Quake3World

ToxicBug wrote:Heh, I'm guessing that tnf would answer these quite easily. I know nothing about biology and I'm afraid of the bio class I have to take in orde r to get my diploma

Nightshade wrote:

ToxicBug wrote:By the way, I really think that you need to be in mechanical engineering to do this sort of physics, since its not in any of the obligatory science courses at my school, I'm taking a "Physics For Engineers" optional course (gotta take 3 optional courses) and because of this course I've decided not to go into engineering in university

No, you don't need to be in an ME program. That material is covered in a first semester physics course.

tnf wrote:dna-rna-protein.
that's all i know about molecular biology.

ToxicBug wrote:

Nightshade wrote:

ToxicBug wrote:By the way, I really think that you need to be in mechanical engineering to do this sort of physics, since its not in any of the obligatory science courses at my school, I'm taking a "Physics For Engineers" optional course (gotta take 3 optional courses) and because of this course I've decided not to go into engineering in university

No, you don't need to be in an ME program. That material is covered in a first semester physics course.

Why didn't anyone here think about it then?

Nightshade wrote:

[xeno]Julios wrote:so mathematically 1/infinity right?

Errm, well, technically if you evaluate the limit of 1/x as x goes to infinity, it's zero, but I don't see the direct connection to the sphere/ground issue.

[xeno]Julios wrote:

Nightshade wrote:

[xeno]Julios wrote:so mathematically 1/infinity right?

Errm, well, technically if you evaluate the limit of 1/x as x goes to infinity, it's zero, but I don't see the direct connection to the sphere/ground issue.

well coz if it's 0 it wouldn't be touching, which is sorta paradoxical.

the way i see it, as the object approaches perfect "sphericality", the proportion of the object in contact with the ground approaches zero.

so if it was a hexagon, it would be 1/6 touching ground, an octagon 1/8, etc...

so 1/n where n approaches infinity.

werldhed wrote: -Describe a culture-independent method of identifying an organism.

tnf wrote:
yea, but the paradox is kind of based on the assumption that we could make whatever the sphere is made of infinitely reducible...

which we can't.

What you are describing sounds, to me, a bit like Zeno's paradox.

[xeno]Julios wrote:

tnf wrote:
yea, but the paradox is kind of based on the assumption that we could make whatever the sphere is made of infinitely reducible...

which we can't.

What you are describing sounds, to me, a bit like Zeno's paradox.

i'm talking purely about a mathematically abstract sphere and surface. It's a geometry question. There is a well defined answer - my hunch is that the answer is 1/infinity percent.

ToxicBug wrote:

[xeno]Julios wrote:

tnf wrote:
yea, but the paradox is kind of based on the assumption that we could make whatever the sphere is made of infinitely reducible...

which we can't.

What you are describing sounds, to me, a bit like Zeno's paradox.

i'm talking purely about a mathematically abstract sphere and surface. It's a geometry question. There is a well defined answer - my hunch is that the answer is 1/infinity percent.

What is 1/infinity? What is 1/0?

[xeno]Julios wrote:

ToxicBug wrote:

[xeno]Julios wrote: i'm talking purely about a mathematically abstract sphere and surface. It's a geometry question. There is a well defined answer - my hunch is that the answer is 1/infinity percent.

What is 1/infinity? What is 1/0?

yes - but the point is that you can understand the quantity as the limit of a process, and that's what the equation denotes. There's more information in 1/infinity than simply 0 it seems.

ToxicBug wrote:

[xeno]Julios wrote:

tnf wrote:
yea, but the paradox is kind of based on the assumption that we could make whatever the sphere is made of infinitely reducible...

which we can't.

What you are describing sounds, to me, a bit like Zeno's paradox.

i'm talking purely about a mathematically abstract sphere and surface. It's a geometry question. There is a well defined answer - my hunch is that the answer is 1/infinity percent.

What is 1/infinity? What is 1/0?

tnf wrote:

ToxicBug wrote:

[xeno]Julios wrote: i'm talking purely about a mathematically abstract sphere and surface. It's a geometry question. There is a well defined answer - my hunch is that the answer is 1/infinity percent.

What is 1/infinity? What is 1/0?

YOU CAN'T DIVIDE BY 0!!!

wrong!!!!

ToxicBug wrote:

[xeno]Julios wrote:

ToxicBug wrote: What is 1/infinity? What is 1/0?

yes - but the point is that you can understand the quantity as the limit of a process, and that's what the equation denotes. There's more information in 1/infinity than simply 0 it seems.

Well what is infinity? Is infinity a number? How can a number be infinity?

Chupacabra wrote:...with a twist. Obviously very unrealistic, but a good theory question.

A train is moving 3/4ths the velocity of light (c = 300,000 km/sec) relative to a lamp post. Assume that a person is running 3/4ths the velocity of light on top of the train.

What is the velocity of the person relative to the lamp post?

edit: the person is running 3/4ths the velocity of light relative to the train.

According to the theorem of addition the total velocity should be one and half times that of light, and the running tramp should be able to overtake the beam of light from a signal lamp. The truth, however, is that since the constancy of the velocity of light is an experimental fact, the resulting velocity in our case must be smaller than we expect--it cannot surpass the critical value c; and thus we come to the conclusion that, for smaller velocities also, the classical theorem of addition must be wrong.

The mathematical treatment of the problem, into which I do not want to enter here, leads to a very simple new formula for the calculation of the resulting velocity of two superimposed motions.

if v1 and v2 are the two velocities to be added, the resulting velocity comes out to be:

V = (v1 +/- v2)/(1 +/- ((v1)(v2))/c^2)

(er in case my brackets aren't right and to get a clearer picture, I drew it in Paint:)



(he goes on to say that for small velocities (compared to the speed of light), you can neglect the second term in the denominator for most practical purposes)

In a particular case, when one of the original velocities is c, the forumula gives c for the resulting velocity independent of what the second velocity may be. Thus, by overlapping any number of velocities, we can never surpass the velocity of light.

You might also be interested to know that this forumla has been proved experimentally and it was really found that the resultant of two velocities is always somewhat ersmaller than their arithmetical sum.

[xeno]Julios wrote:

werldhed wrote: -Describe a culture-independent method of identifying an organism.

as in labelling an organism? Well if we're using words to identify it it's already culturally tainted (unless the nomenclature is perfectly isomorphic to some "objective" taxonomic principle).

then you have the issue of criteria of identification - ultimately a genotypic classification would be ideal, but practically you might be looking for higher level phenotypic features that are discriminable through the naked eye or dissection.

is that the sort of issue you're dealing with or have i misconstrued the question?

werldhed wrote: I paraphrased the question (there was more to it) but "culture-independent" refers to growth culture and the organism in question is an unknown microbe.

hax103 wrote:Ahhh, I was wondering when the first physics-knowledgeable person would appear.