Irregular Webcomic!

Archive     Cast     Forum     RSS     Podcast     Poll Results     FAQ     Search     News     Facebook     Fan Art     More Stuff     Random
<   No. 136   2003-06-10   >

Comic #136

1 Iki Piki: Space banditos!
1 Bandito: Stick 'em up, muchachos!
2 Paris: Eat ionised plasma, dirtbags!
3 Serron: You realise that's a tautology? Plasma is by definition ionised.
3 Paris: It's comments like that...
4 [sound]: Blamm! Blamm! Blamm! Blamm!
4 Paris: {standing over the smoking corpse of an excessively semantical Bandito} ... that really get me riled up.

First (1) | Previous (135) | Next (137) || Latest Rerun (171) | Latest New (3227)
First 5 | Previous 5 | Next 5 | Latest 5
Space theme: First | Previous | Next | Latest || First 5 | Previous 5 | Next 5 | Latest 5
This strip's permanent URL: http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/136.html
Annotations off: turn on
Annotations on: turn off

Alternate punchline:

Another alternate:

Serron: You realise that's a tautology? Plasma is by definition ionised.
Paris: Hey, I'm the party combat monster. You want to worry about semantics, go right ahead, fancy-pants.

2012-04-05 Rerun commentary: Plasma is a state of matter in which the atoms - or at least some of the atoms - are ionised. So although "ionised plasma" is indeed a tautology, plasma can be ionised to different extents.

Ionised, by the way, means that some of the electrons of the atoms have been removed. Usually this occurs because of a large amount of energy being present, such as extreme heat, or bombardment by strong electromagnetic radiation or energetic atomic or subatomic particles. The electrons typically flit around the electron-deficient atoms in a sort of gas-like mixture. They may recombine with the atoms to form electrically neutral atoms again, and this process produces radiation, sometimes in the visible spectrum. If the energy causing the ionisation continues, this ionisation/recombination process can keep happening over and over, and produce a continuous stream of secondary radiation. This is how neon lights work, with the energy input being electric current.

LEGO® is a registered trademark of the LEGO® Group of companies, which does not sponsor, authorise, or endorse this site.
This material is presented in accordance with the LEGO® Fair Play Guidelines.

Irregular Webcomic! | Darths & Droids | mezzacotta | Lightning Made of Owls | Square Root of Minus Garfield | Awkward Fumbles | Comments on a Postcard
Last Modified: Thursday, 5 April 2012; 03:11:01 PST.
© 2002-2012 Creative Commons License
This work is copyright and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported Licence by David Morgan-Mar. dmm@irregularwebcomic.net
Hosted by: DreamHost