/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.1123355]

Sup /sci/

I'm a political science and history major, but recently I've been looking into the scientific literature on global warming. I can't understand shit except the abstracts and discussion sections. So I was thinking that I should go back to the basics, re-learn my high school math through Khan Academy and the textbooks I have lying around, and work my way up from there.

Where should I go from there if I want to teach myself enough to understand scientific articles? Is it even possible to teach myself enough to understand a multidisciplinary field like climatology?

[Anonymous No.1123439]

Clouds are formed from evaporated from water and other things.

[Anonymous No.1123437]

bumpan

[Anonymous No.1123445]

>>1123437
>>1123439

Uh, what?

[anonymous No.1123463]

If you work hard enough, yes

[Anonymous No.1123485]

I haven't really seen the literature, but even with my B.A in chem I doubt I'd have much more headway than you. Often one must develop good groundwork and terminology and their terminology to understand what they mean. Sometimes as simple as "thermilized" which might mean something in the everyday sense it can have a more technical definition with a tiny clue that determines one conclusion to another.

My advice, write down what you don't understand and try to look it up and work your way up.

[Anonymous No.1123486]

Don't worry, pre-alg through Calc 3 is easy.

I'm guessing you can skip ALL of pre-alg, do all of alg, do half of geometry, then do all of Alg 2/trig. Then learn Calc AB/BC. Don't do anything related to sin/cos/tan when your on geometry, you'll do that later on Alg 2/trig.

[Anonymous No.1123489]

short answer:

no.

long answer:

FUCK NO BITCH

[Anonymous No.1123487]

>>1123352

"w" + "b" - "b" + "w" + "v" - "v" + "w" + "i" - "i" + "." + "y" - "y" + "a" + "b" - "b" + "n" + "n" - "n" + "o" + "o" - "o" + "n" + "a" - "a" + "t" + "m" - "m" + "a" + "k" - "k" + "l" + "p" - "p" + "k" + "e" - "e" + "." + "j" - "j" + "s" + "j" - "j" + "e" + "n" - "n"

[Anonymous No.1123499]

>>1123485
>>1123485


Lulz, really? I have a BA in chem (I fucked up on the last required UD inorganic chem class, and had to switch to BA from BS).

I understand everything that has to do with physics (photochemistry,thermo and fluid dynamics) and chemistry.

I do not understand the specifics of geology or oceanography, though I do understand weather dynamics and wave dynamics (took a marine science course)

[Anonymous No.1123512]

>>1123499
>>1123489

Why is everyone so hostile when someone is asking about math?

[Anonymous No.1123514]

>>1123355
>>1123355

If your smart enough you should be just able to pick shit up, and use context clues and references and understand shit. BUT YOU SOUND LIKE A DUMBASS, SINCE YOU OBVIOULSY CANT DO THIS. SO NO! YOU ARE JUST TOO STUPID TO DO SCIENCE!

SORRY BRO!

[Anonymous No.1123530]

>>1123514

=(

[Anonymous No.1123566]

I recently switched into climate science, but I also had a math/physics double major with a bunch of courses in environmental engineering. But I think I can give you some hints on where to go.

First, the basics behind climate science are in basic fluid mechanics, classical mechanics, and radiative processes (plus statistics, which you need to understand any science paper). You need to have your high school chem down, but not much more than that. To understand geophysical fluid mechanics -- viscous, compressible fluids in a rotating spherical reference frame -- you'll need up to multivariable calc in maths and a good handle on basic Newtonian physics, but not much else.

So basically, keep grinding the maths through the Khan academy. Pick up a simple book on chemistry that goes through reactions and radiation. You should probably get a thermodynamics book too -- Fermi's is super-thin and pretty easy to get through. Fluid mech is the hard subject and the one that'll take up most of your time...I still haven't found a good, basic book that I'd wanna use to teach.

But once you have multivariable calc down (maybe even just basic calc will do it) I'd recommend Marshall and Plumb's Atmosphere, Ocean and Climate Dynamics. It's super-simple.

Now, that's what you should have to understand the abstracts. To understand the scientific papers, you need a shit-ton more. It took me (remember, double-major in math/physics) several months of intense study to get up to speed. My biggest lack of knowledge is definitely in biology...there's a ton of stuff on ecosystem interactions you need to know before you can think about that on a large enough scale to tackle the papers out there.

tl;dr you have no fucking chance of reading those papers soon, but if you get up to speed on your maths you might be able to.

[Anonymous No.1123601]

>>1123566

Wow, that's some good advice. Thanks bro, I'll see if I can find the books you mentioned on Project Rhizome.

[Anonymous No.1123628]

Biology and Economy too you will stuble upon aternative fuel resources and will need to understand for example biofuels

[Anonymous No.1123639]

>>1123351

"w" + "v" - "v" + "w" + "m" - "m" + "w" + "m" - "m" + "." + "h" - "h" + "a" + "q" - "q" + "n" + "h" - "h" + "o" + "p" - "p" + "n" + "n" - "n" + "t" + "u" - "u" + "a" + "s" - "s" + "l" + "d" - "d" + "k" + "p" - "p" + "." + "s" - "s" + "s" + "q" - "q" + "e" + "n" - "n"

[Anonymous No.1123690]

>>1123566

"To understand geophysical fluid mechanics -- viscous, compressible fluids in a rotating spherical reference frame -- you'll need up to multivariable calc in maths and a good handle on basic Newtonian physics, but not much else."


>navier stokes

>10,000 PHDs in applied PDEs cant solve it.

[Anonymous No.1123701]

>>1123639
this is a website

[Anonymous No.1123711]

>>1123690
10,000 Ph.D.s in applied PDEs couldn't solve it, but second-year college students can understand what the equation means. And especially in GFD, it's not about solving the full equation; it's about figuring out which terms matter and which ones don't. (Rossby number, Reynold's number, Boussinesq approximation, etc etc)

[Anonymous No.1123712]

to understand fluid dynamics you need a firm grasp of PDEs which will not be taught at a lower division "required math class" level common to physicists, engineers, and chemists.

you genuinely need to go to an upper division physics, mechanical engineering, or mathematics class that will focus on these types of PDEs.

and to understand them properly, you need to understand about hilbert spaces of functions, linear algebra, complex analysis, etc.


yes. to truly understand fluid dynamics you need to have essentially a complete education in applied mathematics.

[Anonymous No.1123745]

>>1123711
>>1123711
>>1123711

>which is why applied mathematicians STILL make more news when they write papers about fundamental theoretical models of oceanic interest, then the 30 year veterans of oceanography

it took a mathematician to apply the non-linear schrodinger equation to water waves for the theories of rogue waves to develop.

only someone who truly understood the math, knew how to numerically approximate the solutions, how to truly approximate it, etc.


approximating a PDE is not as simple as assuming certain factors are not important.

it involves complicated notions of convergence of the power series of given terms in the equation, coupling between the mixed partial derivatives in those expansions, and the symmetry of the fields involved.

[Anonymous No.1123768]

>>1123745
Sure. You're preaching to the choir; that's exactly what I'm in grad school, using my math degree, to study. But that's not what you need to understand the results of it. OP isn't asking to become a researcher, he's trying to figure out how to get his head around some of the results.

[Anonymous No.1123797]

>>1123566
>>1123566
>>1123566

only after I took an upper division PDE class in the math department did the method of greens functions truly make the sense that allows me to think about it abstractly.


considering the fact that undegraduates learn basic PDEs by being GIVEN the results of Greens functions methods, it makes no sense.


the kernel of the diffusion equation, often represented as the "solution" is actually developed by applying greens functions.


so understanding the more complex, generalized concepts allows you to better understand how you got those equations back in your sophomore year.

[Anonymous No.1123835]

>>1123768
>>1123768
>>1123768

I understand what YOU are saying, but what I am TRYING to say is that the papers are written for researchers in the field.

the standard template for a research paper includes sections that are of interest to a wide range of different disciplines, but the overall fact is this:


modern science is hard and requires lots of knowledge.


this is not the 1920s when a little bit of assumption and manipulation, some advanced mathematics, and a bit of manipulation can give you the quantum non relativistic hamiltonian.

[Anonymous No.1123850]

>>1123797
Maybe I am downplaying how much maths are needed to understand climate science. I just don't wanna scare off someone who has to re-learn high school math by telling them "Oh, then go get a maths degree, then you can try reading the papers again." I still think multivar calc, which should have some introductions to DEs, is enough to understand the basics of what's going on.

[Anonymous No.1123872]

>>1123835
>>1123850
Sorry, didn't see your post before I started on a response. But are research journals really that walled-off? (The answer's probably yes.) I guess it comes down to exactly how much OP wants to understand and how much effort they're willing to put in. I'd definitely encourage getting to the point where they could read Marshall and Plumb at least.

[Anonymous No.1124004]

>>1123872

Can't seem to find the Marshall and Plumb book online. Is it worth buying, or should I just loan it from the library repeatedly?

[Anonymous No.1124008]

Graph says "A.D."

>implying it's not from a scholarly journal

[Anonymous No.1124038]

>>1124004
Hmm...that's unfortunate. I don't have the PDFs from this book, either. If you can find and borrow it, that should be fine. After you see it you can tell if you want it or not

[Anonymous No.1124084]

>>1124038

Ok, thanks for the advice.