Who killed Meredith Kercher? part 23

[abaddon]

Are you saying that if the range were longer, the speed could be achieved?

How much longer would the range need to be, in your opinion?

Take Gallileo: drop a heavy object and a light object (perhaps a penny) from the leaning tower of Pisa and let us know which of the two falls nearest to the point from which it was dropped.

That exhibits so much confusion of ideas that it is difficult to know where to start. What you now seem to be claiming is that a cricket bowler could simply drop the ball and have the same effect as if he had bowled it.

 

[Vixen]

That exhibits so much confusion of ideas that it is difficult to know where to start. What you now seem to be claiming is that a cricket bowler could simply drop the ball and have the same effect as if he had bowled it.

What? I am referring to the relationship betwen weight and momentum.

You try hitting a medicine ball with a bat and tell me whether it goes
(a) faster,
(b) higher
(c) further:

than a 5 oz baseball ceteris parabus

(d) all of the aforesaid
(e) none of the aforesaid, or
(f) 'I haven't the foggiest'.

 

[LondonJohn]

Baseball pitchers have it down to a fine art in how to improve their thrust, which includes improving upper body effectiveness and strenght and pitching at just the right angle.

A six oz ball hit by a hard baseball bat can indeed reach 100 mph.

No. Read again. A (150g) baseball can be THROWN BY A PITCHER at 100mph.

Perhaps there's some kind of mumbo-jumbo black magic that causes a 10lb paving slab-shaped object to do same.

Nobody is suggesting that a human can throw a 4.5kg rock (which is not "paving-slab shaped" (yet more intellectual dishonesty there)) at 100mph (ooh look: MORE intellectual dishonesty!).

A 4.5kg rock can be thrown at something around 10-15mph by an average fit young adult male.

As others have pointed out, the 15-18 years schoolboy shot is 12lb (some 2.5lb heavier than the rock Guede threw). The US high school record for an 18 year old using a 12lb shot is 24.77m. Go out onto the street and measure 24.77m, Vixen. And then consider whether Guede could have thrown a 2.5lb-lighter-in-mass rock 2m through the air.

Seriously. No idea. No idea whatsoever. I'm absolutely starting to believe this is all one big spoof (though not a very well-constructed or well-articulated one...).

 

[Vixen]

Perhaps this will help explain why the window could not have been smashed from the outside, as if by a trajectory from either the car park or the ground below.

The breaking of the window would also give away that the burglary was staged. The distribution of the glass on the windowsill is evenly distributed both on the inside and outside but does not extend beyond the point where the shutters close.[26] There was also no glass on the ground below the window.[27] This is consistent with the window being broken from the inside with the shutters closed. If the window had been broken from the outside glass would have fallen down into the garden and it would not have stopped advancing outward on the windowsill at exactly the point where, if closed, the shutters would have been resting.
A second issue with the homogeneous distribution of the glass on the windowsill is that it clearly indicates that no one entered the cottage though that window. The windowsill was 13 ft / 4 meters above the ground but to unlock the window someone would need to reach the lock that is an additional 2½ feet / 75 cm up. Since one hand would be needed to unlock the latch the thief would need to kneel or stand on the windowsill. The problem with this is that the windowsill is covered in glass.[28] A real burglar would have brushed the glass off the windowsill before trying to climb up onto it. Failing that the result would be that the burglar would cut himself if he used his knees and crush the glass if he stood crouched on the window. Since there was no blood or crushed glass no one could have entered through that window.[29] Give this some thought. You have a window that is 13 feet / 4 meters up. The windowsill is covered in broken shards of glass. How do you manage to climb into this window without either hurting yourself or disturbing the glass?

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/The_Staged_Burglary


The conclusion to be drawn is that it was a staged burglary, with the glass deliberately broken to make it look as though there had been a burglary.

The only person to have such a motive would be someone anxious to deflect suspicion away from themself.

In Honor Bound Raff himself recounts a story he once read in the paper of a man murdering his wife and then staging a burglary to try to cover up it was an inside job.

Likewise, a acquaintance of Amanda contacted the Perugia police within days of Amanda's arrest to inform them that she had staged a burglary on a roommate who had slept with her boyfriend, and had been made to apologise as the girl was left distressed by the act.

So, Raff and Amanda were no strangers to the phenomenon.

 

[LondonJohn]

What? I am referring to the relationship betwen weight and momentum.

You try hitting a medicine ball with a bat and tell me whether it goes
(a) faster,
(b) higher
(c) further:

than a 5 oz baseball ceteris parabus

(d) all of the aforesaid
(e) none of the aforesaid, or
(f) 'I haven't the foggiest'.

You do not know what you are talking about. You don't even know or understand the difference between momentum and kinetic energy, nor how they are derived and calculated, nor the quantities that are relevant and irrelevant in their calculations. It's pitiful. Stop digging.

And it's Ceteris paribus. HAHAHAHA!!!! Lovely stuff! Ignoramus.

 

[bagels]

Amanda to Raff: When this rocket rock hits 28 mph ur gonna see some serious ****

 

[LondonJohn]

And, by the way, in a scientific context (and absolutely in the context of a debate involving discussion of quantities such as momentum, forces, velocities etc), one refers strictly and solely to MASS, not to "weight". Weight is a force exerted by an object, and is used as a placeholder for mass only in a non-scientific lay colloquial context which is wholly inappropriate for a scientific discussion. Pounds and kilograms are not units of "weight". They are units of mass. It's an extremely important differentiation.

Yet more evidence of the scientific illiteracy at play here..........

 

[LondonJohn]

Perhaps this will help explain why the window could not have been smashed from the outside, as if by a trajectory from either the car park or the ground below.

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/The_Staged_Burglary


The conclusion to be drawn is that it was a staged burglary, with the glass deliberately broken to make it look as though there had been a burglary.

The only person to have such a motive would be someone anxious to deflect suspicion away from themself.

In Honor Bound Raff himself recounts a story he once read in the paper of a man murdering his wife and then staging a burglary to try to cover up it was an inside job.

Likewise, a acquaintance of Amanda contacted the Perugia police within days of Amanda's arrest to inform them that she had staged a burglary on a roommate who had slept with her boyfriend, and had been made to apologise as the girl was left distressed by the act.

So, Raff and Amanda were no strangers to the phenomenon.

There's zero credible, reliable evidence that the break-in was staged. By anyone, let alone Knox and/or Sollecito. Rather, the available evidence far more strongly suggests that the break-in was real (inasmuch as the rock really was thrown in from the outside through the closed window of Romanelli).

Remind us all again, Vixen: in respect of the criminal charges related to the staging of the break in against Knox and Sollecito (that's charge "E" on the original charge sheet, Vixen), were they:

a) convicted; or

b) acquitted and annulled?

Which of those two was it, Vixen? Inquiring minds need to know!!

 

[Vixen]

No. Read again. A (150g) baseball can be THROWN BY A PITCHER at 100mph.







Nobody is suggesting that a human can throw a 4.5kg rock (which is not "paving-slab shaped" (yet more intellectual dishonesty there)) at 100mph (ooh look: MORE intellectual dishonesty!).

A 4.5kg rock can be thrown at something around 10-15mph by an average fit young adult male.

As others have pointed out, the 15-18 years schoolboy shot is 12lb (some 2.5lb heavier than the rock Guede threw). The US high school record for an 18 year old using a 12lb shot is 24.77m. Go out onto the street and measure 24.77m, Vixen. And then consider whether Guede could have thrown a 2.5lb-lighter-in-mass rock 2m through the air.

Seriously. No idea. No idea whatsoever. I'm absolutely starting to believe this is all one big spoof (though not a very well-constructed or well-articulated one...).

Have another look at a shot put field. The problem with throwing a heavy uneven shaped object of that weight and mass means its trajectory becomes unpredictable (and the item is of a similar mass to sandstone, Perugia is famed for its sandstone quarry, and many of its buildings are fashioned from sandstone slabs; the item is indeed rectangular and could well be a remnant of what was once a paving stone; an average brick is circa 10lbs).

If a shot putter (or even a javelin thrower) cannot throw to land his missile onto an exact spot, then what chance would wimpy Rudy have accurately slinging the weighty, unwieldy, slab right first time, directly through the narrow gap, should the outer shutters have been agape, whether or not he first climbed up to open them. Even then he had no way of knowing if the inner window was locked by an allen key or security lock after all of that trouble.

You are saying he'd have to have cricket bowler's eye hand coordination, shot putters upper body strength and deadly accuracy to be able to ascertain direction, speed, angle of throw first time.

Incidentally, a class bowler knows how to shine up that ball and all ace tennis players know how to put a ferocious spin on a ball. What you are claiming Rudy lunged is NOT spherical and any spin would have it flying off course.

 

[Vixen]

And, by the way, in a scientific context (and absolutely in the context of a debate involving discussion of quantities such as momentum, forces, velocities etc), one refers strictly and solely to MASS, not to "weight". Weight is a force exerted by an object, and is used as a placeholder for mass only in a non-scientific lay colloquial context which is wholly inappropriate for a scientific discussion. Pounds and kilograms are not units of "weight". They are units of mass. It's an extremely important differentiation.

Yet more evidence of the scientific illiteracy at play here..........

Calm down dear. It was me who informed you of the fact the mass of the rock was similar to that of sandstone.

 

[LondonJohn]

Have another look at a shot put field. The problem with throwing a heavy uneven shaped object of that weight and mass means its trajectory becomes unpredictable (and the item is of a similar mass to sandstone, Perugia is famed for its sandstone quarry, and many of its buildings are fashioned from sandstone slabs; the item is indeed rectangular and could well be a remnant of what was once a paving stone; an average brick is circa 10lbs).

If a shot putter (or even a javelin thrower) cannot throw to land his missile onto an exact spot, then what chance would wimpy Rudy have accurately slinging the weighty, unwieldy, slab right first time, directly through the narrow gap, should the outer shutters have been agape, whether or not he first climbed up to open them. Even then he had no way of knowing if the inner window was locked by an allen key or security lock after all of that trouble.

You are saying he'd have to have cricket bowler's eye hand coordination, shot putters upper body strength and deadly accuracy to be able to ascertain direction, speed, angle of throw first time.

No. No you wouldn't. It's a TWO METRE length of throw. Again, I urge you to take a tape measure and actually measure two metres from a wall, then stand at that mark and look at the wall.

I guarantee you with something approaching 100% certainty that I could have hit that window first time with that rock from that distance and that trajectory.

 

[LondonJohn]

Calm down dear. It was me who informed you of the fact the mass of the rock was similar to that of sandstone.

Wow. Just wow. What the heck has that got to do with your abject lack of understanding of physics? Unbelievable. But the straw man attempt at diversion is both well-noted and entirely predictable.

 

[Vixen]

Wow. Just wow. What the heck has that got to do with your abject lack of understanding of physics? Unbelievable. But the straw man attempt at diversion is both well-noted and entirely predictable.

Your claim I don't know the difference between mass and weight is ridiculous. You pointed out Numbers' error, yet I didn't see you hurl any abuse at him.

 

[Vixen]

No. No you wouldn't. It's a TWO METRE length of throw. Again, I urge you to take a tape measure and actually measure two metres from a wall, then stand at that mark and look at the wall.

I guarantee you with something approaching 100% certainty that I could have hit that window first time with that rock from that distance and that trajectory.

The window overlooks the carpark. Hence it is an upward trajectory.

Even if someone did smash the window first time from the car park, you haven't explained how come there is no glass on the ground below, nor any disturbance of the foliage. In addition, the burglary could still be staged even if it was thrown from outside (which forensic expert showed it was not).

 

[abaddon]

Have another look at a shot put field. The problem with throwing a heavy uneven shaped object of that weight and mass means its trajectory becomes unpredictable

Over a distance of two meters? Seriously?

(and the item is of a similar mass to sandstone, Perugia is famed for its sandstone quarry, and many of its buildings are fashioned from sandstone slabs; the item is indeed rectangular and could well be a remnant of what was once a paving stone; an average brick is circa 10lbs).

Irrelevant.

If a shot putter (or even a javelin thrower) cannot throw to land his missile onto an exact spot,

The objective in shot putt and javelin is distance not accuracy. Why on earth would you think otherwise? Have you never seen those events?

then what chance would wimpy Rudy have accurately slinging the weighty, unwieldy, slab right first time, directly through the narrow gap, should the outer shutters have been agape, whether or not he first climbed up to open them.

If he were temporarily blinded, and even then only maybe. And even then there is nothing stopping further attempts.

Even then he had no way of knowing if the inner window was locked by an allen key or security lock after all of that trouble.

Wait, so burglars can magically tell if allen key or security locks are A: present and B: applied correctly This is a deterrent which has a 100% success rate. This is now your claim?

You are saying he'd have to have cricket bowler's eye hand coordination, shot putters upper body strength and deadly accuracy

None of those are required.

to be able to ascertain direction,

From two meters away? Direction? Seriously?

speed,

Sure. Burglars always set up a radar speed gun in the commission of their crimes. Everyone knows that, right?

angle of throw

Burglars attend trigonometry college. Everyone knows that, right?

first time.

Or second. Or third. Or fourth. If it works first time, great. If not, try again. Burglars do that.

Incidentally, a class bowler knows how to shine up that ball and all ace tennis players know how to put a ferocious spin on a ball.

Irrelevant. He wasn't playing cricket or tennis. He was heaving a rock.

What you are claiming Rudy lunged is NOT spherical and any spin would have it flying off course.

Wrong. Never skipped stones on a lake?

 

[LondonJohn]

Your claim I don't know the difference between mass and weight is ridiculous. You pointed out Numbers' error, yet I didn't see you hurl any abuse at him.

You don't know the difference between mass and weight. At least, not until it was pointed out to you within this thread. End of.

Numbers made a small error of precision of speech when introducing the term "energy" into a calculation about momentum - though kinetic energy and momentum are interrelated (Ek = 1/2 x velocity x momentum) and it was clear he was referring to the effect upon the interior shutter. It was imprecise and ambiguous, that's all.

By contrast, the grotesque errors of even the most basic physics - physics which, in all truth, a 14-year-old school child would be embarrassed to get wrong - contained within your recent "arguments" are several orders of magnitude worse. They are beyond laughable. Really. Honestly.

 

[LondonJohn]

The window overlooks the carpark. Hence it is an upward trajectory.

Oh brother. It's the "bars on the lower window" fiasco playing out once again!

Take another, closer, look at that photo you were good enough to supply. Place a standing adult male at the edge of the parapet (there are, usefully, figures within that photo for scale). You will notice that the shoulder height of an adult male standing at the edge of that parapet (with waist against the wooden rail/fence) is totally horizontal with the middle of Romanelli's window.

You (one) couldn't make it up.

Even if someone did smash the window first time from the car park, you haven't explained how come there is no glass on the ground below, nor any disturbance of the foliage. In addition, the burglary could still be staged even if it was thrown from outside (which forensic expert showed it was not).

Oh no. Not this bollocks again. Evidence shows that a large blunt object (such as the rock) thrown against a thin single pane of window glass causes a combination of forward projection of various medium-sized (5-10mm diameter) fragments of glass in the direction of impact, and the vertical falling of larger pieces of glass. The only glass in such an impact that is projected rearwards is in the form of a low number of very small fragments (<2mm diameter).

And in this case, the inept crime scene police trampled all over the ground below Romanelli's window (using it, unbelievably, as an area to smoke and make mobile phone calls.....), and they demonstrably never conducted anything remotely resembling an appropriate search of the ground (an appropriate search would have involved fingertip searches on hands and knees with strong lights, and sieve-screening of the earth). Therefore, if there were a small number of <2mm-diameter glass fragments on the ground below Romanelli's window, the inept and incompetent crime scene police never made anything approaching a proper attempt to detect them - they were most likely trampled deeper into the grass and earth, and lost forever. So it's time to strike out for good the nonsense that "there should have been glass fragments below the window, but there were none" - in fact, there's every chance there were the small number of small glass fragments one might expect from such an impact, but the incompetent police did not make any proper attempt to find them (and they destroyed the scene into the bargain - great job!).

The "disturbance of the foliage" canard is also nonsense: firstly, this was scrubby ground with a mixture of tufty grass, bare earth, loose-leaf foliage and shrubs. It would be, to all intents, IMPOSSIBLE to determine whether or not anyone had been walking in this area some 18 hours previously. Secondly, and on top of this, the police themselves destroyed the scene with their trampling all over it. They didn't even photographically document the state of the ground as they first found it. We can, with extremely high confidence, totally throw out the idea that there was any evidence showing that the ground below Romanelli's window could not have been walked over on the evening of 1st November 2007.

And yes, someone could have "staged" the break-in (again, please be more precise and use the term "break-in" rather than "burglary" - the issue of whether or not a burglary was staged is a totally separate (though related) matter) by throwing a rock through Romanelli's window from outside. But I suggest that one would be on very shaky ground indeed suggesting that this would be in any sense whatsoever evidence that Knox and/or Sollecito staged a break-in. It's high time you realised that in order to accuse someone of a crime (let alone prove they committed that crime), you need actual, reliable, credible evidence that the person committed that crime. And if there's another reasonable, feasible explanation for the available evidence, then almost by definition one cannot reasonably justify such an accusation (again, let alone construction of a proof).

 

[Numbers]

Careful conflating energy and momentum!

Conservation of momentum does not take account of energy transfers. In our example, all we are looking at is motion in the velocity vector of the direction of travel of the rock when it hit the window (which, let's say for the sake of simplicity, was exactly horizontal and perpendicular - which, if the rock was thrown in a slightly upward direction, might actually have been its real direction of travel when it hit the window....).

The momentum in the horizontal perpendicular vector at the point of impact was represented by the mass of the rock multiplied by the impact velocity of the rock (m^rv(impact)^r). This is the quantity that must be preserved. As you correctly say, we must add up the mv components of all the moving elements (where, importantly and critically, "v" is strictly the component of velocity in the direction of the impact direction of the rock).

We must deal with the interior shutter not by thinking about energy transfer, but by considering its movement. Unfortunately in the case of the interior shutter those calculations are exceptionally difficult, since the shutter was hinged, and angular momentum must be taken into account as a result (the impact caused the shutter to rotate around its hinge rather than set off in a straight line). But it's still an "mv" type of calculation, expressed in kgm units.

And all the components of momentum in this given direction of all the moving elements after impact MUST equal m^rv(impact)^r. Since the (relatively) high-mass rock loses a significant portion of its velocity (and thus momentum) post-impact (and a small piece of its mass, but that mass has velocity and momentum too, remember), this must be exactly compensated by the sum of momentums of all the other moving objects post-impact (in that specific direction, remember). The relatively far lower mass of each flying piece of glass from the window indicates why the velocity of those pieces is likely to be significantly higher than the impact velocity of the rock.

As I said earlier, the proper calculations (based on a certain set of starting conditions) could be done. They would be difficult to do, owing primarily to the twin problems of the rotating internal shutter and the accurate modelling of the dispersal of glass fragments post-impact. At the moment I don't feel inclined to do those calculations, but I might in the future.

My thought is that the kinetic energy of the rock at impact is, in part, transferred to the kinetic energy of the glass, but some remains with the rock (it is not stopped in its motion) and some of the rock's kinetic energy - almost certainly a very small amount - is transferred to the glass to accomplish the work of fracture and sound (material compression/tension) waves.

In real macroscopic systems, even billiard balls, some very small amounts of energy is lost in real (rather than ideal) elastic collisions, for example, in producing the sound of the collision. These losses may be so small as to not be readily detectable when velocities are measured and momenta calculated.

 

[Numbers]

It has been a closely held secret until revealed recently on ISF, but William Shakespeare had precognition of PGP's new physics. He explained those principles in part in Bottom's speech in Midsummer Night's Dream:

The eye of man hath not heard,
the ear of man hath not seen,
man's hand is not able to taste,
his tongue to conceive,
nor his heart to report ....
___
Could someone explain again (in the PGP "new physics") how many inches are in a pound? Or was it how weight multiplied by distance equals, what, velocity or momentum or something? (In the old physics, it would equal work, for that part of the distance vector in the direction of the force vector.)

 

[Vixen]

You don't know the difference between mass and weight. At least, not until it was pointed out to you within this thread. End of.

Numbers made a small error of precision of speech when introducing the term "energy" into a calculation about momentum - though kinetic energy and momentum are interrelated (Ek = 1/2 x velocity x momentum) and it was clear he was referring to the effect upon the interior shutter. It was imprecise and ambiguous, that's all.

By contrast, the grotesque errors of even the most basic physics - physics which, in all truth, a 14-year-old school child would be embarrassed to get wrong - contained within your recent "arguments" are several orders of magnitude worse. They are beyond laughable. Really. Honestly.

Sorry, it was me who calculated the mass of this slab and told YOU what it was.

And how embarrassing, you had never heard of pounds-force.