I'm going to have to go with 'gas' stations being fitted with capacitors that charge continually, and discharge rapidly each time a car plugs in to it.

Of which Bender will attest: Beer is a vital component.

I see no difference between this and a laugh track in a sitcom.

Click here to find out how he became famous with this one weird trick.

Tesla Model S Crashes, now 10 times more AWESOME!

I would hope, though, that being /. readers, in a topic about energy braking and flywheels, the average reader would be somewhat familiar with the concept of manual transmission.

For those who don't like hill analogies,

The flywheel works in the same way as putting your car into a lower gear and breaking against the engine.

You can picture it as the flywheel being separated from the axle (via a clutch) and when you apply the brakes it connects the flywheel up. You now have the inertia of the flywheel being overcome by the turning of the axle transferring the energy to the flywheel.

When you have stopped (when the system senses that the axle is no longer giving the flywheel any energy, when the rotational momentum of the flywheel is greater than that of the axle), the circuit is broken again and the flywheel continues to spin while the car is stationary. When you want to go forward again, the spinning flywheel is connected to the stationary axle again and that energy is returned in addition to engine power.

The efficiency isn't ever going to be great, as you are always working towards an equilibrium. From standstill, the engine speeds up the car. During braking, the axle and flywheel reach a balance, (up to 1/2 the rotational momentum - whatever is taken via brake friction). When re-accelerating, up to 1/2 of the energy can be transferred back to the wheels + engine.

The flywheel will continue to spin, slowly losing energy until the next braking event at which point it will spin up again, at some point reaching an upper threshold. So the flywheel is great for racing where there are numerous stops and goes but won't be that good for your average home user. The question really is, over the life of the car, will the energy saved by braking and accelerating be worth carrying the additional weight on highway trips of consistent speed.

Or waht if someone in Russia with knowledge of how the US conducts its spying told them something to make them suspicious of Apple products?

Wait, Homeopathy is like vaccination???? Does it cause Autism?

You actually think US government corruption is only a recent thing? How long do you think it has to run before it becomes unstable? How long do you think it has been running so far?

Don't dismiss this too soon. As an anti-violence in games person, he must have done lots of thorough investigation into exactly what kind of violence is actually in games. So it's actually quite possible he was influenced by all the violence and crime he's seen depicted in these games and as this has lead to him pursuing it in the real world.

But then why is he anti-violence in games? Surely if he is trying to ban guns to increase his profits, why isn't he lobbying for violent games so people are more interested in buying his product? Is it possible that deep down he knows that violent games don't lead to an increase in real-world violence?

I dunno, the liver needs regular exercise too.

Sorry for the off-topic.

Strictly speaking, until you shine a light on the inside of the water melon, does it have any colour at all? Is it black? Is it colourless? Colour as we see it is only the left-over light reflected after the other bandwidths are absorbed by the surface. Until you cut open the watermelon, no light shines on the inside and thus there is no colour.

It's along the same lines of the tree falling in the woods debate. Sure, it's falling disturbs the molecules of air around it, but it doesn't produce sound until someone is there to hear it!

Well, you are forgetting another possibility. Just like the Stuxnet virus, you have to ask the questions, who could make the plane disappear altogether from all types of surveillance?

From one point of view, you see a plane that turns off the transponder, climes to 45k and then descends and is not seen again. Climbing to 45k could simply be a method of killing off the passengers (I'll come back to this).

The real trick is then dropping below radar, an avoiding all the spy satellites. What you need to that is knowledge of the radar floor, which isn't hard, but you also have to know the position and trajectory of all the satellites, which isn't so easy.

Conspiracy paranoia aside, the most likely suspects are either the US or China, and they may have wanted someone on the plane. They take over the plane and fly it up to kill off collateral then below radar and through a pre-cleared satellite path to land somewhere they control.

It would be simple for China to land it somewhere on the mainland, but also technically possible for the US to pull something like this off. It's like something from a Bond movie tbh.

The suicide option is also very likely, but the total lack of sightings, should the plane have traveled for up to 5 hours is very suspect. I can understand the plane taking that long, it's something the pilot (if it was the pilot) might agonize over for hours before doing it.

But in my opinion, to absolutely vanish the plane needed significant planning and resources and most importantly cooperation from various three letter agencies to turn a blind eye on the passing of the plane. Not many people have this power.