As per the post above, you can use longurl.org to see where it goes (in this case, here) without ever clicking on it. I'd not seen the service before but can see how it would be handy in situations like this where you are unsure whether to trust the link.

If you do a lot of scientific or similar work, a lot of machines have dedicated PCs, each with their own keyboard. For myself, that's two HPLC machines, a mass spectrometer, a microplate reader, a real time PCR machine and a fluorescence microscope all without touching a "normal" computer.

I did wonder about the exact temperature required and naturally assumed it was a carefully controlled centigrade temperature. Of course, it's just another case of mis-conversion from one unit to another. 1382 F is the exact conversion from 750 C, a value only given to 2 sf. 1400 F would be a more appropriate conversion if you have to convert it at all.

But it has happened...

Some quick back of the envelope calculations: FTFA, each tile generates "2.1 W" per step. If we assume a typical step time of 500ms based a pace of 120 steps per minute this could be interpreted as about 1.05J captured per step.

The casing is made from stainless steel which required about 53 MJ/kg for production in 2004. If we assume a tile casing mass of 2kg that is 106 MJ required for the steel production alone.

The shopping centre may be open around 10 hours a day with perhaps 20 seconds between each step averaged over a typical day. This is 1800 steps per day at 1.05J per step giving a total of 1890 J captured per day. Assuming 100% efficiency and a never-closing shopping centre, this gives an energy breakeven for the steel alone of around 56000 days or 153 years.

I know that other factors are in play such as the potential to raise awareness of environmental issues but this is ridiculous. I noticed that the award that the guy is in the running for is sponsored by Shell and part of me suspects that they know that these things are crap but want to be seen to promote something like this which appeals to the public and appears "green".

This is something I really need to look at in more detail. If you try astrophotography with a lot of digital cameras, you'll find that the H-alpha wavelength (around 650nm, red) is greatly diminished by the filter. However, an IR LED (peak wavelength about 960nm) shows up brightly in digital photos taken on the same camera. It seems more sensible to include a short-pass filter as they are cheaper to manufacture but perhaps they are band-pass? Just a thought; may be totally off here.

There's also a very similar SMBC cartoon (although a little later than the XKCD one).

I think your best one was to say that the average rainfall is around 6.1 cubic inches! The error is confusing millilitres with millimetres. The first is a measurement of volume (about 6.1 cubic inches) and the second is a length, interpreted in this case as a depth. The area of Brisbane according to wikipedia (I know it's been raining in more than one place but this is an approximation) is 5904.8 square kilometers which gives a total typical rainfall for this area for this month of about 590 million tons or about 3.6x10^13 cubic inches.

I'm sure there should be some sort of record broken for most orders of magnitude out here :-)

As a little off-topic trivia, slavery (as in the ownership of one human by another) only became illegal in the UK on 6th April 2010 (source).

Slavery was abolished in stages throughout the British Empire in the 19th Century but the status of slave was never acknowledged in the UK so it was never illegal to own one since they didn't exist!

Maybe I'm being a bit old fashioned about this but surely the best solution is to use pen and paper!

This is almost exactly what Jonathan Shorr of the University of Baltimore was quoted as saying by BBC news. The students think they are having an easy course but in fact are "tricked" into learning something. I don't have a problem with this per se but surely not for adults. This is the kind of technique you use with young children who don't want to learn. If people at university don't want to learn (or can't learn without being hoodwinked) then they shouldn't be there.

Typist losing synchronicity?