Posts by Michael Chester

Is it just me.....

or is amanfromMars making more sense than usual? Some of the comments are almost understandable on the first reading.... Or maybe I'm just going crazy and sinking (or transcending, depending on your POV) to his level....

I wouldnt call you conservative....

Here in the UK we have a much more snappy word: Bigot.

a couple other funny names from family experience (not my own unfortunately)

one of my sister's classmates: Iona Hawe

a cambridge tax inspector unfortunately generally listed with his initial: Peter Enis

My opinion

As a current student (AS Physics/Chemistry, AS and A2 Maths, doing A2 Physics and chemistry and the full further maths a level next year), i have to say that in this particular run of exams (all on edexcel) I have noticed very few "political" questions, with most of it being theory, however i would like to raise one or two other points....

In physics as part of unit 3 (the last of the first year), you do an option topic (edexcel only). these were originally designed to re-enforce (with some real world applications) the topics in the "core" units. these topics are:

Astrophysics (Thermal physics mostly, generally to do with black body radiation but with some rote learning of star life cycles and some understanding of fusion), the core parts for this are taught in the 2nd year

Nuclear and particle physics (a general introduction to the particles and forces in the standard model, but without the quantum parts), the core parts of this are in the first year (radioactivity) although most of it is new

Solid Materials (no one does it, its boring!) basically just hookes law and a couple bits that are also in chemistry about material strengths

Medical Physics (mostly on X-rays and ultrasound, as well as radiotherapy, MRI and other uses of radiation) Primarily based on the waves topic (2nd year) and the radioactivity topic (1st year)

Of these the most popular with schools/colleges seem to be astro- and medical physics, as the pupils will fall asleep at the mention of solid materials and run screaming at the mention of something as difficult sounding as particle physics (although this is by far the easiest! Little rote learning, just conserve everything except quark type in weak interactions), however this means that students HAVE to learn these by rote as the basic foundations are not taught till the year after.

The option topic used to be part of the second year, but it was decided that pupils would be more "engaged" if they learned some applications in the first year, and so this makes it less engaging as they understand none of the principles behind them...

Matrix mechanics by the way, earlier identified as one of the key things that students should have from an A level if they intend to do physics at uni, do not some up until the Further Maths syllabus, and due to the extra effort this requires (doing the Maths A level in 1 year rather than 2) many students will not get this far unless they wish to do pure maths later in life.

I would agree with the above poster that being able to derive equations by instinct does make physics and many parts of maths alot easier, one of my fellow students who I often help cannot do this, and suffers as a result, however there is little attempt to teach this in the modern curriculum.

The other problem with the education system is that work designed to encourage brighter students is often not recognised. I am yet to meet a single person outside of my secondary school (which was a private school) who has any idea what an FSMQ is (a maths qualification between GCSE and AS, designed to allow bright GCSE students to do some more work without causing too much worry to the admin staff when they do AS levels, contains most of the core subjects for the AS level), this includes the careers advisors, the maths teachers at my current college (although for one of them it is not unexpected as I don't believe he could tell his arse from his elbow..), in fact anyone at my current college, any of the places I apply for part time work or work experience (which includes some technology companies), or indeed a Cambridge admissions tutor at a recent conference.

I have been told many times on my way thorugh the current system that i could not be given extension work, the first was in primary school (year 5) where after being moved down previously due to a change in education policy (no child left behind, no child allowed ahead either), i was told that extension material could not be given "as the school did not have enough money to provide anything beyond the year 6 curriculum when Michael moves to the next year". This then resulted in me being constantly ahead of the class, and so I could easily doss about during lessons, occasionally stopping to help some of my slower classmates along in the hope of reaching something which I could not do easily. This did not happen until last year, by which point actually having to learn in school was such a novel experience that I struggled for a while because of it. To those that say that this is because I did not find extension material for myself, I will only say that I had enough understanding of particle physics, radioactivity and electricity midway through secondary school to have passed the relevant sections of the course this year, and my mechanics wasnt too far behind. The problem came when the areas of maths that got studied were different enough from what had come before that I had not encountered them except in vague mentions and so had not been interested enough to read up on them (calculus for those that are wondering).

I have no idea where this is going, (hence the lack of any essay subject in the ones that i am doing) so will just end it now....

Better applications.....

Not sure where i saw this, it was a few years ago, but there is a demo somewhere of a similar (tabletop, multi touch) interface, being used to play Warcraft 3 (for non-gamers thats the strategy game that preceded the MMO), drag around the units with your hands to select, jab the enemy to attack.

And on the "detecting your empty pint" note, for that to work properly the barcode should be on the side of the glass in such a way that the light signal can be refracted to/from it only when there is less than a certain volume in the glass, having it on the bottom gives no information as to the amount of liquid in the glass.

re: hacked copter

Bearing in mind that there is no sure-fire way to identify a friendly from an enemy target automatically (see pretty much any friendly fire incident in the last 10 years), there is likely to be at least an override, if not a manual target confirmation on these. Possibly not in the US but it would be required if the UK developed something similar (due to the requirement for there to be line of sight to a target, not just a lock from some other sensor, which is not required for all American pilots)

20+20 could be close to 40...

A half ton (for the sake of easy maths :P ) GWiz hitting a wall that will not move or deform at 40m/s (for the sake of SI units to make the calculation easier) will experience a momentum change (and therefore impluse) of 20Ns.

Two half ton cars moving at 20m/s that collide head on will end up somewhere between stopping completely and bouncing back at the original speeds (but opposite velocities) depending on the elasticity of the collision, meaning an impuls of between 10 and 20 Ns, however the energy transferred overall is still the same, so the enegy that does not go into bouncing the car away from the collision instead goes to wrapping it around your body.

With a heavier car involved in the collision the amount of energy going in to deformation is likely to be larger due to the higher energies, and there is the added sudden acceleration due to the smaller car being pushed backwards.

Oh, and to be pedantic, energy does factor in to impact forces, assuming that the collisions are totally elastic, as the conservation of energy and conservation of momentum will result in a defined momentum change in each object and hence a defined force. Also for an instantaneous impact it is more accurate to talk about impulse than force.

One good thing about the litre....

Once on a holiday in Barcelona a restaurant that had tried to make itself more attractive British holidaymakers sold beer as a "glass" and "half glass", the glass in this case, being, rather than a pint (British or otherwise) a full litre. Combine that with a large jug of sangria and we were staggering back to the hotel most nights

Upside down can=Cream

Surely if the can was upside down (i.e. with the bottom towards the ceiling) then all the cream would come out, it would have to be the right way up (i.e. with the top (where the tube is) towards the ceiling) to just get the propellant.

Suppose that the other chemicals that come with it are better from huffing cream than anything else though.

(a rather more sensible yoof of 2day)

P.S. There is no such thing as a Britshism, it was our language first! Squirty cream is Proper English, Reddi Wip is an Americanism.

"Proof" of evolution...

Evolution is a theory, like most of the explanations in the sciences that deal with the past, it is likely to remain a theory (at least without detailed records from a civilization that exists for a few hundreds of millenia), however there is a body of evidence to suggest that it occurs, which has been drawn from direct observations.

Firstly, random mutations causing changes to an organism. In the negative side this could be cancer, or some genetic condition turning up in a person with no family history of that condition.

Secondly, natural selection. This can be seen in many instances, either by the slower of the gazelles being caught by the faster of the cheetahs, or by the oft-quoted example of the peppered moth (which I will not repeat here to save space. Various genetic experiments have proven beyond most doubt that characteristics can be passed on through generations, so it stands to reason that if a trait causes members of a species to survive, then it is more likely to be kept.

Some mutations will have both good and bad factors (such as the one that causes sickle cell anemia, which can provide a resistance to malaria), and therefore the trait will be more likely to be kept under certain stresses (i.e. an area with a high chance of catching malaria) and lost under others.

The simplest example of both these factors in action is in viruses, where mutations to the genes that code for the coating of a virus can make it undetectable by the immune system even if there is a resistance to the virus before the mutation.

While this does not prove that evolution did occur, it shows the mechanisms by which it might occur, and suggests ways for species to become separated (e.g. different beneficial mutations arising in separate populations of the same species).