flooded, and the heat capacity of the earths water would surely melt all snow and ice without freezing over, since new water would continue to flow through for a very long time. (See the What if - Drain the Oceans: http://what-if.xkcd.com/53/ )Kynde (talk) 19:26, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
The doors look ready to be surprised or in the process of so being. The anchor on the other hand is too smug for its own good.
Suppose that the anchor is ripped off at impact and the doors slam shut. The flow rate is now dramatically altered. Isn't this what comics and magic is all about? I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait
) 20:04, 22 January 2015 (UTC)