Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2015 September 3

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September 3

Chrysler/Ram minivan

Is this a "Ram C/V" or something else? It looks similar to File:2012 Ram Cargo Van -- 06-02-2012.JPG, which is a member of Commons:Category:Ram C/V, but I'm having trouble finding much about minivans produced by Ram Trucks and don't know what other things I should look at. Nyttend (talk) 03:11, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

It seems to be a Ram C/V Tradesman, more details and images here and here. It gets a mention on Wikipedia at Dodge Caravan#Ram Cargo Van (Ram C/V Tradesman). But I've never seen one - they've never made it to this side of the Atlantic as far as I know. Alansplodge (talk) 16:39, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Sexual Shivers

Is it true that some men start shivering when they are intensely aroused. Also, do women experience this as well? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.124.66.178 (talk) 10:44, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

No.KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 12:10, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

It is true that some people have reported getting chills, and that when that happens they're prone to start multiplyin. --Dweller (talk) 12:20, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Despite KageTora's dismisal, it seems to me this is one of the many Rule 34 (Internet meme)-esque situations, i.e. there's probably at least one person in the over 7.3 billion currently alive (or really 100+ billion people who have ever lived) who experience this. And indeed, a quick search for 'shivering arousal' finds anecdotal reports from both males and females, I see no reason to presume all of them are lying. Nil Einne (talk) 13:21, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

• Foreplay has caused me and my partner to have chills run up our spines. I would mention that there was ear nibbling and Liszt's Les préludes involved, but that might be medical advice, so I have decided not to. μηδείς (talk) 16:20, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Some clarification on word choice - shivering can be used in many ways, but it we want to speak carefully, shivering is a response to hypothermia. I think the OP and people reporting these sensations are talking about frisson, which is sometimes described in English as chills, shivers, etc. by analogy. Goose_bumps are often a part of frisson, and, according to our article, goose bumps can also be triggered by sexual arousal. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:44, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Also, after several fights over deletion, the (WP-OR stupidly pseudo-sciency named) "Autonomous_sensory_meridian_response" page is back, and may have some useful info for OP. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:46, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Shortest proportionate height

How short is it possible to be without any underlining abnormality for a male or a women. It seems people under 4'10 are classed as a midget. And many of those people suffer some sort of condition that restricts their growth. But what about people who are otherwise normal, healthy with no underlying condition? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.195.27.47 (talk) 18:12, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Not sure I quite understand you but I'm 4ft 9 tall (could be 4ft 10 if I stretched) and I have no underlying condition such as dwarfism or restricted growth. And I've never been described as a midget. Shortarse, yes. --TammyMoet (talk) 20:18, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

See Dwarfism, Short stature and Height discrimination for our relevant articles. (I'll never understand why "midget" is offensive and "little person" is acceptable - I would have expected it to be the other way round...) Tevildo (talk) 21:59, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Maybe because too many don't understand the difference between a midget and a dwarf. So "little person" is a correct umbrella term. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:12, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

You may find List of shortest people of interest. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:15, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Orgasm Quantity by Height

Are there any studies documenting ejaculate quantity by height? It would be interesting to know how much a larger man 6'5+ can ejaculate compared to a smaller man (5'1) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.96.88.122 (talk) 18:22, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

"Testis volume was positively correlated with the number of sperm ejaculated." [1]. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:42, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Sperm <> ejaculate, though I assume there's a degree of correlation. Sperm occupies only a small fraction of the volume of semen. 64.235.97.146 (talk) 13:20, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Indeed, it's also unclear if or to what degree testis volume might correlate with height at maturity. I found lots of scholarly work on google scholar, but most of it was about trends between primate groups, not within humans. So I just posted the first closest thing I could find. OP can probably get more detailed info by searching google scholar for things like /ejaculate volume correlate human/. We also have good articles on semen and ejaculate that include many refs. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:17, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

• I read the opening sentence as "height of ejaculate". My image was of a man lying on his back and ejaculating vertically, cf. pissing over a wall. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:00, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I can piss over a six foot wall, as long as the ladder is long enough.85.211.129.78 (talk) 05:56, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Indoor thermometer humidity measurement related to temperature?

I have a few indoor digital thermometers like this one in my room:

http://www.amazon.com/AcuRite-00613A1-Indoor-Humidity-Monitor/dp/B0013BKDO8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1441319332&sr=8-1&keywords=indoor+thermometer

When I don't turn on my air conditioner in the summer, I get readings around 48% humidity and 82F, varying depending on the outside conditions of course. But when I turn the AC on full blast, I get something around 52% humidity and 68F.

When I turn my AC on, all my thermometers are consistently demonstrating this pattern where the temperature drops significantly, but the humidity goes up by a bit. My understanding was that ACs are supposed to de-humidify the air as it cools the air.

Is the humidity reading on the thermometers somehow related to the room temperature? Although I'm not positive, I think it does actually feel drier and more pleasant (and of course colder) when the AC is running.

Thanks. Acceptable (talk) 22:31, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I think that's because it is reporting relative humidity and not absolute humidity. See also dew point. It is possible to have a higher relative humidity at a cooler temp and a lower RH at a warmer temp, while the absolute humidity is still lower in the cooler case (I did not check the math for the specifics you gave). Wet-bulb_temperature and Dry-bulb_temperature are also relevant. Perhaps most specifically, note Air_conditioning#Dehumidification_and_cooling reference absolute humidity. SemanticMantis (talk) 22:41, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

To put it another way, cool air has less capacity to hold moisture, so it's gone from 48% of a larger amount to 52% of a smaller amount. If water wasn't being removed from the air, you would have had an even higher humidity reading at the lower temperature. --65.94.50.17 (talk) 23:32, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Ah, thank you; that makes sense. On a similar note, do most weather forecasts report humidity in relative or absolute terms? i.e., is the the humidity on weather forecasts directly comparable to the reading I'm getting in my room? Or do I have to manipulate it mathematically? Acceptable (talk) 00:30, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Most weather forecasts in my experience don't report humidity at all; but if they do, it's relative humidity (which you can tell because it's given as a percentage). --65.94.50.17 (talk) 04:19, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Around here (North Carolina), they usually report dew point more often than relative humidity, though sometimes they do both. --Jayron32 09:55, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

For some strange reason, reporting the relative humidity became the norm, even though it has the undesirable property of changing with the temp, although the amount of moisture in the air hasn't changed at all. Also, thermometers that report humidity always seem to report it as relative humidity. My local weatherman reports both, and explains how useless relative humidity is each time, but still feels the need to report it, because it's expected.

To explain why it's useless, let's say it is 40°F outside and 100% relative humidity. You might think if you open the windows (say because you burned something in the oven), all that humidity will come inside. But that's really very little humidity, less than in the warmer inside air. So, your inside absolute humidity may actually go down. In absolute humidity terms, you would say the outside temp and dew point are each 40°F. That's a low dew point, meaning the air is dry. StuRat (talk) 13:45, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

It's not "some strange reason", it's very simple: they report relative humidity because that is what controls the effectiveness of your natural evaporative cooling via sweat. See also the wet/dry bulb articles linked above, as well as Relative_humidity#Comfort, and heat index. If you want more scholarly sources, see e.g. here [2] [3] [4]. But maybe all those articles are wrong, and RH is really "useless" as you claim :P SemanticMantis (talk) 15:04, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm sure that's true, but you don't usually need to sweat if it's 40°F (4°C), so 100% relative humidity does not cause discomfort. Even at 59°F (15°C), 100% humidity can be quite comfortable. For this reason, I find the dew point much more relevant to my comfort. For me, the dew point is an issue only above about 65°F (18°C). Above that point, it is the temperature that matters most, not relative humidity. A dew point of 68°F (20°C) is much more uncomfortable at a temperature of 30°C than at 20°C, even though at the higher temperature the relative humidity is much lower. So that I am not accused of being sourceless, see Dew point#Relationship to human comfort and this source. Marco polo (talk) 19:01, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. Dew point is a much better way to know if it's uncomfortably humid or not. Relative humidity alone doesn't tell you anything about how humid it feels. You need to combine that with the actual temperature to figure out how humid it feels, and that combo is pretty much the dew point. (The heat index is how hot it feels, which isn't quite the same as how humid it feels.) For an analogy, giving the relative humidity would be like telling somebody what percent full a water bottle is, without telling them the size of the bottle, as opposed to dew point, which is like telling them how many liters are in the bottle. StuRat (talk) 19:12, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Stu, can you explain how 100% humidity is "very little humidity"? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:33, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

You are Oztralian, where it never gets cold. Come here when it's a high percent in a cold snap. If you scratch your very dry inner thighs until it feels better to stop for a few weeks you can actually make it get pink and then brown as it heals, which takes weeks. I guess that's why women like moisturizing lotion so much. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:49, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

You've never told the rest of us where you live, so I don't know where "here" is. Unless it's the Milky Way. Yes, that could be quite cold. Unless you're in close proximity to one of the billions of stars such as our Sun. Or even a hot planet like Venus. But I'm guessing you are in fact an Earthling Galactarian, like me. But not a very well educated one if you think Australia never gets cold. About the rest of your post, the less said the better. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:07, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

New York City. I know it's not completely accurate, even in just the populated areas but the cold of Australia is not comparable to the cold of the US, except some of the south. Maybe it frosts a few times a year in Perth and a bit more in Victoria and Sydney but there's very roughly 100 days a year of frosts in New York. Plants freeze to death outdoors for 4-5 months a year which is mild by Northern standards. We call anything over 40F/4.4C cool, not cold. 26F/-3.33C is the average January low, 20F/-6.7C is common, 10F/12.2C is the low of an average year, About a week before last winter ended it almost reached the temperature at which 35% salt 65% water freezes, if you add salt to that it can't dissolve anymore. -15F/-26.7C is the official record but a thermometer read -26F/32.2C in the Little Ice Age and the harbor (practically seawater) froze. People walked almost 10 km across the round frozen harbor. To say nothing of Minnesota (-51C! record) or Antarctica where it almost constantly snows ice dust right out of the air because the clouds are too dry to see. The average humidity on the East Coast is at least 60% if not higher. It doesn't differ a lot from winter to summer. I think it might take up to a few weeks of around freezing 60% RH or so air to dry the skin enough to start itching or cracking, so a short amount of cold in Australia wouldn't do it. If it's cold too intermittently and doesn't stay cold most of several weeks in a row it probably wouldn't dry out your skin enough to itch either. Sorry for the disturbing image but I think it's the inner thighs cause the roughness of jeans always rub on the thigh every step and maybe my jacket was too big for my skinny frame leaking cold under the bottom so I always walked very fast the years when the winter dryness was the worse. Also, if you move your lips too suddenly they can suddenly split open from the dryness, probably enough to bleed is possible but I'm not going to move my lips that sharply to find out. This doesn't happen at the same relative humidity in warmer air because they're moisturized enough then. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 00:13, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Sounds ghastly. But just so that we're clear, general statements in international forums like this should not be framed from an implied reference point of New York City, or the USA generally, or anywhere else. If your thinking is "The world consists of two places: the USA and Everywhere Else", maybe time to rethink that paradigm.  :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 03:36, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

But the point is that 100% definitely can be very little humidity as any north US-ian could tell you (The example at diamond dust#Climatology is super-extreme: ice dust falls at Plateau Station, Antarctica 316 days a year and is 70% of their 25 millimeters of precipitation a year (9.99 times drier than some deserts)). It doesn't really matter much where the cold place is, but you were welcome to ask if you were curious (which you were). And hey, I just found out that Australian state capitals are ludicrously milder than American ones of similar latitude, continentality and altitude. The rarity of frost is remarkable given that even Miami has snowed before. Thanks for inspiring me to look them up. If you ever want to visit the US interior do note that the latitude of Melbourne has seen -35C at low altitude, the latitude of Sydney has seen colder than -27C (also not at high altitude) and the latitude of Hobart has reached -44°C near the Mississippi River (low altitude). (-38.8C is when traditional thermometers freeze) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:39, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes. Cold air holds very little humidity, so the count of water molecules is quite low, even at 100% humidity, when the temperature is low. Going back to my example of opening the window to let out some smoke from the oven, you might think if it's cold but 100% humidity out, that all that humidity will come inside and raise the indoor humidity. But the opposite happens, since the dew point outside is low, and that tells you the absolute amount of water in the air is low, so the outside air, once brought inside and warmed up (after you close the window and turn the furnace back on), will not be humid at all. This is why relative humidity is confusing and should be avoided. StuRat (talk) 19:53, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Look, different people prefer different information. I personally can tell a large difference between 100F at 50% RH and 100F at 25% RH, and I don't care what the absolute measurements are. Stu should also read Humidity#Absolute_humidity carefully, because it clearly states that "The absolute humidity changes as air temperature or pressure changes." I have no problem with using dew point and other info as well, but Stu's claim that RH useless is, well, useless - there is a long history of using RH, together with temperature, as a way to assess human comfort. Stu doesn't have to like RH, but he can't deny that many people find it to be a useful metric. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:56, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Your example holds the temperature constant while changing humidity, which is the only case where relative humidity alone is meaningful. Of course, dew point is meaningful in this case, too, as well as in cases where the temperature varies. For another analogy, it's like referring to weight rather than mass, but if the world had a force of gravity that constantly changed. Would you tell people your weight, along with g's under which it was measured, or just tell people your mass ? StuRat (talk) 20:03, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Of course the number is not meaningless, it means something to somebody. Once again, you've painted yourself into a corner with you indefensible personal opinions, and provide nothing in the way of evidence or support, and in the face of actual reliable references from others, you keep going. When are you going to stop making yourself look foolish, and just admit when you're just wrong... --Jayron32 19:53, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Plenty of others have provided sources. Considering that the virtue of relative versus absolute humidity is tangential to the actual Q here, there's only so much time and effort we should spend on it. But, as usual, you are here only to complain, not to contribute anything (and you also again have failed to provide any sources while complaining about a lack of sources). Typical. StuRat (talk) 20:33, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

A few people above have mentioned that cold air "holds" less humidity. That is in no way true. Air is not a sponge, holding water molecules in it until Jack Frost comes and squeezes it dry. An excellent explanation is here, complete with the objections you're planning to raise. Hey look! A reference! 99.235.223.170 (talk) 21:57, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

That's just a silly quibble over semantics. Less water vapor is possible at low temperatures than high temperatures, given the same pressure. I see nothing wrong with saying "the air holds less water vapor at cold temperatures", any more than I see anything wrong with saying "the Sun rises and sets". Yes, you can insist that every instance be rewritten to say "the Earth rotates so that the Sun appears to rise and set", but that's just being picky. StuRat (talk) 02:15, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

No it isn't. From the point of view of us on the plant, the sun really does appear to rise and set. I walk out in the morning and - sure enough - there goes the sun, rising in the east. However, at no point does the air actually "hold" the humidity, nor does it appear to do so from a different point of view. That claim is simply wrong - and deeply misleading. If this wasn't a question about humidity I wouldn't bother with correcting it, but it's an important part of understanding what's actually happening. Surely the OP deserves to get the best available information? 99.235.223.170 (talk) 03:03, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

It's not the Sun appearing to rise, it's the horizon appearing to drop! (See The Shadow of the Torturer.) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 185.74.232.130 (talk) 13:21, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

I think the problem is that you are thinking "hold" means something like "binds to". Hold def 2 is "To contain or store", as in "the bucket holds water". The air contains/stores humidity, hence it holds it. Or would you prefer the use of the word "atmosphere" instead of "air" ? StuRat (talk) 15:10, 7 September 2015 (UTC)