Having trouble in math?

[PauL]

You're not alone, look at these:

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[tybrenis]

LOL!! Those sound like things I put on my math tests. I'm horrible at math for the most part, and rather then just plain failing miserably, I generally like to do it in a humerous fashion...

[Aero]

haha, heres my favorite:


The following concerns a question in a physics degree exam at the University of Copenhagen:

"Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer."

One student replied:

"You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building."

This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed immediately. The student appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case.

The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics. To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer that showed at least a minimal familiarity with the basic principles of physics.

For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn't make up his mind which to use. On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows:

"Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H = 0.5g x t squared. But bad luck on the barometer."

"Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper's shadow, and thereafter it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper."

"But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force T =2 pi sqr root (l /g)."

"Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up."

"If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground, and convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the height of the building."

"But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor's door and say to him 'If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give you this one if you tell me the height of this skyscraper'."

The student was Niels Bohr, the only Dane to win the Nobel Prize for physics

[Omega]

WHAT

NIELS BOHR SAID THAT?

Dude.




****ing awesome.

[simon275]

Saw all this digg like a weeks ago. Kinda funny I love the one about the boss firing the guy

[xRyokenx]

That one with the elephant is great... I'm having trouble keeping from cracking up constantly... urgh... but yeah, all those are great, heh heh: find "x," "here it is" heh heh heh

*breaks out into constant laughter, falls on floor, and rolls around until head hits wall and whole family wonders why I'm up at freakin' 12:4- in the morning*

jk:D

[DaveW]

We just a good laugh in the Computing lab at all these. Nice. You're cheering up a dark and dreadful place. :)

-Dave

[Aero]

I showed my math teacher this thread today. She let me and my friend put the batman one up on the board. It r0xx0r3|)

[progbuddy]

That would be so fun to do on an assessment test...

[Airbozo]

Showed the wife last night and she just shrugged and said it looks like the stuff her kids turn in... She did get a small chuckle out of it though.

[moon111]

I remember thinking years ago, when will I ever use this stuff? And you know what? I never did. Was always a straight A in math though.

[Durrthock]

I laughed in math class today thinking about the elephant one. My teacher has a poster on the wall with a slope like that.

[Slug Toy]

two interesting things about this stuff.

firstly, i handed in my chem lab notebook last week because even though it doesnt affect our grade, the teacher wanted to look through them. i had to scramble and write up a bunch of conclusions for each lab, and part of them deals with finding systematic errors and explaining how they would affect the results. i was on the last conclusion, and i just couldnt think of an error to talk about... so i used the elephant line. i wrote in big letters "NO!! THERE'S AN ELEPHANT IN THE WAY!!" and i drew an elephant smashing a bunch of glassware. my teacher didnt say anything about it... although i cant read his writing, so i wouldnt know even if he did.

secondly, i think niels bohr is wrong. not about that quote (that stuff he said there was bloody awesome), but about his electron orbital stuff. rutherford was having trouble explaining electron behaviour, so bohr came up with the idea that they travel in fixed orbitals around a nucleus and cant leave them unless energy is applied. when energy is applied, the electrons jump to a higher state, but nothing is said about whether they spend any time in the space between two orbitals. even further, there are a whole bunch of equations set up to explain this, but i feel that the only reason they explain it is because scientists were looking for a reason to prove bohr right.

why would i say this? because of wave-particle duality of course. some of you might remember how i went on about why i think that light is in fact matter, and how it may even be the reason why the universe is expanding. well this ties in because when electrons move down to a lower energy state, they give off a photon who's wavelength is equivalent to the amount of energy the electron loses. perhaps the electron isnt losing energy... maybe its losing mass because it is not stable above its usual mass. further still, the mass lost may be traveling at different speeds depending on how large the "energy level" transition of the electron is, which would explain the different spectra of light given off.

it gets complicated trying to think about electrons in the "conventional" quantum sense. my ideas get equally complicated, but feel just as right. instead of going off the assumption that light is energy and electrons give off light, i go with the possibility that light is matter and perceived wavelengths are actually variations in speed and not the actual wavelength or frequency. electrons still give off light in my ideas, but light has vastly different characteristics the way i see it.

so why is bohr wrong? because the way i see it there is plenty of evidence to support my way of thinking (although i still have to gather everything together). i think ill eventually finalize my ideas, and prove bohr wrong, but until then i can only state that hes wrong and they i have a good idea too. who knows.. maybe ill end up proving us both right. we'll see.

[Aero]

Slug, the Bohr model is not considered correct in todays scientific community. It is well known because it is the simplist to understand and the easiest to teach. The current model is the electron cloud model saying electrons can be found at any place within given orbitals. I recommend looking into that because its now the set model.

Your idea is ok, but don't forget just how fast electrons are moving. Approx. the speed of light. At those speeds Mass and energy are close to the same. The more energy you put into the object the more mass it will have because it cannot move faster. Also the speed of light is a universal constant, it never changes unless the medium its traveling in changes.

[Commando]

That's some great stuff. I think that's what about half my tests looked like in college. I'll never forget. When in doubt write something funny a point or 2 is better than nothing.

[Slug Toy]

Slug, the Bohr model is not considered correct in todays scientific community. It is well known because it is the simplist to understand and the easiest to teach. The current model is the electron cloud model saying electrons can be found at any place within given orbitals. I recommend looking into that because its now the set model.

that pertains more to atomic structure, and not exactly to electron dynamics. the electron cloud model DOES say some things about energetics, but it says the same thing as the bohr model. its definitely a step up, but im personally still not happy with it. it still feels like the equations supporting all this are stretches to explain, and arent definite. the sheer fact that the schrodinger equation has an infinite number of possible answers raises too many questions in my mind to believe that its actually correct. i dont like the probabilistic approach, and im looking for a definite approach. i guess in the end you can say i dont agree with any accepted model.


Your idea is ok, but don't forget just how fast electrons are moving. Approx. the speed of light. At those speeds Mass and energy are close to the same. The more energy you put into the object the more mass it will have because it cannot move faster. Also the speed of light is a universal constant, it never changes unless the medium its traveling in changes.

i did a quick calculation, and the momentum involved with an electron travelling at .9C is only about 2.45789342x10^-23 kgm/s. its very small. and if you're wondering, the mass of an electron is 9.10938188x10^-31 kg.

obviously under my thinking a photon would have a mass considerably less than that of an electron, and a speed slightly higher, although im starting to wonder about that. i may have to redefine the speed of light since im assuming it has mass. anyways my point being that photons will have a momentum many orders of magnitude smaller than the momentum of an electron. it would take trillions and trillions and trillions of photons to make up a kg of force... but we DO have trillions and trillions and trillions of them. the whole universe is bathed in photons of different spectra. this particular idea is pretty beautiful as far as im concerned because it offers a means of justification for light being the cause of the universe expanding at an increasing rate. it works kind of like one of those ion drives. a small impulse over a long period of time equates to a high end velocity. you wouldnt feel this effect though because of the small momentum of photons. gravity far outweighs the potential force of light. although this all still hinges on the assumption that light has mass.

thanks for trying to shoot holes in my ideas though. the criticism helps me shape my thoughts much better than idle philosophy.

[meticoeus]

Schroedinger's equation may have an infinite number of solutions, but given the specific conditions of atoms/molecules/etc it gives specific solutions. Its really just a somewhat specific wave equation to begin with, operating under the assumption that electrons and other things its applied to are waves.

As far as electrons 'jumping' to different states, its generally accepted that they enter a transitional hybrid state of the two states it is switching between. How long it remains that way I don't know. I think it is believed to be much less than any scale we can currently measure, or even less than any scale we can measure based on the uncertainty principle.

As far as photons, if they weren't massless, special relativity simply wouldn't work. And special relativity has been experimentally verified hundreds of times. I'd say it is pretty unlikely that it is wrong but as with anything in science, everything is just a model and no matter how much evidence you have for something, it could always potentially be proved wrong.

[Slug Toy]

Schroedinger's equation may have an infinite number of solutions, but given the specific conditions of atoms/molecules/etc it gives specific solutions. Its really just a somewhat specific wave equation to begin with, operating under the assumption that electrons and other things its applied to are waves.

this is true, the equation will have one solution for a given set of conditions, but for every new condition, nothing stays the same. im looking for a way to keep everything about the electron and possibly the interactions the same, and just have them scale depending on the particular atom involved. theres too many fancy symbols in the Schroedinger's equation too. id like to get rid of them. id also like to eliminate the whole wave function deal too, and replace it with my mass-velocity functions.


As far as electrons 'jumping' to different states, its generally accepted that they enter a transitional hybrid state of the two states it is switching between. How long it remains that way I don't know. I think it is believed to be much less than any scale we can currently measure, or even less than any scale we can measure based on the uncertainty principle.

heres the only thing about hybrids. they exist when bonding occurs. i havent found excitation hybridization anywhere. from my understanding, a change in the energy level does involve a jump to the next highest energy level, but no hybridization. if an electron is in the 2s orbital, it would jump to 2p, and so on. although to be honest, i havent spent much time reading up on this area. ive been more involved in creating my own ideas about this. i suppose it would help if i understood what im trying to destroy though.


As far as photons, if they weren't massless, special relativity simply wouldn't work. And special relativity has been experimentally verified hundreds of times. I'd say it is pretty unlikely that it is wrong but as with anything in science, everything is just a model and no matter how much evidence you have for something, it could always potentially be proved wrong.

this is pretty much what i think too, although i dont care if special relativity doesnt work anymore. if i end up being right, well we just need a new idea to replace it dont we? as far as i know, nothing that is "true" right now would work in my world.