/sci/ - Science & Math

how much you getting paid, son?

Nice! Just for sake of coversastion, what are your credentials?

How much money would it take for a private sector company like Spacex or virgin galactic to put a long term habitat in orbit?

Why aren't these private sector companies (read: for profit) mining asteroids? Spacex announced a desire to mine lunar water a while back, but no one ever says anything about mining metallic NEO's.

Does the Reynolds number say anything or was it invented to satisfy freshmen and engineers? Is it any kind of critical point in the NS equations or something like that?

have you spilled 12M HCl on yourself b4?

what is the process of applying to grad school like?

>applied mathematics

fucking ew. how vain are you?

>>2854817
>Nice! Just for sake of coversastion, what are your credentials?
BS/MS from a moderately well respected institution, work experience at small firm, current PhD student at a very highly respected institution. A half dozen papers published in my field, though nothing one would consider groundbreaking of course.

>>2854819
>how much you getting paid, son?
I'm a graduate student. I get "free"/waived tuition, health insurance, and around $2000/month in living stipend.

I want to go to grad school at a decent state school but only have a 3.0 GPA. How fucked am I?

What does OP think of plasma rockets, mars in 40 days, etc?

I graduate next year, have a 3.9 GPA and want to study Math @ MIT? BS in Genetics, Minor in Math.

How fucked am I?

>>2854831
>Does the Reynolds number say anything or was it invented to satisfy freshmen and engineers? Is it any kind of critical point in the NS equations or something like that?

Woah, does it say anything? Yes, it's immensely important. Mach number and Reynolds number are the most important nondimensional parameters in all of fluid mechanics.

Is it critical? Absofuckinglutely. It's the difference between laminar flow and turbulent flow. It's the difference between being able to exactly compute the flowfield around an object with the computational power of your cell phone, and being completely inable to totally resolve all the scales of the fluidic devices we use in every day life (like airplanes.)

What Re describes really sums up the millennium problem.

>>2854854
Honest, you're not as fucked as you think you are. Graduate admissions aren't one dimensional. You have a low GPA, so you need to make up for it with strong recommendations and test scores. You need to personally get to know someone that can take you as a grad student.

I know more than a few people with low GPAs that made it to grad school.

>>2854868
Plasma rockets are awesome. I'm not really up on my astrodynamics though, sorry. I didn't think plasma rockets with their low thrust were the kinds of things to do 60 day missions? Please correct me. It's not my field.

>>2854848
LOL. honestly, I'm sorry man. I fucking HATE mathematicians as much as anyone can. "Applied" mathematicians are the worst. It's just that I'm taking a course in advanced "applied" mathematics, the vast majority of which aren't applicable at all, and I mentioned it. Please accept my apology. Mathematicians are barely a step above philosophy majors.

ive finshed high school with a atar score of 97( im not sure what the translates to in america, but in austraila it means im in the top 4%
i can get into almost any uni course. the supjects i took in highschool were- physics, specialist math, chemistry, german, and english
what course do i want to do in uni to get into your feild?

>>2854881
Thanks. I've heard it is easier to get into masters programs, which is what I want to do, than for phd programs. Is this true? Anything else different between applying to masters vs phd?

Also if the grad program application asks for 3 letters from professors, and I give 2 from professors and 1 from an employer, can I get away with this?

>>2854884

I've heard 40 or so days to mars at best. Depends on a lot of factors though, 60 days wouldn't surprise me

>>2854896
What? Fuck you. Pure mathematicians are the gods of this world. Pure mathematics is the only thing in life worth studying.

By the way, G.H. Hardy would like a word with you.

>>2854847
>what is the process of applying to grad school like?

Well, for me, I knew the area of research I wanted. I looked at the top depts in my field for a while, looked at the research papers of people I wanted to work with, and emailed them. Some didn't respond, some were eager to have me apply. It was pretty painless, except for that limbo period.

>>2854869
>I graduate next year, have a 3.9 GPA and want to study Math @ MIT? BS in Genetics, Minor in Math.
I'm not at MIT, but I'm with people that did UG there. I really can't answer that, but what I can say is that you're a dbag for picking a grad school by the name notoriety instead of your research interest. do what you like doing. if all you want is to go to MIT grad school for math so you can tell people you go/went to MIT, then go for it. you'll most likely make a ton of money in a hollow job like computational finance.

>>2854930
>>2854930


I put a ? because I don't really know.

Either Brown or MIT, haven't decided

>>2854905
Well based on simple hohmann transfers, there's two optimal routes to Mars. One takes like a year, the other like a month or two. This is far from my field and you can probably google it. But that's the idea, and it's based on simple mechanics, and nothing to do with the rocket (aside from assuming it's more like a chemical rocket with instantaneous burns.)

>>2854926
Pure mathematics was valuable two hundred years ago. Name me a pure mathematician that has contributed to the greater good of all of humanity in the past one hundred years.

>>2854847
If you don't know what you want to research and you're fine with going to graduate school at your undergraduate college, talk to some of your professors. I chose one of my former professors as an advisor and he gave me several ideas for research projects.

What is your opinion of UTIAS?

How would you feel if you were replaced by a robot?

What if that robot was negroid and made in Jamaica?

>>2854943
Well, all I can say is to (a) work hard towards stuff other than GPA (like recommendations) that can help your applications, and (b) apply to more than just brown and MIT. You should realize that there's thousands of other 3.9GPA math majors out there that want to go to brown/mit/princeton.

How does it feel to be vastly inferior to your Russian peers ?

Is there some anti-Russian sentiment amongst you people ?

>>2854946
100% agreed with this.
>>2854949
I know good research work that comes out of UTIAS. It's well respected. If you're a Canadian and want to study aerospace areas, there's probably none better.
>>2854951
>How would you feel if you were replaced by a robot?
My primary research interest lies in automating tasks that are better done by computers. So I'd be making the robots that replace people. Although they won't be robots, so much as computer programs without moving parts.

>>2854944
Who cares about the greater good of humanity? Since when do most scientists contribute to the "greater good of humanity"? Oppenheimer? Even fucking Feynman? Half the shit that is discovered, scientifically, usually contributes to killing people en masse more efficiently. Especially as a rocket scientist you should know this.

Pure mathematics is about aesthetics and elegance. It is beautiful. It is an art. It is the only discipline ever that you will come across absolute, objective truths.

What would I need to know to put a satalite into orbit?

What made you choose your particular field? I have little idea of what I'd like to do in the future and it would be nice to see if your reasons are ones I resonate with.

>>2854853
If you so smart how come you be having tripcode man? Something's fishy. My troll senses are tingling.

op what uni are you at?

I am getting PhD, in aerospace (combustion).

What region of US are you in?

>>2854985
>Pure mathematics is about aesthetics and elegance. It is beautiful. It is an art.
So it's masturbatory. I know. Pure mathematics exists only for the sake of mathematics. The problem is that mathematics only exists to solve problems. If you invent a new problem and then solve it, you've accomplished 0, like a contour integral around a complex field with no poles.

I'd be fine with that, except at least artists make their work accessible to the broader public that can appreciate the art, without having all the skills necessary to do it themselves. Pure math lacks this, so it's not really even art. Pure mathematicians accomplish nothing substantial like artists, but unlike artists, only other mathematicians appreciate it.

>It is the only discipline ever that you will come across absolute, objective truths.
Incompleteness theorem.

You lose. Other branches show physical results. Engineers make airplanes fly. Physicists learn things about how the universe is created. Biologists cure diseases. Artists entertain the masses.

Pure mathematicians? You masturbate in groups.

>>2855006
everything OP says can be googled

>>2855018
Trolls troll?

>>2855018

i lol'd

>>2855018

Pure mathematics is just solving applied mathematics before you know how to apply it.

>>2855018

No, you masturbate ON groups (theory).

>>2854969
There are still Russian scientists? I haven't seen anything of merit from Russia since Kolmogorov41 (which was fundamentall flawed.)
>>2855014
the northeast
>>2854987
Where to find money
>>2855006
I've started these threads before. Some butthurt teenagers decided to impersonate me, so I went with a trip.

>>2854839

>Why aren't these private sector companies (read: for profit) mining asteroids? Spacex announced a desire to mine lunar water a while back, but no one ever says anything about mining metallic NEO's.

The sad truth is that there is no cost effective way. Even with a kilogram of platinium being worth 50,000 dollars, it's still not enough to pay for the in situ mining, separation, and bringing it all back.

>>2855019
=/
?

I never said otherwise. This is a discussion board. I'm a human being, and I know there's people on this board that would rather speak to someone that was in their shoes a few years ago than google some silly undergrad math problems. i'm not writing a peer reviewed article on /sci/. I'm drinking on a friday night and chatting up my homies.

>>2855030
I doubt that a serious PhD "candidate" spends his leisure time on /sci/.

How does work experience in something aerospace or mechanical engineering related look on grad school applications?

>>2855018
LOL WAT. Of course the empirical scientist completely misinterprets the incompleteness theorem.

The incompleteness theorem only states there are certain limitations to a formal system. In Godel's case, he used the natural numbers ONLY. The second incompleteness theorem states, merely, that arithmetic cannot be used to prove the inconsistency of itself. Godel's theorem doesn't even touch the question whether mathematics is objective or subjective.

You may have seen a courtroom scene on TV, where the lawyers talk about proving some claim "beyond a reasonable doubt". Well, that's about the most we can expect in many of our day to day activities. Experimental physicists and chemists and biologists and medical doctors repeat the same experiment over and over again, and get different results each time. It is very difficult to take precise measurements and get them absolutely correct. There is always a little error, so the scientists do lots of repetitions, in the hope that the little errors cancel each other out, and they hope they end up with something "reasonably close" to the truth.

>>2855046
Only a troll would come up with such elaborate explanations against my accusations of trolling.

If you're not legit you're probably the best troll on /sci/

>>2855030

Really ? Perelman has like 5 threads a day on /sci/. Also, Russians got the nobel in 2010 for chemistry (nanotubes).

Just because you don't know them doesn't mean they're not better.

Their lauches aren't shit for starters.

>>2855032
Yeah, I couldn't work in a way to get a good joke out of the group thing

>>2855048
you don't know any phd students, do you? do you honestly think that graduate students don't fuck around on the internet like everyone else in america?

>>2855045
right. at several thousand dollars per pound to launch things into space, and i don't know how many to land on an asteroid, mine it, and come back to earth, i don't think there's any element worth that pure weight expense.

OP, what would you recommend for my education? Studying mechanical engineering in an 'okay' country that pays for my education, then getting a masters or something in the US (Can someone actually get a job, permanently, in the US that way?) or go straight to the US from highschool?

Is molten rock a non-newtonian fluid ? Why/WHy not ?

What is the balanced reaction between nitric acid and kerosene.

>>2855059
>"beyond a reasonable doubt". Well, that's about the most we can expect in many of our day to day activities. Experimental physicists and chemists and biologists and medical doctors repeat the same experiment over and over again, and get different results each time.

Absolutely. Experimental sciences all have this problem.

Here's the thing though. Take medicine for example. You always have conflicting research for anything of scale. But often there's a statistical trend. As a result, modern medicine, despite disagreements in studies, has eradicated many major diseases, and provided cures for many more. There is a concrete benefit to what they have done.

Engineering is very stochastic by it's nature. In landing on the moon, engineers utilized many fundamental relations (say, Navier Stokes) that mathematicians are completely incapable of actually solving. Yet, given these "unsolvable" equations, we actually did land on the moon, and get the astronauts back home.

Now tell me, what have pure mathematicians done in the past 100 years, besides tell real members of society what they did was not actually possible?

>>2855045
"yet" is the pretty big thing there. Profitable mining of asteroids would require a lot of knowledge that isn't there yet, and some of the technologies that are there aren't politically viable. Nobody can put a 1mw reactor strapped to a VSIMER rocket with appropriate cooling into orbit, and a space tug like that would be pretty much required to position mirrors for a solar powered orbital refinery on a promising rock, then to send the product home. ((IIRC, it looks like it should be cheaper to move a mining rig from rock to rock then to try and maneuver asteroids to a refinery with all the chaff).

>>2855067
yeah so they spend time talking about their stuff on sci boards.

>>2855069
Um, I don't really know much about education outside the US. I suggest you ask someone who's been in your positions.

But, I do know foreigners that came to the US for undergrad, and ended up with jobs. I also know foreigners that did BS in their home country, and came to the US for grad school, and managed to find jobs here too.

>>2854793
do you need to be good at mental arithmetic to be a rocket scientist?

>>2855107
>"yet" is the pretty big thing there.

sure. I just can't really imagine a future where mining asteroids is every worthwhile though, and let me tell you why:

Current carbon nanotube development is all over the place. Given enough development, we can do insane things with CNT. Also, we will not run out of carbon on Earth. So I ask, in the future where it's cheap to fly to an asteroid and back, what raw materials will they have that make it economically feasible to mine them?

>>2855114

Thank you. There is one person I know, here, who went to the US to study aerospace. Then he came back and ended up choosing with planes X company has to buy. Which is pretty good considering the other option is sitting in front of a CAD program all day designing aerodynamic car wheels with a picture of the space shuttle taking off duct-taped to the wall.

>>2855124
Depends what you think arithmetic is. I've forgotten a lot of shit. I do separation of variables on PDEs in my head, but I think if you put my freshman calculus exam in front of me now I'd probably get a lower grade than I did then (memorizing integral tables is a fucking waste of brainspace.)

>>2855104
Don't you think this is unfair? The moment pure mathematics becomes useful, people start calling it applied mathematics.

Pure mathematics has been instrumental in working with things like prime number related encryption techniques, and in computer science in general. It's just, as this stuff gets more and more established and less and less theoretical, it gets adopted by the other side and they like to pretend it was their work all along.

>>2855126

Well, Platinium is a candidate for room-temperature superconductivity and overall a worthwhile thing. There are a lot of rare earth metals on the ocean floor, but they are far more dispersed than on an asteroid, and going down there would require nuclear power which is enough to trigger the hordes of Greenpeace luddites, and with CNT's (Or molecular nanotechnology) it would be fairly cheap to send machines to the asteroids.

One thing I have always wondered is why Eric Drexler, such a big space fan, dedicated only a bunch of pages in Engines of Creation, but I digress.

Hey OP, don't leave me hanging. ;_;

>>2855051

>>2855128
>Thank you. There is one person I know, here, who went to the US to study aerospace. Then he came back and ended up choosing with planes X company has to buy. Which is pretty good considering the other option is sitting in front of a CAD program all day designing aerodynamic car wheels with a picture of the space shuttle taking off duct-taped to the wall.

Holy shit, this so much. Wow.

Right down to the mind-numbing CAD-staring with a shuttle picture pinned up in the cubicle.... you just described everything and everyone I've worked hard to avoid. You could be me in the future, posting into the past.

Is computer engineering difficult? Actually, just try to quantify how 'difficultly' of the last two years of an engineering degree for B.S., please. Relate it in terms of the most difficult undergrad course you took.

Also, I like programming but how much of that is actually done in computer engineering?

>>2855136
That's a good point.

I overstated my opinion on mathematics because this is 4chan. But seriously, valid point.

I regularly use mathematics to solve real world problems that were obscure pure math questions a hundred years ago.

>>2855158
"Hard" is relative. If you do the program right and pay attention your first two years, your last two years shouldn't be any more difficult. It's hard to quantify these things cause of all the variables. People with great aptitude for these areas that still wanted to excel end up working 60-80 hours a week on their schooling.

>>2855151

Well, I try =3

>>2855051
>How does work experience in something aerospace or mechanical engineering related look on grad school applications?

it looks good. depends on the work done, but all experience outside of school and grades helps a ton.

>>2855128
CCM you should leave me a way to contact you. we've spoken before, i like you.

OP doesn't appreciate higher math.
>mfw

(also, I would argue that someone has to make the tools, and even if now they seem useless, they might become usefull. Like Symplectic geometry (Hamiltonian Mechanics), Galois theory of differential equations (Lie Groups), ...wavelet theory, functional analysis, kryptography...)

>>2855182
Seriously, I've been at two graduate departments, and in both places I've shared office space with people that had (a) had shuttle pictures up on their walls, and (b) were never going to make it as anything significant.

At least it's better for the grad students....

Is physics hard to pick up? Assume you never have opened a physics text book but have aced all math-related courses up to (and including) DEQ.

Of course you actually solve physics-related problems in calculus (Calc II, Calc III, DEQ) but they never seem to be the 'hard' stuff.

Basically, if I understand math will I do ok in a physics course? It's scaring the crap out of me because I get to take physics I for engineers fall semester.

>>2855192
Worry not as OP is but a peasant.

>>2855192
>Hamiltonian
Realize that basically all these very famous results that came out of mathematics were by people studying real, physical problems. Hamilton's work was firmly rooted in reality. I support the hell out of pure math, so long as it has a specific target in mind.

For example, I cite Kolmogorov. A mathematician/statistician that chose to study fluid turbulence, and made a huge impact.

>>2855203
You've taken (assuming standard US college) 3 calculus courses and differential equations, and you've never taken physics?

If that's really the case, I'd say you shouldn't have a tough time at all with introductory physics. There's always an outlier that's worthless at anything applied.

>>2855188

On IRC I generally idle on #casualchat on irc.undernet.org, under 'eudoxia'.

The regular email is black.linen99@gmail.com.

>>2855192

Jesus Christ people.

> PhD candidate uses, eats, breathes, and shits mathematics every single day to even express his thoughts about his field

> hates mathematicians

>>mfw OP hates math

>>2855242
u r not thar!

>>2855247
>misinterpret OP
Moron

>>2855247
Totally. I use very high mathematics to solve real world problems. Why are you surprised that some like me would hate on mathematicians that know as much or less math, but don't solve real problems?

That's where the beef is.

>>2854896

> I fucking HATE mathematicians as much as anyone can

What in the fuck did I misinterpret, ass? lul.

Not sure if this relates but do you know the data that supports our need for dark matter and energy. I really want to understand the dynamics of large mass physics. Maybe some formulas or simulations

The Diamond Age, or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

>>2855281
Not my area, sorry!

>>2855271

Well, then you didn't quite mean what you said. I know of a mathematician/statistician who does do work for science. Biologists send him ass-dicking amounts of experiment data, and he invents algorithms to find correlations and group genes and things together so that the biologists have some idea about where to start looking for interesting phenomena. Made me more excited about my choice of undergraduate degree than anything. I've made a rapid shift in class choices from "abstract algebra and topology" to "PDE and continuum mechanics" precisely because I do want to use mathematics to help science. Nothing would give me a bigger math boner than helping scientists and engineers solve problems. Makes me sad to see all mathematicians lumped into one basket, bro.

What is a good introductory book on fluid dynamics aimed at someone with a bachelor in physics?

>>2855329
Completed bachelor in physics, but haven't done fluids work?

I'd say the attached. It's old, but good. Batchelor is a good book too.

is there a future in going to grad school for computational neuroscience ?

>>2855355
I am completing it right now, and I've had some statistichal mechanics but no real fluid dynamics. Too busy reading particle physics courses.

what's a good book for numerical methods for solving PDEs?

>>2855367
Sure, if you're good at it.
>>2855406
Um, Hildebrandt has a numerical analysis textbook, but it's probably dated regarding applications. It's such a broad field that different books take totally different approaches. I learned it from the finite volume/finite difference perspective in CFD books. others attack from the finite element perspective.

Sorry, I learned these things from classes, and now I can learn directly from research articles. I'd say just look for a well regarded book on amazon.

Hi OP. I'm a high school senior, and i got into a couple of schools with really solid engineering departments.

My question is whether to do mechanical engineering or aero. My endgame is to study aerospace, masters or maaaaaybe PhD. I've just heard that at undergrad, going mechE is better than aero.

also, what would you recommend i do to prepare for undergrad courses. I've already taken AP Physics B and C, AP Calc AB and BC, AP chem and compsci.

thanks in advance.

>>2855643
>going mechE is better than aero.

you heard completely fucking wrong. ME is inferior in every single area.

good work on your AP stuff. do as much as you can, and try to pick up on some introductory computer programming.

Fluid mechanics fascinate me but I have no schooling in physics or math. Can you recommend some documentary or book on the subject that would be easy enough for a layman to understand?

>>2855678

Don't want to seem like a dick, but you're opinion might be a little biased. Care to expand on that for me?

What's the next math course that I would take, deq's? multivariable calc? I'd like to at least familiarize myself with whatever it is.

how replaceable by computers in the future is your job?
after the 2012 apocalypse will you be useful?

You are easily the best man on this whole board. Props, OP.

I'm going to uni next year to study engineering, what skills should I get under my belt before the start of the course (Like programming or a specific branch of maths)?

I haven't decided on what branch i'm going into yet, which would you say is the most interestng?

>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcWRc1wK3gM

why didn't you self-teach yourself like the God known as John Carmack?

u jelly, programming a game is harder than rocket science.

u so jelly