What's a "high-frequency radio signal" and how do baby dragons emit it?

[elementofloyalty]

Character(s): Rainbow Dash and Jack Spicer
Location: Engineering Classroom
Rating: PG
Open/Closed/Finished: Closed
Summary: Equestria does NOT have the sort of communications methods that class is talking about.



Since being advised to just mentally replace things she didn't understand with things she did, Rainbow Dash had been doing a lot better in her technology classes. When it talked about planes or airships, she went for pegasi or dragons; when it came to cars and trucks, carts and wagons.

But television? Radio? Microwave communications arrays?! She didn't understand the first thing about any of this! Sure, she understood it was supposed to be some way to communicate, but the closest things she could come up with any of this was magic... and magic sure didn't have all these rules and equations and stuff.

So a sad pony stared at her book in confusion.

Comments

[bot_builder]

Jack, meanwhile, was mostly concerned by the fact that none of this stuff worked through the air very well here. It seemed like everything in this world relied on land lines. His default robot design relied on them being able to receive a wireless signal once in a while... He'd have to get more in-depth about how this jamming thing worked. Maybe it could be fixed. Or at least circumvented somehow. But, naturally, the teacher wasn't dwelling on what Jack found interesting, so his attention began to wander.

That blue pegasus seemed to be having difficulties for the first time in a while.

...

Since he now had an enemy to worry about, maybe it was time to make a friend or two. What with not having supplies for just building any, he supposed he'd have to settle for real people.

"Hey, something bothering you?"

(Also, if she looked closely, she might notice the bandages around his wrists. They were more than half-hidden by his coat sleeves though, so then again she might not.)

[elementofloyalty]

"I don't get what half of this stuff even IS!" she said, banging the book with a hoof in irritable frustration. "What's a radio wave? What's a 'land line' and a 'tran-seeve-er' array? Come on, I know I'm not the only student here who's from a place where they don't have this stuff, couldn't they make it a little EASIER?!"

Rainbow was the only student foolish enough to enroll in these classes, though, or at least so it seemed.

"I've been trying to picture it as stuff I know but I don't even know what it's anything LIKE!"

[bot_builder]

Well, this was slightly more interesting than what he was supposed to be doing, so...

"Huh. What kind of communication stuff do you guys have? Can't really help if I don't know what I've got to work with."

[elementofloyalty]

"Well, Ponyville's a small place, so mostly we just go talk to other ponies? Or if they live in another city, we can send a letter to them. And Spike can send letters to Princess Celestia personally, so anytime we need to sent her something we can do it with him."

Rainbow was not intentionally providing absolutely no context as a demonstration of what all these weird terms and phrases did to her own head... no matter how well it worked like that in practice.

[bot_builder]

"Hm. So you have folks that deliver the mail, right? Do you know how that works? Your postal system back home?"

Unless they don't use mail the way people on earth do, and... well, whatever. Jack figured that if he was assuming something incorrect, she'd just tell him.

"Wha--who's Spike? How does he work?"

[elementofloyalty]

"Mailponies pick up the mail and deliver it?" She approached the question skeptically because it couldn't be as simple as it sounded. How else would mail work?

"Spike's a baby dragon. I don't know if it's magic paper or dragon magic, but when burns up a letter it reappears in Canterlot with the Princess, and when she sends a letter he just belches it up in a burst of flame."

[bot_builder]

"So you don't know much about your mail system either. Ok... That's probably a good thing, because otherwise this analogy might not work. The first step to understanding all this stuff is knowing what the stuff does. All these different things we're talking about today transmit information. That's sort of the way the mail works. You take a letter (a packet of information), and I guess stick it in a mailbox or give it to the mailpony or whatever (this is like whatever's being used as a transmitter). Then the letter probably circulates around in the mail system a few days? Anyway, it gets shuttled from one place to another, the way information travels via our tech. And when the mailpony gets the letter to whoever it's for, that's like the receiver end of whatever system's being talked about."

He listened to the explanation of Spike with some surprise. "Wow, that's... ok. Did not know dragons did that."

[elementofloyalty]

"Yep, Spike's a pretty useful guy," she said with a grin.

"So... if the words are in one of these things --" She tapped her work console. "Then I should think of it like paper, and if it's supposed to go somewhere else, then the machines do the work of a mailpony and send it to where it's supposed to go?" Putting a hoof to her chin, she turned that around in her head till it made some sort of sense. "Okay, I can get that! So I guess these 'radio' waves are like a pegasus, they fly through the air, and if it goes through 'cables' it's like an earth pony carrying them on the ground?"

No one could call Rainbow Dash stupid. Of course, if you call her an egghead or a book-lover she might get angry...

[bot_builder]

Jack thought about the reply for a moment. "Yeah, that sounds about right... Anything specific bothering you, or was it just the concept?"

[elementofloyalty]

"Well... I get that's how all this stuff works like, but what do electrical magnets have to do with anything?" Rainbow Dash had stumbled on a brief discussion of the communication frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum. What?