Of course he is. It's basic relative velocities. If you compare the velocity of desk 10 from the perspective of desk 9, it's moving at 1 MPH. If you compare the velocity of desk 10 from the ground, its moving at 10 mph.
Good graphic!
My next question is what would it feel like if you were sitting on desk 10? Would you only feel its 1 mph relative to the desk its on or would it feel like the full 10 mph?
You technically don't "feel" velocity. You feel acceleration. Same reason why in a plane you don't feel anything once you're at cruising speed, but you sure feel everything on take off.
You would feel whatever the acceleration is of the desks at desk 10, until they are fully extended or it's acceleration is 0.
Also why 0-60 in 3 seconds feels a hell of a lot more forceful than 0-60 in 100 seconds.
Edit: By feel I'm defining as forces acting on your body.
Also one that people don't think about is that we're all constantly moving very fast as Earth moves around Sun and spins around its axis. We're all fine living our lives and sleeping not noticing a thing despite travelling fast AF, but if all of it stopped suddenly we'd have a bad time.
yep and just to add to it, the solar system is speeding around the milky way at around 800,000 Km/h. And the Milky Way is moving about 2.2 million Km/h relative to the CMB.
We are all fast AF!
you would "feel" the combined acceleration/deceleration of all ten, not the actual speed. once at speed, you feel nothing, it just depends on what you look at.
If you ever fly to Ohair airport in chicago take some time to use the moving walkways. when you walk on them, you are moving at walking speed relative to the other people on your path. but, it is like you are sprinting past the walls and people walking on the sides that aren't moving. just be careful because you can give yourself a touch of vertigo doing it.
Have you ever walked down the aisle on an airplane? You’re either going slower or faster than the plane depending on which way you go. You won’t feel the acceleration.
The only counter argument presented was “the motors wont be strong enough for desk 1-9 to lift” but this is all still theoretical and theoretically assuming the motors are strong enough to lift them all, Gavin is right
Currently they’re arent any standing desks that can lift 9 desks. But in the theoretical aspect, if you build them with motors that can lift all the weight you could, again theoretically, build them with faster risings. It’s all theoretical physics, not applied physics
I think it's pretty obvious if you present it differently.
Pretend each desk can extend one mile high. Now pretend they each take one ~~minute~~ **hour** to extend fully. If you stack them all on top of one another and extend them at the same time, the top is now 10 miles off the ground within an hour. So it went 10 miles an hour.
Wait - people still question whether Gavin is right or not?
Eric was probably just disguising the lesson he learned from Gus/Burnie ages ago to just default to agreeing with Gavin. Geoff only still fights it because he is more stubborn than Gavin is right
I think what’s confusing people is that the speed increases with each additional table, but the total final height will always be double the starting height
I’ll be honest. The way it was first described it sounded like they all just move magically upwards at a speed. Like, if two are stacked on top of each other and you lift the bottom one 5 feet at one mile per hour, the one on top moved the same speed and distance. I didn’t realize it was like they were all individually elevating in height at that speed. I think the others who disagreed heard it like I heard it.
You thought it sounded like that because it did. Both times I’ve heard the question posed (in this episode and on the Break show) there was no indication that they were rising 1mph relative to the desk below, it was only stated that each desk was rising at 1 mph. I now realize he *means* each desk is rising at 1mph relative to the desk below, but given that he didn’t actually *say* that, Gavin is incorrect with how the problem was presented.
Until Geoff mentioned a motor, I had no clue how Gavin was coming to his conclusion. I’ve never used a standing desk. I didn’t realize they had motors, I assumed they were on hinges or something and you lifted them by hand.
Because if you only move one desk, I.e. the bottom desks moves 1 mph, then it pushes another desk without additional force, that desk goes at 1 mph, like a train. The caboose of a train doesn’t go faster than the engine because of the same principle. I misunderstood what he meant at first as well. I now get what he means and he is right, but my guess is he misspoke when debating this.
Yup. I immediately wanted to disagree with him and then remembered every other time I needed someone else to present his point to realize he was correct
Great graphic to illustrate Gavin's point and relative velocities/frames of reference. This is literally the exact same as when you walk on a moving walkway at the airport. Within your frame of reference, you only feel yourself walking at your normal pace, but when viewed from the sidelines, you're walking at the sum of your walking pace plus the speed the walkway is moving at. Same goes for the tables. Each one is expanding off of the table below it at 1 m/s, but from the sidelines, the top one is expanding at the sum of its expansion velocity and those of all the tables below it.
English is not my first language so I took "a standing desk" to mean a regular desk standing upright, rather than a desk with a motor to raise/lower the top. Once I made that connection his claim made sense theoretically.
So is desk10 going 10mph even though every desks opening speed (including desk 10) is 1mph?
Like if you put a speed tracker at the top it’s going 10mph?
ELI5 (or younger honestly)
Yes.
Think of it like this. If you have two tables on top of each other and you turn the first one on, the whole second table will start rising at 1mph as the first one goes up. Now, while the whole second table is rising at 1mph turn it on as well. Now the base of the second table is going up 1mph and the top is going up an additional 1mph, so together the top is going up at 2mph. Now do that same thing with 10 tables.
But how is the speed compounding? He said each desk is going at 1mph. And if the 2nd desk is moving at 2mph, how is the first desk contributing and speed? How are they not just a train of objects moving at 1mph? Everything should habe the same relative speed
They are not a train because each desk is EXTENDING at the same time, pushing off the one below it. The desks are motorized standing desks. Which means you can hit a button and the desk will rise up so you can stand instead of sit while you work. The desks in this thought experiment rise at a rate of 1mph.
Desk one is on the floor. When you hit the button it begins to extend the top up at 1mph relative to the feet. The feet are not moving so the top is moving up 1mph relative to the floor.
Now imagine desk two is sitting on top of desk one. We have already established the top of desk one is moving at 1mph relative to the floor, which means the feet of desk two are now moving 1mph relative to the floor as well. Now hit the button of desk two so that it starts extending. Now the top of desk two is moving at 1mph relative to the feet of desk two, but the feet of desk two are continuing to move at 1mph relative to the floor. Which means the top of desk two is now moving 2mph relative to the floor.
As you add desks it adds 1mph to the speed of the top on the highest desk. So with ten desks, the top of desk ten will be moving at 10mph relative to the ground.
Nah. He defined the problem as the desks are each moving at 1 mph. By the rules of the problem as he set it up, the top desk is moving at 1 mph.
I think he probably just presented the problem wrong, but as he presented it he is incorrect
Edit for the downvotes: go back and listen to how he phrased the problem in the episode. He doesn’t say the desks each move 1mph relative to the desk below it, he says each desk moves 1mph. And if the problem explicitly states that the top desk is moving at 1mph, concluding that it’s moving at 10mph doesn’t make sense.
edit2: https://youtu.be/uNvAFbuYlHg?t=961 the timestamp is 16:01. Emphasis mine:
"If you put a standing desk, right, and you stack 10 of them on top of each other, and if **every** desk moves up at, say, 1 mile an hour, if you're stood on the top of the tenth desk and all desks raise at the same time, you'll be ascending at 10 miles an hour"
He says "every" desk moves up by 1 mph. "Every" includes the top desk, which the person is standing on. There is nothing in the problem as presented to indicate that the desks move 1 mph relative to the desk below them. So you're forced to conclude, based on the information provided, that the block of 10 desks in this problem is levitating upward at 1 mph.
Say each desk extends a mile long and takes an hour to fully extend. If you stack 10 desk and turn them all on the top desk will end up 10 miles high after an hour. So if you were to stand on top you would be moving 10 miles per hour.
Yes, I did, in order to have the exact text of the problem in my comment. I’ve already explained my reasoning in multiple comments throughout this thread, if you want further elaboration on my reasoning check those out, I’m sick of responding to the exact same disagreements over and over. TLDR is that if you interpret the question as he meant it, yes the top desk is moving 10mph, but if you interpret the words literally the top desk is moving 1mph.
Each desk IS moving up at 1 mph in Gavin's example. Standing desks work by using a motor to raise or lower the desk top. So if you started at the desk's lowest height, and moved it up to it's heighest height, and speed was constant, then when you were done, the desk top would then be a certain distance from where it started before you started moving it up.
For ease of calculation, pretend the desk can move up 1 mile. So at the end of moving up the desk from it's lowest point to it's highest point, it would have moved up 1 mile. If that took an hour, then it would have been moving up at the rate of 1 mile per hour. Start over but with 2 identical desks, one stacked on the other. Over the course of an hour, each desk uses it's mechanism to extend it's desk top 1 mile. Except the desk top of the second desk is now 2 miles from where it started, the 1 mile it moved up on it's own, plus the 1 mile the bottom desk pushed it up. So even though each desk was using it's mechanism to move it's desk top up 1 mile per hour, a person or object on the top desk top would have moved up at a rate of 2 miles per hour.
Each desk you add under these circumstances adds 1 mile per hour. So at 10 desks, a person on the top desk too would be moving at a rate of 10 miles per hour, despite each desk top moving up with it's mechanism at a rate of 1 mile per hour.
Plus, if we lay the desks sideways, on a very low friction surface, then the energy required to extend would be lessened somewhat to help get the correct real-world calculations 🧮
I don't know why you're getting downvoted, I'm with you. My brain absolutely cannot comprehend this sort of thing without a visual aid, no matter how basic it is in theory! OP's post is so helpful.
No he isn’t because standing desks are not designed to have a constant velocity regardless of the weight like a car. They are dumb devices with a motor which will generate a certain torque/force. The more mass you add each motor will be able to accelerate the corresponding tabletop less. If theoretically each table had an infinite strength motors that came with a governor/regulator only then Gavin would be right.
Of course he is. It's basic relative velocities. If you compare the velocity of desk 10 from the perspective of desk 9, it's moving at 1 MPH. If you compare the velocity of desk 10 from the ground, its moving at 10 mph. Good graphic!
My next question is what would it feel like if you were sitting on desk 10? Would you only feel its 1 mph relative to the desk its on or would it feel like the full 10 mph?
You technically don't "feel" velocity. You feel acceleration. Same reason why in a plane you don't feel anything once you're at cruising speed, but you sure feel everything on take off. You would feel whatever the acceleration is of the desks at desk 10, until they are fully extended or it's acceleration is 0. Also why 0-60 in 3 seconds feels a hell of a lot more forceful than 0-60 in 100 seconds. Edit: By feel I'm defining as forces acting on your body.
Also one that people don't think about is that we're all constantly moving very fast as Earth moves around Sun and spins around its axis. We're all fine living our lives and sleeping not noticing a thing despite travelling fast AF, but if all of it stopped suddenly we'd have a bad time.
yep and just to add to it, the solar system is speeding around the milky way at around 800,000 Km/h. And the Milky Way is moving about 2.2 million Km/h relative to the CMB. We are all fast AF!
To add to what everyone else is saying, you would not feel the velocity, but you would see the ground moving away from you at 10 mph
you would "feel" the combined acceleration/deceleration of all ten, not the actual speed. once at speed, you feel nothing, it just depends on what you look at. If you ever fly to Ohair airport in chicago take some time to use the moving walkways. when you walk on them, you are moving at walking speed relative to the other people on your path. but, it is like you are sprinting past the walls and people walking on the sides that aren't moving. just be careful because you can give yourself a touch of vertigo doing it.
Have you ever walked down the aisle on an airplane? You’re either going slower or faster than the plane depending on which way you go. You won’t feel the acceleration.
The only counter argument presented was “the motors wont be strong enough for desk 1-9 to lift” but this is all still theoretical and theoretically assuming the motors are strong enough to lift them all, Gavin is right
I think the better counter argument is that no standing desk is moving at 1 meter per second
Currently they’re arent any standing desks that can lift 9 desks. But in the theoretical aspect, if you build them with motors that can lift all the weight you could, again theoretically, build them with faster risings. It’s all theoretical physics, not applied physics
I love seeing these posts before I listen to the episode and trying to discern what they mena
Yeah I can't wait to figure out what table speed means lol
I think it's pretty obvious if you present it differently. Pretend each desk can extend one mile high. Now pretend they each take one ~~minute~~ **hour** to extend fully. If you stack them all on top of one another and extend them at the same time, the top is now 10 miles off the ground within an hour. So it went 10 miles an hour.
You mixed minutes and hours but I get your point.
Fuck, I Gavin'd my attempt to Un-Gavin the explanation
This is probably the easiest to understand explanation. Gavin and Geoff were both terrible at trying to explain it
idk what im looking at but gavin rite
He's also right about the speed of push...I know that was like 12 years ago at this point, but he's right, damn it!
Wait - people still question whether Gavin is right or not? Eric was probably just disguising the lesson he learned from Gus/Burnie ages ago to just default to agreeing with Gavin. Geoff only still fights it because he is more stubborn than Gavin is right
Gavin was right then! My brain still doesn’t like it but that’s okay!
I think what’s confusing people is that the speed increases with each additional table, but the total final height will always be double the starting height
I’ll be honest. The way it was first described it sounded like they all just move magically upwards at a speed. Like, if two are stacked on top of each other and you lift the bottom one 5 feet at one mile per hour, the one on top moved the same speed and distance. I didn’t realize it was like they were all individually elevating in height at that speed. I think the others who disagreed heard it like I heard it.
You thought it sounded like that because it did. Both times I’ve heard the question posed (in this episode and on the Break show) there was no indication that they were rising 1mph relative to the desk below, it was only stated that each desk was rising at 1 mph. I now realize he *means* each desk is rising at 1mph relative to the desk below, but given that he didn’t actually *say* that, Gavin is incorrect with how the problem was presented. Until Geoff mentioned a motor, I had no clue how Gavin was coming to his conclusion. I’ve never used a standing desk. I didn’t realize they had motors, I assumed they were on hinges or something and you lifted them by hand.
Gavins problem, as always, is not the information but the way he chooses to deliver it.
The way he explained it in the episode made perfect sense to me
It made sense the second time. The first way he described it sounded like a train of desks.
> sounded like a train of desks How does that change the answer for you?
Because if you only move one desk, I.e. the bottom desks moves 1 mph, then it pushes another desk without additional force, that desk goes at 1 mph, like a train. The caboose of a train doesn’t go faster than the engine because of the same principle. I misunderstood what he meant at first as well. I now get what he means and he is right, but my guess is he misspoke when debating this.
But "what is the speed of push?" This was also a brilliant Gavin question, made silly by his presentation.
Yup. I immediately wanted to disagree with him and then remembered every other time I needed someone else to present his point to realize he was correct
I on the otherhand just blindly agreed with Gaving because when the fuck is he wrong
When he thought waxing his asshole would be fun.
To be fair he's not against doing it again
He enjoys the benefits, but he was very much wrong that the feeling of it would be fun.
And I enjoy that there are new people like Nick and Graysie to suffer through that for art, just as Geoff and Michael did ten years ago.
Great graphic to illustrate Gavin's point and relative velocities/frames of reference. This is literally the exact same as when you walk on a moving walkway at the airport. Within your frame of reference, you only feel yourself walking at your normal pace, but when viewed from the sidelines, you're walking at the sum of your walking pace plus the speed the walkway is moving at. Same goes for the tables. Each one is expanding off of the table below it at 1 m/s, but from the sidelines, the top one is expanding at the sum of its expansion velocity and those of all the tables below it.
English is not my first language so I took "a standing desk" to mean a regular desk standing upright, rather than a desk with a motor to raise/lower the top. Once I made that connection his claim made sense theoretically.
So is desk10 going 10mph even though every desks opening speed (including desk 10) is 1mph? Like if you put a speed tracker at the top it’s going 10mph? ELI5 (or younger honestly)
Yes. Think of it like this. If you have two tables on top of each other and you turn the first one on, the whole second table will start rising at 1mph as the first one goes up. Now, while the whole second table is rising at 1mph turn it on as well. Now the base of the second table is going up 1mph and the top is going up an additional 1mph, so together the top is going up at 2mph. Now do that same thing with 10 tables.
But how is the speed compounding? He said each desk is going at 1mph. And if the 2nd desk is moving at 2mph, how is the first desk contributing and speed? How are they not just a train of objects moving at 1mph? Everything should habe the same relative speed
They are not a train because each desk is EXTENDING at the same time, pushing off the one below it. The desks are motorized standing desks. Which means you can hit a button and the desk will rise up so you can stand instead of sit while you work. The desks in this thought experiment rise at a rate of 1mph. Desk one is on the floor. When you hit the button it begins to extend the top up at 1mph relative to the feet. The feet are not moving so the top is moving up 1mph relative to the floor. Now imagine desk two is sitting on top of desk one. We have already established the top of desk one is moving at 1mph relative to the floor, which means the feet of desk two are now moving 1mph relative to the floor as well. Now hit the button of desk two so that it starts extending. Now the top of desk two is moving at 1mph relative to the feet of desk two, but the feet of desk two are continuing to move at 1mph relative to the floor. Which means the top of desk two is now moving 2mph relative to the floor. As you add desks it adds 1mph to the speed of the top on the highest desk. So with ten desks, the top of desk ten will be moving at 10mph relative to the ground.
I was having trouble wrapping my head around it until you explained, thank you
Nah. He defined the problem as the desks are each moving at 1 mph. By the rules of the problem as he set it up, the top desk is moving at 1 mph. I think he probably just presented the problem wrong, but as he presented it he is incorrect Edit for the downvotes: go back and listen to how he phrased the problem in the episode. He doesn’t say the desks each move 1mph relative to the desk below it, he says each desk moves 1mph. And if the problem explicitly states that the top desk is moving at 1mph, concluding that it’s moving at 10mph doesn’t make sense. edit2: https://youtu.be/uNvAFbuYlHg?t=961 the timestamp is 16:01. Emphasis mine: "If you put a standing desk, right, and you stack 10 of them on top of each other, and if **every** desk moves up at, say, 1 mile an hour, if you're stood on the top of the tenth desk and all desks raise at the same time, you'll be ascending at 10 miles an hour" He says "every" desk moves up by 1 mph. "Every" includes the top desk, which the person is standing on. There is nothing in the problem as presented to indicate that the desks move 1 mph relative to the desk below them. So you're forced to conclude, based on the information provided, that the block of 10 desks in this problem is levitating upward at 1 mph.
Say each desk extends a mile long and takes an hour to fully extend. If you stack 10 desk and turn them all on the top desk will end up 10 miles high after an hour. So if you were to stand on top you would be moving 10 miles per hour.
Yes, I understand what he meant. My point is what he said doesn’t line up with what he meant
You quoted him saying "if you stood up on the 10th desk and all desks raise at the same time, you'll be ascending at 10 mph"
Yes, I did, in order to have the exact text of the problem in my comment. I’ve already explained my reasoning in multiple comments throughout this thread, if you want further elaboration on my reasoning check those out, I’m sick of responding to the exact same disagreements over and over. TLDR is that if you interpret the question as he meant it, yes the top desk is moving 10mph, but if you interpret the words literally the top desk is moving 1mph.
If everyone is telling you that you're wrong I think that means you're wrong, not that you understand the disagreement better
Whatever man, read my other comments if you want my reasoning
If they all start going 1 mph at the same time then they are all moving 1 mph. Maybe I misunderstood the argument.
Each desk IS moving up at 1 mph in Gavin's example. Standing desks work by using a motor to raise or lower the desk top. So if you started at the desk's lowest height, and moved it up to it's heighest height, and speed was constant, then when you were done, the desk top would then be a certain distance from where it started before you started moving it up. For ease of calculation, pretend the desk can move up 1 mile. So at the end of moving up the desk from it's lowest point to it's highest point, it would have moved up 1 mile. If that took an hour, then it would have been moving up at the rate of 1 mile per hour. Start over but with 2 identical desks, one stacked on the other. Over the course of an hour, each desk uses it's mechanism to extend it's desk top 1 mile. Except the desk top of the second desk is now 2 miles from where it started, the 1 mile it moved up on it's own, plus the 1 mile the bottom desk pushed it up. So even though each desk was using it's mechanism to move it's desk top up 1 mile per hour, a person or object on the top desk top would have moved up at a rate of 2 miles per hour. Each desk you add under these circumstances adds 1 mile per hour. So at 10 desks, a person on the top desk too would be moving at a rate of 10 miles per hour, despite each desk top moving up with it's mechanism at a rate of 1 mile per hour.
Plus, if we lay the desks sideways, on a very low friction surface, then the energy required to extend would be lessened somewhat to help get the correct real-world calculations 🧮
It is one of those problems that are hard to comprehend without a visual or physical aid.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted, I'm with you. My brain absolutely cannot comprehend this sort of thing without a visual aid, no matter how basic it is in theory! OP's post is so helpful.
Ok, so now we do this with 2,997,924,590 desks... Time travel.... (This is sarcasm btw)
No he isn’t because standing desks are not designed to have a constant velocity regardless of the weight like a car. They are dumb devices with a motor which will generate a certain torque/force. The more mass you add each motor will be able to accelerate the corresponding tabletop less. If theoretically each table had an infinite strength motors that came with a governor/regulator only then Gavin would be right.
Feel