I learned a frankly disgusting amount about legal procedure, libel legislation, business/tax law, lunar reflection angles, plenty of geography surrounding the shittiest parts of the UK, Wiccan numerology, the accuracy of Mafia portrayals in classic films, even more geography surrounding major population centers in the UK, the historical decline of the punk movement in the late 70s, the speed at various altitudes of jet aircraft, and, most importantly, the necessity of well-labelled flow charts and spread sheets.

 

And what did you conclude? I am quite interested...

I don't think I've written enough fanfic yet to really say that I've done a lot of research, never mind strange research. However, one thing that comes to mind is trying to pinpoint the location of Grimmauld Place using Google Earth for the fourth chapter of SSS.

I need to get back to writing that... or my Freelancer fic... or my master's thesis...

 

Shall we assume priority by position here?

 

More like reverse priority.

I... need to write.

 

Hate to burst your bubble, but the biggest thing I learned is that Alcubierre drives are a big ol' wad of superficial hype. They don't work at all like the way they're advertised.

Someday, I may write up the calculations as an arXiv.org preprint as it's probably worth putting out there if only so others don't waste their time. I wouldn't know where to submit this as an actual peer reviewed article. (I doubt anything related to Alcubierre's metric even qualifies as science in the way I understand the term.)

 

Really? Something that contradicts a rather popular theory would be quite the hot topic, I'd believe. I'd be interested to see it, at any rate.

 

I assumed that poor packing and relatively shallow angles of repose would be a better 'worst case' scenario than ordered stacking. I just wanted to check the actual wording.

According to my dictionary a 'mound' is a rounded protrusion of a material (not exactly a cone, but can be modelled as such for shallow mounds). Usually relatively interchangeable with 'heap' in the case of 'a mound of'. However, the sickles are obviously stacked correctly (but if the Galleons are stacked, why not say 'stacks'?).

Basically, if the Galleons conform to the shape of a mound (rather than the conic model used earlier) then the volume of gold only increases. And if they are stacked into that mound shape rather than being dropped haphazardly then the amount of gold increases further.

And to be honest that estimate appeals to me simply because it doesn't seem totally unreasonable for that to be Harry's total wealth after the death of his parents (and possible liquidation of their assets).

 

Wikipedia! It's the Journal of the Future.