Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[tikay]

Aside from the japery...

Breaking news about the Boston marathon. Seems there's been a serious incident:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22160691

Utterly awful.

[tikay]

I'll tell you who's pretentious. Bloody Steve 'I have to talk over the end of every record because I can't wait any longer to hear the sound of my own voice' Wright on Radio 2. That's who.

Steve has put on a bit of weight.

Click to see full-size image.

Click to see full-size image.

[david3103]

Saucer of milk for Table 4

[Tal]

He looks like the late WWF wrestling promoter, Paul Bearer:

Click to see full-size image.

[Machka]

This page look like it would be right up your street, town, city, county, country, empire tikay...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminology_of_the_British_Isles

Glad that page cleared up things for me!

There's even a nice Euler diagram for Merenovice to appreciate.

Good find, Aaron, thank you.

...
Maths is a beautiful thing.

If it's done right it is

"... Beauty is the first test: There is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.”-- G. H. Hardy

If you Google beautiful formula you find:

Euler's identity 

From wikipedia:

After proving Euler's identity during a lecture, Benjamin Peirce, a noted American 19th century philosopher/mathematician and a professor at Harvard University, stated that "It is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand it, and we don't know what it means, but we have proved it, and therefore we know it must be the truth."

A couple of mentions of Euler from before on your diary  - Euler's identity and Euler diagrams.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_diagram

Proper well educated me.  Or so I tell people.

[Machka]

On that spolling thing, physics has a fun set of made up words:

The rate of change of something.

Start off with position. That's where a thing is.

The rate of change of position is called velocity.

The rate of change of velocity is called acceleration. So far so good.

The rate of change of acceleration is called jerk. Bit harder to imagine but OK.

The rate of change of jerk is called...

Jounce.

I've never heard that word spoken aloud apart from the one time I was told of its existence.

Now THAT is beautiful.

The particular words which grow around specific specialities fascinates.

In IT we now have architects.

I know a chap who is an "IT Problem Manager". He keeps himself pretty busy, I gather.

In the world of micro, we have quarks, gluons, quasers, leptons, mesons, quartons, & even pentaquarks.

My favourite has to be the quark family, which consists of the following sub-divisions.....

Up

Down

Top

Bottom

Strange

Charm

PS - Note the punny adjective. particular. Almost proud of that.

Quarks, gluons, quasers, leptons, mesons, quartons, & even pentaquarks...

Now that brings me onto one of the authors I was going to recommend, Richard Feynman.

I did notice that there was a recommendation for one of his light reading books on your diary before by Bongo called Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Surely-Youre-Joking-Feynman-Adventures/dp/009917331X/ref=pd_sim_b_1

A few more great books by Mr Feynman that are definitely worth a read are

Six Easy Pieces - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Six-Easy-Pieces-Fundamentals-Explained/dp/0140276661/ref=pd_sim_b_4

No Ordinary Genius - http://www.amazon.co.uk/No-Ordinary-Genius-Sykes/dp/039331393X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1366061380&sr=1-1

It's hard to describe what he did as he did so much during his life.

From developing new mathematical techniques never before used to developing the atomic bomb to helping understand and explain the cause of the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster.



Where do Quarks, gluons, quasers, leptons, mesons, quartons, & even pentaquarks. come into this?

Mr Feyman won a Nobel Prize for his work on Quantum Electrodynamics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_electrodynamics#Feynman.27s_view_of_quantum_electrodynamics

which was used for the basis of Quantum Chromodynamics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_chromodynamics

that describes the interactions between quarks and gluons.

[mulhuzz]

Feynman of course famously described as 'half genius, half buffoon' by a colleague.

After his colleague worked with them some more, he changed his mind and described him as 'all genius, all buffoon'.

[Machka]

Euler chat ITT?!

Very pleased with discussions on Konigsberg's bridge system in mathematical contexts. Keep it coming! Probably one of the most important people in scientific history.

He is the man after whom the number e is named. He proved some of Fermat and Newton's theorems and a ridiculously large Mersenne prime.

Not to mention the physics and astrophysics.

Don't understand as much as 1% of it, but boy is it sexy.

I was going to mention the google doodle if nobody else did - I should have realised that Tikay would get there first

I did quite a lot of number theory at university so came across Euler quite a bit, can't beat this for beautiful and elegant

Although trying to explain elements of it to people can make it sound a bit like a lot maths hasn't really got much relation to the real world 

The problem I have with that "beautiful & elegant" theory is that I simply do not understand it, & never will, because I have no mathematical base-knowledge. 

I failed my GCE O Level in Maths - a pretty neat trick - but I was able to pass, with a "distinction" a City & Guilds in Arithmetic.

So I don't feel embarrased about my maths ignorance, as I can handle day-to-day numbers as well as anyone I know, but maths is simply way over my head.

Weird there can be such a difference between two related subjects.

We used to be given those "two trains set off from different points at the same time, one doing 60mph, the other 30 mph, at which point do they pass each other?" things.

I could always suss the answer but I could only do so long-hand, & so I got knocked back, as you had to show the workings. Showing a series of guesses, ever nearer untuil the right answer eventually & inevitably arrived, cut no ice......

I think when it comes down to it fundamentally most people don't understand it.  "It" being most things mathematical.

Pi, e, i, some things like these just are.

1+1=2 some things like this seem obvious, but aren't necessarily true.

The internal angles on any triangle are 180 degrees, everyone learns that at school.  But it's only true in certain circumstances.

Arithmatic is useful, Maths is amazing.  I don't understand most of it but I love learning a little more whenever I can.

[mulhuzz]

Non-Euclidian geometry ITT.

Think tikay will enjoy reading about that

[Tal]

^^^

That.


There are apparently five fundamental numbers that appear and keep appearing all over the place in completely unconnected branches of maths:

0
1
i (the square root of -1)
e (our new-found base of natural logorithms)
π (pi, the ratio between the circumference and the diameter of a circle)


I could quite happily prattle on about the 1% or less that I know about this stuff, but suffice it to say that we see connections between seemingly unconnected things in science (remember those ciccadas with their prime number cycles?). It is referred to as beautiful because everyone agrees that it's a good thing when everything gets a little bit closer together; when we start to see things taking shape and understanding how stuff works.

Funny how both the scientists and the religious folk argue that these connections - this elegance - is proof of their argument. The scientists say maths is a perfect, underlying, inherent quality in everything and didn't need outside help. The religious say it is all too perfect not to have been the work of a higher being.

[Tal]

Jackanory cliffs: Euclid was an old Greek chap who wrote a big book of shapes.

If you draw a triangle on a piece of paper, the internal angles will always add up to 180degrees.

Euclid worked in 2 dimensions.

Non-Euclidean geometry goes a step further.

Take a sphere. Draw an equilateral triangle on it. Internal angles? 60degrees apiece?

Nope. 90.

Each internal angle is a right angle.

I think....help...it differs depending on the triangle you draw...

[Tal]

Click to see full-size image.

[tikay]

Have you tried radio 4 Extra, http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4extra/programmes/schedules/this_week
mainly classic bbc radio,it is digital though so you need digital radio ,internet or sky channel 0131

Thanks Nick.

Unfortunately, I don't have, & can't seem to get, Radio 4 Extra. Not sure I know what "Digital Radio" is. I have a Digital Alarm Clock though.

[tikay]

On that spolling thing, physics has a fun set of made up words:

The rate of change of something.

Start off with position. That's where a thing is.

The rate of change of position is called velocity.

The rate of change of velocity is called acceleration. So far so good.

The rate of change of acceleration is called jerk. Bit harder to imagine but OK.

The rate of change of jerk is called...

Jounce.

I've never heard that word spoken aloud apart from the one time I was told of its existence.

Now THAT is beautiful.

The particular words which grow around specific specialities fascinates.

In IT we now have architects.

I know a chap who is an "IT Problem Manager". He keeps himself pretty busy, I gather.

In the world of micro, we have quarks, gluons, quasers, leptons, mesons, quartons, & even pentaquarks.

My favourite has to be the quark family, which consists of the following sub-divisions.....

Up

Down

Top

Bottom

Strange

Charm

PS - Note the punny adjective. particular. Almost proud of that.

Quarks, gluons, quasers, leptons, mesons, quartons, & even pentaquarks...

Now that brings me onto one of the authors I was going to recommend, Richard Feynman.

I did notice that there was a recommendation for one of his light reading books on your diary before by Bongo called Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Surely-Youre-Joking-Feynman-Adventures/dp/009917331X/ref=pd_sim_b_1

A few more great books by Mr Feynman that are definitely worth a read are

Six Easy Pieces - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Six-Easy-Pieces-Fundamentals-Explained/dp/0140276661/ref=pd_sim_b_4

No Ordinary Genius - http://www.amazon.co.uk/No-Ordinary-Genius-Sykes/dp/039331393X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1366061380&sr=1-1

It's hard to describe what he did as he did so much during his life.

From developing new mathematical techniques never before used to developing the atomic bomb to helping understand and explain the cause of the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster.



Where do Quarks, gluons, quasers, leptons, mesons, quartons, & even pentaquarks. come into this?

Mr Feyman won a Nobel Prize for his work on Quantum Electrodynamics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_electrodynamics#Feynman.27s_view_of_quantum_electrodynamics

which was used for the basis of Quantum Chromodynamics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_chromodynamics

that describes the interactions between quarks and gluons.

Thanks Aaron. Another one I had never heard of, but it seems he was a busy sort of chap.

I had better add him to my "Books to Buy List" when I next visit Foyles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman

[tikay]

Loved this, about Richard Feynman.....


Due to the top secret nature of the work, Los Alamos was isolated. In Feynman's own words, "There wasn't anything to do there". Bored, he indulged his curiosity by learning to pick the combination locks on cabinets and desks used to secure papers. Feynman played many jokes on colleagues. In one case he found the combination to a locked filing cabinet by trying the numbers he thought a physicist would use (it proved to be 27–18–28 after the base of natural logarithms, e = 2.71828…), and found that the three filing cabinets where a colleague kept a set of atomic bomb research notes all had the same combination