Modulus of elasticity is a measure of how much something stretches when a force is applied provided you don’t stress it beyond its elastic capacity. It often correlates with strength, but not always.

To calculate how much something will stretch under a force:

Extension = Force x Length / (E x Area)

Wood has a decent modules of elasticity for its weight, but it’s E is lot less than most building materials. Something like 2-8% that of steel depending of species.

> And still today there are places where a rowing boat is just as versatile as a car and therefore just as common.

I’m kinda skeptical of that and would be interested to know where this is, however assuming this is true… this places highly restrictive geographic requirements as a barrier to entry and you still need a boat, oars, and a way to either transport it to/from the water or store it nearby. Not exactly something kids can do in any playground on earth.

How does 4 a side baseball work? Pitcher, catcher, first base and one kid covering the rest of the field?

The barrier to entry for kids is “have a ball and some space to kick it around”.

In terms of participation you don’t need a full field, you don’t need grass, you don’t need special shoes, armor, uniforms, gymnasiums, an indoor space, etc etc. You don’t even need a goal - a couple of bags to mark the goal is fine. Kids don’t even need any particular supervision due to low contact nature, and versions of it can be played with almost any number of people and in parallel with other activities.

Compare to, say, baseball where you need at a minimum a diamond, enough clear space for the ball to reasonably fly and a minimum of 7 fielders along with other equipment. Or rowing where you need a boat, boathouse, river, and a whole team to turn up, or American football where you can kinda play but almost all variants require a fair number of people each time and a marked field of some description, or ice hockey where you need sticks, skates, and a fucking ice rink.

Adding: Association Football has heavily embraced an actual league system with promotions and relegations, and the league tiers extend all the way down to random pub and village teams. This enables widespread active participation in the sport at every ability level with a continuous line from playing on some local social team to the premiership football players at the top of the sport, providing a level of connection between fans and pro players that helps drive fan engagement.

Not really - there’s equal chance that there’s a long string of zero hits on any given letter as there is a chance of of weaving a thread and missing all correct answers with the same number of random guesses.

Provided the scattering is random, or at least random enough given the sample size, then there’s not actually a statistical advantage to picking one letter vs picking a scatter.

Only slight advantage at just filling in a single letter is it saves time guessing if you’re real short on time.

If you ever do this though make sure you understand all the grading rules, some tests deduct points for incorrect answers.

Americans abroad do get to vote in elections (state and federal).

Note that you only have to pay any federal income tax if you’re earning somewhere above $100,000/year and the taxes in your country of residence are lower than the federal taxes you’d owe, and then you have to pay the difference. So basically fairly well off expats on the Middle East. Almost everyone else is either not earning enough, or is paying more tax in their country of residence than they’d owe Uncle Sam so don’t have to cough up any extra.

There are other asinine things though - you still have to file your taxes, which is a massive PITA from overseas as none of the info you get from your employer is formatted for US taxes, and things like retirement funds are also subject to US taxes (again with the $100k/year threshold. Banking can also be a pain as the U.S. have massive reporting requirements for US account holders that a lot of overseas banks just don’t want to deal with so don’t accept US citizens as customers. Basically the US government views all its overseas citizens as though they’re billionaires trying to hide vast fortunes, rather than the mostly very ordinary folks that they are.

I think you’re significantly underestimating the effort that would be required to relocate the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges.

It’s not about force being spread over a larger area.

There are two things here:

1. Momentum is conserved. Momentum is the mass of an object times it’s velocity. Velocity has a direction. The total momentum of gun+bullet before you shoot is zero, so it has to be zero after you shoot. So when you shoot the bullet speed times bullet mass in one direction has to equal the gun speed times the gun mass in the other direction. But the gun is much much heavier. To keep math easy we’ll say 100x heavier. So for the mass of the bullet times the velocity of the bullet(plus propellant) to have the same magnitude of momentum as the gun the bullet has to go one way 100x faster than the gun goes the other.

2. The kinetic energy is proportional to the mass times the velocity squared (1/2 mv^2). The bullet weighs 1/100 times that of the gun, but is going 100x faster (to keep numbers easy). This means that the bullet is carrying 100x as much kinetic energy as the gun.

So for every unit of energy your hand/shoulder has to absorb the bullet proof vest (combined with your flesh/bones behind it) need to absorb 100 units, which is gonna take a lot more to absorb. With something like a rifle, much heavier than the bullets it fires, that could go to 200x, 300x or more.