/sci/ - Science & Math

I feel it's time for some Grothendieck here

In those critical years I learned how to be alone.[But even]this formulation doesn’t really capture my meaning. I didn’t, in any literal sense, learn to be alone, for the simple reason that this knowledge had never been unlearned during my childhood. It is a basic capacity in all of us from the day of our birth. However these three years of work in isolation[1945-1948],when I was thrown onto my own resources, following guidelines which I myself had spontaneously invented, instilled in me a strong degree of confidence, unassuming yet enduring in my ability to do mathematics, which owes nothing to any consensus or to the fashions which pass as law..By this I mean to say: to reach out in my own way to the things I wished to learn, rather than relying on the notions of the consensus, overt or tacit, coming from a more or less extended clan of which I found myself a member. or which for any other reason laid claim to be taken as an authority. This silent consensus had informed me both at the lycee and at the university, that one shouldn’t bother worrying about what was really meant when using a term like” volume” which was “obviously self-evident”, “generally known,” ”in problematic” etc…it is in this gesture of ”going beyond to be in oneself rather than the pawn of a consensus, the refusal to stay within a rigid circle that others have drawn around one-it is in this solitary act that one finds true creativity. All others things follow as a matter of course.

>>4999079
(nano-, mirco, genetic- blubb) biologists are paranoid.

Basically, there will be no arXiv for a field which is so new that there is money to get.

yes, just try to set r=0.

if you don't want thad, use

(r-d)·n=0, with d·n \ne 0

The standard handbook really isn't that bad. Other than that you can really just start the in build 10 minutes tour and at the end you know what's really happening. In contrast to Matlab, the Mathematica help is also easy to read.

>>4303068
I don't see that happen anytime soon, he's pretty pissed.
(frustrated with 1 vs. 0.999... threads and so on)

Depending on how it's introduced, it will help you to undestand the Maxwell equations a little better, but it will not have any practical implications. I guess.

>>4142114
okay, yeah that gives me some sort of picture. When I browsed wiki for symplectic topology I discovered the semi-holomorphic curves thing and spottet "Witten" too. But I mean I'm never surprised anymore to see that name in anything related to the last 30 years, especially classifications of semi-manifoldian things. In any case, I have to say that I can't quite imagine what these curves are. at least without reading about them. Strangely enough, I usually avoid complex function theory.

I'm asking these things because I recentry worked with symplectic structures myself, more on the physical side though. I think Josef is interested in these kind of things as well.

>>4012423
>implying Feyerabend is anti-science

>>3971707
aha, I don't even know that mathematica help example.

>>3888313
why do you want a plot of the integral?
I can make one though....

(and it's mathematica, the software wolfram alpha uses)

>>3869080
>>3869086
It might look harder than it is. There is nothing going on but using basic integral relations and facts about wavefunctions, like ∫ |f(x)|^2 dx = 1

How much liquid will turn to gas is dependent on the termodynamical parameters and the substance. Since the volume V is given, it mostly depends on the temperature. At some point there will be equilibrium and nothing else will change anymore. The scenario with perfect balance of water left and right will not happen.

See for example
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clausius%E2%80%93Clapeyron_relation

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

>>3713591
it's just a function which summarizes alot of integrals. for example

int_0^1 f(x) dx

is some value, and

int_{-1}^8 f(x) dx

is some other value.

if you white

g(xstart,xend):=int_xstart^xend f(x) dx

then these two values are g(0,1) and g(-1,8).

>>3701117
>means
?
My answer are in the regime of classical ("only geometric") framework, yet. However, photons would also couple to gravitons. It makes sense and in string theory they do. Loop quantum gravity gravitons couple to nothing, basically - which is a problem.

>>3695134
The process I described is reversible, so the entropy necessarily doesn't change. Wouldn't you agree?
Your example doesn't correspond to my first one.

>>3695141
>How the fuck can you get a change in entropy without a change in either ∆Q or ∆W??????
The equation of state f(V,P,T)=0 (for example PV=NkT in our case) describes the system in equilibrium. For quasistatic process where you go from equilibrium to equilibrium, the change of entropy is dS=dQ/T, so from dQ=0 you get dS=0. However if you go from one equilibirum state to another non-quasistatically, then not even temperature is well defined in classical thermodynamics. In such a process you can get from low to high entropy without heat flow.
If you pop a balloon with helium in a room full of air, then the gas will spread and then the entropy will grow and grow. consider this process from 3 seconds after the ballon-explosion to 5 seconds after the balloon explosion. clearly the internal energy is constant, no work is done so also ∆Q=0. but the entropy of course gets bigger - because this is not a process from equilibrium to equilibrium.
You'll find other examples, exspecially for processes where dT=0. I think entropy of mixing is one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_of_mixing

>>3695098
yes, except for the fact that there is another possibility. If you work, such that ∆W-->∆Q and nothing else happens (such that you can't get the energy back, like if you stir the pudding) then that's irreversible too.

The discussion also comes up in /tv/-threads on the movie "The prestige".

Unrelated to the following argument
>This copy would have all of your memories and would be unaware that it's a copy of a person who was just de-atomized
is kinda wrong. If I copy myself than the copy (or "me" if you like) knows that it a copy. But that's beside the point.

A funny thought is that the sentence "I have been copied" can't be said in this context. If the original particle configuration is no longer there and the copy is "just a copy" in a different place, than this copy can't say "I have been copied", because it's not that "I".

Okay, now the question: I can't agree with you.
You are afraid of getting lost, even if you realize that the copy will think as if it's you. Okay, but then you must convincingly argue why you now and you in 3 seconds should have to be considered the same person. In this line of thought, you always kill yourself if you learn something new.
Especially if you think that there is no soul in the spiritual sense and everything that makes you is basically complicated physics/chemisty, then why are you afraid of momentarily non-existence. You don't lose anything, you just skip time other people experience.
I don't see the argument why you would not do it/what you lose.

If you set out to learn how to play yoyo by the end of the day, then you are more different, than if you copy-transport youreself from place A to place B.

>>3638886
>>3638889

>Use half a dozen obvious troll posts
>People take you seriously

Stay classy, /sci/.