The Learn Physics Thread - Space and Time
-
It's like an auto LOD culling system. Why render something when noone's looking?
Edit: great timing, pageturn!Steam: Ruffnekk
Windows Live: mr of unlocking
Fightcade2: mrofunlocking -
Steam: Ruffnekk
Windows Live: mr of unlocking
Fightcade2: mrofunlocking -
What fucks me off is that during school I had to sit and listen to a very nice teacher as he banged up a load of letters and numbers on a board, said they were equations, and that we needed to remember them. It just turned me off, made me feel like I was never getting this shit so why bother and I filled my time with secretly looking across at Catherine Allott hoping she’d notice me.
If I’d had this kind of info back then I think it’s almost 100% safe to say that I’d have probably been some kind of world leading madman physicist by now, probably solved a few things and would be just getting the finishing touches on my Time Machine sorted, which only sort of exists if you look at it.
Who’d have thought that if you explain science with a bit of the humanities and a bit of the arts thrown in I’d actually understand it. Or, I guess, make my peace with it. -
Formulae or gtfo -
(jk obvs, I'm enjoying reading)
-
The maths (esp. Maxwell and Newton) are actually doable if you like and enjoy maths. It's the jump in imagination which underpins the physics models that people have trouble grasping. Maths are also very abstract which make people bounce off of the subject.Steam: Ruffnekk
Windows Live: mr of unlocking
Fightcade2: mrofunlocking -
I'm with unc on this. The problem is it just isn't taught well at school. There's no point in leaving the interesting stuff until uni. Tell kids about the mad stuff - they can handle it, and once they're invested they'll be more enthusiastic about the maths. My boy learnt the order of the planets at primary but what's the point in that? Show them some videos, a sunset on Mars or an astronaut dropping feathers on the Moon. Give them a tour of the solar system.
Teach them some philosophy if you must but get them thinking. Tell them the Moon isn't there if nobody looks at it."Plus he wore shorts like a total cunt" - Bob -
Since we went there I just want to say something about QM. It sounds so fantastical it's easy to just not believe it, but it has been tested so thoroughly it's arguably the only complete theory in physics. It 'explains' everything except gravity and some small areas of nuclear physics and the focus is on to merge those.
Its history is one long sequence of disbelief. It starts with the double slit experiment and ideas to explain it. Idea A can't be true because that implies B is true, and B is even more nuts than A. So you test for B and it turns out to be true. But B implies C is true, and C is batshit insane. So you test for C and it's true and then you have to deal with D. And then E and so on. X doesn't seem to respect any notion that there is a reality and we still have Y and Z to deal with.
"Understanding " quantum mechanics is pretty much like going through the five stages of grief and it's a long road. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. Nobody likes it but we don't make the rules.
Luckily we don't have to deal with it in our everyday lives because we see the average of all this crazy behaviour. A cat is made up of a lot of particles and the average of all this madness is still a cat, but only when we look at it.
Anyway, next time back to something that is understandable and that's relativity."Plus he wore shorts like a total cunt" - Bob -
Quantum physics is easy to understand as long as you are drunk discussing it with another drunk person.You rang.....
-
Loving the wave particle discussion. That’s exactly the sort of stuff that I like. I do wonder if in 50 years we discover it’s something completely different that we haven’t been able to detect yet.
Also Unc is on the money with school. It wasn’t science for me, actually had a really good biology teacher. For me it was languages. The way they used to teach French meant I had not practical comprehension of how it should really be used. Terrible way to learn. -
Lurch666 wrote:Quantum physics is easy to understand as long as you are drunk discussing it with another drunk person.
There's nothing to understand and there never will be. Ever. Bold statement but there you go. John Bell gave us a way to actually test this, and like everyone he was hoping it wasn't true.
The good news is that science hasn't collapsed even when we're left with only probabilities. We can do all sorts of cool stuff by working with probability!"Plus he wore shorts like a total cunt" - Bob -
Good point since everything in science is simply a theory based on current evidence there's a probability that there's something we don't know that would turn any current theory around.
So it's not totally different.You rang..... -
I'm not actually saying that. Well maybe. I'm saying if QM is wrong then maths is wrong. As in 2 + 2 does not equal 4."Plus he wore shorts like a total cunt" - Bob
-
I was just (probably badly) trying to point out that we actually don't know anything for sure.
And I'm not even sure about that.You rang..... -
The odd thing about QM is it states as an absolute fact we can never know anything for sure. There's a circular argument here that could drive a man mad if he didn't have a glass of wine to hand."Plus he wore shorts like a total cunt" - Bob
-
Our A-level physics teachers actually took us to the pub after school and tried to explain things to us there. I finally understood the Doppler effect when it was explained in terms of driving past speed cameras. Proper Yorkshire, that.
On the downside, they were 100% only doing that because they were dirty old men trying to get off with the 18-year old girls. One of them eventually left his wife for a girl in my class. -
SpaceGazelle wrote:I'm not actually saying that. Well maybe. I'm saying if QM is wrong then maths is wrong. As in 2 + 2 does not equal 4.
So... A few weeks ago I decided to sit down and try to understand the strong force, or at least the group theory bit of it. They use colours to describe the different charges because red, green and blue add up to white (so white is 0 and red, green and blue is a 3 way charge system - like how positive and negative add up to 0 in electricity).
But it turns out you can't just add them together, you have to multiply them together, and it's matrices.... And complex numbers... And then a whole load of degree level linear algebra because it's not JUST that.
Quantum mechanics maths is fucking mad. Sometimes 2+2 = √2i or something. -
Lurch666 wrote:Quantum physics is easy to understand as long as you are drunk discussing it with another drunk person.
Fuck, my family would have been the best quantum physicists. -
Complex numbers aren't that bad, and arguably it's the negative part that's the problem. We all learn negative numbers at school easy enough without giving them much thought. If you can get your head around negative numbers then complex numbers aren't any odder."Plus he wore shorts like a total cunt" - Bob
-
Complex numbers are OK for wrangling. What is fascinating is that they have more mundane "real world" applications. There are everyday electrical appliances , the design of which uses complex numbers. I presume it's to do with the 2D nature of the values they represent, but there must be something about i that makes them useful.Holding the wrong end of the stick since 2009. -
They're useful in exactly the same way negative numbers are useful! Or positive numbers for that matter. All numbers are strange if you try and define what they are."Plus he wore shorts like a total cunt" - Bob
-
s'pose so.Holding the wrong end of the stick since 2009.
-
This is my argument for teaching kids about relativity and stuff at school. I'm not saying teach them the maths behind it, but if they can handle the concept of 2 minus 3 they'll be alright. We cope with odd ideas better when we're young."Plus he wore shorts like a total cunt" - Bob
-
I'll do the next relativity post soon. Trying to think how to explain it. It's not that hard but you have to understand a couple of strange concepts at the same time to make sense of it."Plus he wore shorts like a total cunt" - Bob
-
Yeah, once you accept that space and time can behave in ways we're not used to. It's easier to just do the maths but we won't be going there, except for Pythagoras."Plus he wore shorts like a total cunt" - Bob
-
Not sure I agree with that. Special relativity maths is alright (you know, if you're doing physics or maths for your degree), but general relativity is not.
-
Who said anything about maths?"Plus he wore shorts like a total cunt" - Bob
-
Although we will use Pythagoras for sr, we won't be touching field equations in gr. Even Einstein didn't bother, he got a pal to do it."Plus he wore shorts like a total cunt" - Bob
-
I thought you were saying it 'was easier to do the maths'. It's not - the maths is hard.
Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Categories
- All Discussions2,716
- Games1,880
- Off topic836