/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.5994755]

does a hard drive completely filled with video games weigh physically more than an empty one?

[Anonymous No.5994761]

>calculate the weight of data
>poast results

[Anonymous No.5994763]

>>5994761

i don't own a calculator

[Anonymous No.5994767]

Does a nail weigh more when you magnetize it?

[Anonymous No.5994768]

of course it does. you need to put information inside the hard drive and even though it's very small (pretty much negligible really) it still increases the weight.

[Anonymous No.5994777]

>>5994768
Why?

[Anonymous No.5994781]

>>5994777
A harddrive stores information by magnetizing sections of the disk. This does not increase the mass. The number of atoms on the disc remains constant.

There's the Einstein thing about energy and mass being the same thing so you could argue that magnetising an object increases its mass, but in practical terms this is like saying a rock has more mass after you carry it up a hill.

[Anonymous No.5994800]

>>5994755
When full the hard drive would be switched over to induce entropy and thus a change in energy and thus a change in mass. So yea, and a bit goes by ln 2(natural log 2) or so I've heard.

[Anonymous No.5994803]

>>5994781
>but in practical terms this is like saying a rock has more mass after you carry it up a hill.

I don't think that's quite the same. When you put energy into pushing something against a conservative field, the energy gets stored in the field, not the rock.

The miniscule extra weight of a "full" hard drive comes not from the direction the magnetic moments of the particles, but in the entropy of the system.
Whether a full hard drive (arbitrary but specific strings of data) or an ACTUALLY empty one (all 0's, not just "no data" as read by an OS) weighs more due to entropy would come down to information theory, and I'm not an expert on that.

And if you don't like the idea of entropy having weight, I direct you to supercooling techniques that use entropy, which have real, tangible results using entropy manipulation as a cooling mechanism.

[Anonymous No.5994819]

>>5994800
Sorry I know this yield criticism but I meant realistically.
Realistically the magnets become demagnetized after a while and the energy of the moving electrons essentially become mass. In short terms, energy is converted into mass because the moving electrons have stopped moving.

[Anonymous No.5994826]

>>5994819
The very small amount of energy stored in the magnetic field of the harddisk will radiate out of the drive as heat as the fields collapse. Its only while the energy is stored on the disk that you can consider its mass to have increased.

[Anonymous No.5994834]

>>5994826
I don't quite understand you? The moving electrons aren't generating heat, quite the contrary they are are gaining energy because they are slowing down because of the demagnetizing. When particles are moving fast, heat is produced, when they aren't moving much we consider it cold.

[Anonymous No.5994841]

>>5994834
>they are are gaining energy because they are slowing down
wut

[Anonymous No.5994850]

>>5994841
Basic principles sir. English is not my native language but that applies even relativistically in the sense that you get heavier as you slow you down. You then reach potential energy stored into your particles. It also goes the same for endothermic reactions when things that get cold actually gained energy.

[Anonymous No.5994854]

>>5994850
> you get heavier as you slow you down
> things that get cold actually gained energy

Do you come from opposite land?

[Anonymous No.5994857]

>>5994854
No, and now I'm going back there.

[Anonymous No.5994864]

>>5994854
WHat is endothermic reaction then?

[Anonymous No.5994890]

>>5994755
Depends on the game.

[Anonymous No.5995430]

it's turning into bullshit, like always (people speak of things they don't really undersantd)

Here, it is a *little* more reliable
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=419343

[Anonymous No.5995459]

>>5994755
I don't know much about harddrives, but not necessarily. Would a row of switches weigh differently if the switches were set to certain positions?

[Anonymous No.5995583]

>>5994755
weighs less, unless you deban it beforehand

[Anonymous No.5995603]

>>5994890

This, repacks weigh less tho.

[Anonymous No.5995638]

Does a ball weigh more if you rotate it to the left?

[Anonymous No.5995998]

>>5994755
No, your hard drive does not physically add things when you download things, it turns unassigned 1's and 0's into meaningful ones. The switches are there from day 1, you just change the sequence.

[Anonymous No.5996007]

Does an empty brain gain weight the more said brain is exposed to new ideas?

[Pedro No.5996616]

We just had this on /g/.

[Anonymous No.5996737]

>>5995998
This is a very good answer.

You start off with some symbols on the HD. 0000000000000 or 111111111111111 which is then changed into 10101010111110101. The number of symbols doesn't change.

[Anonymous No.5996742]

>>5996737
>>5995998
It does gain a slight amount of mass, not even meaningful but it does. The entropy induced from changing those to 0 and 1 causes energy to be converted into mass thus increasing the entropy and mass of the system.

[Anonymous No.5996751]

would a really deep story (book, film, videogame) in a harddrive make the harddrive more dense?

[Anonymous No.5996765]

>>5996742
Well done.

[Anonymous No.5996778]

>>5996765
Your infographic gave me a boner.

[Anonymous No.5996866]

great question I have wondered about this for years...thanks for bringing it up.

[Anonymous No.5997088]

>>5996742
How does entropy correlate to gravity? I wanted to mention it but really didn't know enough to talk about it.

[Anonymous No.5997124]

every fucking bit of information on the hardrive is either read as a 0 or 1, so no, changing 0 for 1 won't change the weight of your hard drive

[Anonymous No.5997129]

>>5997124
>implying sorting a deck of cards doesn't make it lighter because of the decreased entropy

[Anonymous No.5997131]

>>5997124
>not reading thread
>being this angry

[Anonymous No.5997139]

>>5997129
That gives me an idea.
>sort a deck of card
>it's not low entropy
>do a world conference
>change the naming conventions for natural numbers, now instead of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9, it's 5 3 2 8 7 1 9 4 6
>the deck is now shuffled
>its mass increased
>gather the people everyday to change the international convention
>keep the deck in an isolated room and watch it produce heat when you adopt the new convention or cool down when you go back to the normal convention
>infinite energy

[Anonymous No.5997140]

>>5997139
>it's not low entropy
meant "now"

[Anonymous No.5997141]

ITT: we think thermodynamic entropy and information entropy are the same thing

[Anonymous No.5997145]

>>5997141
>he doesn't know

[Anonymous No.5997147]

>>5994755
it depends on how exactly the hard drive works, if the physical configuration of a bit in the "1" position is a higher potential that having it "0" (or the reverse) then you will have a highest mass when all the bits are 1 (or 0) and thus adding data will change the mass depending on how many bits get flipped. if you take into account the potential energy becasue of neighboring bits then you get maximum mass when all the bits are 0000..., or 11111, or 0101010101... depending on the interaction. again you will have a maximum mass and changing data will change that mass up or down.

[Anonymous No.5997148]

>>5997139
>the deck is now shuffled
no, its not in a (different) specific configuration (5 3 2 8 7 1 9 4 6)

[Anonymous No.5997150]

old meme is old

[Anonymous No.5997151]

>>5997150
It's still a nice change from 0.99... threads.

[Anonymous No.5997152]

>>5997148
Correct.

[Anonymous No.5997159]

>>5997145

I know that /sci/ is full of retards. Is that what you mean?

[Anonymous No.5997164]

>>5997145
>you'd think it was obvious

[Anonymous No.5997170]

yes, but in an analogous way as you feel recoil when you turn on a flashlight.

[Anonymous No.5997176]

Is it possible to have so much stuff in a hard drive that it (the information) would collapse in on itself forming a black hole inside the bit world?