/sci/ - Science & Math

>>2502150
That depends entirely on what kind of engineering your engineer friends are involved in and what kind of doctors you're friends with.

I wouldn't be surprised if an Anesthesiologist had a nicer house than a Civil Engineer who works for the city. Nor would I be surprised if a lead Mechanical Engineer at Raytheon's proverbial 'crib' outclassed a private practitioner.

Attempting to categorize people by broad terms will only give you incomplete information at best and misguided information at worst.

>>2502356
Why is it so hard to believe?
How much physical space do you think a memory occupies? If we want to get technical, a thought is nothing more than an infinitesimal moving mass of electrical impulses carried through any number of your billions upon billions of nerve cells in your brain. Plenty of space up there for several lifetimes of memories if we made perfect use of it all. We don't, but that's beside the point.

Your brain holds your conscious. Simple as that. Your mind is exactly where it's supposed to be, in your mind.

>>2447961

There was an artificial sight experiment I heard of not too long ago where a camera attached to a pair of glasses delivered output data to a tactile pad that was meant to be placed on the human tongue.

After a few months of use, previously blind subjects managed to 'see' using this device because their brains figured out how to interpret tactile information on the tongue into a cohesive mental picture.

Another experiment I heard of: A man built a belt lined with small vibrators that was worn around the waist. The belt was designed such that whichever vibrator was north-most would vibrate while the others remained off. This resulted in a vibratory sensation on the man always informing him of which direction 'north' was.

He reported that after a year of wearing the belt constantly, he had acquired an innate sense of direction that could pinpoint the location to an arbitrary landmark as the crow flies from his location with disturbing accuracy. For example, if he was visiting France he could tell you exactly which direction and how far his hotel was provided he was conscious for the duration of his travel.

My point is, the brain is not necessarily designed to work with our eyes, our fingers, or any of our senses really. It's 'designed' to work with ALL manner of senses, real or artificial. It is so because our slipshod bodily makeup is so random and chaotic there's really no alternative.

>>2447394
In actuality, OP, it is absolutely critical that the brain be as powerful a sensor interpreter as it is.

Meaning no offense to any creationist out there, the human body is, from an engineering standpoint, very poorly designed. None of our sensory organs are optimized for use with the brain, in fact hardly anything in the human body is optimized at all. The only way we (or any other animals on the planet, for that matter) manage to exist is because the brain is awesome enough to take this hodgepodge of random data and output power and 'figure out' how to turn it into something useful.

Think of your brain as a kickass engineer and your body is a random scrapyard of useless junk. As soon as your brain was even marginally functional, your kickass brain was trying to figure out how to make something useful out of that scrapyard.

(followed up in next post)

I dunno guys, this joke is getting kind of Told.

Oh Lawd, iz dat zum Atomic Force Microscopy?

Do you use an alternating Piezoelectric Sensor-Actuator or do you use the laser reflection method?

[] The Phantom Told-Booth
[] The Brave and the Told
[] ToldFinger

I wouldn't say it should be a 'Standard Punishment'.

I think it should be a severe punishment for cases where the evidence is overwhelming and the crime was Murder 1 or equivalent.

Even then the wait should be at least 20 years or so.

Sage for no science.

....Also I'm from Texas and the Death Penalty is awesome and everyone from Texas should feel awesome for living in such an awesome state!

Fuck Yeah Death Penalty! Wooo!

Or if you have more time, change some fundamental chemical or mechanical material property, such as the speed of sound or the density of air and extrapolate from there, for example: "The kinematic viscosity of nitrogen (which composes 70% of the air, I think, I could be wrong) is so low that when snapping or making certain rapid gestures, humans can induce pockets of low pressure in the air. With some practice, a person skilled in moving certain parts of their body quickly can direct a chain of low pressure points both inside and outside of their bodies."

That opens the door for instantaneous impaction, rapid heat transfer (both giving and receiving), commanding wind and weather conditions, directing arcs of any manner of projectiles (solid or fluid or flame), rapid movement, flight, and any number of things. The point is to combine these different effects into useful 'spells' that an end user could feasibly research and understand (or not!). Treat your 'hard' magic like a technological innovation. Alternatively, treat your 'hard' magic like a technological innovation that was forgotten! Perhaps humans don't quite understand what the kinematic viscosity of Nitrogen is or what it implies, they just know that when they snap their fingers in a certain way, wind rushes at them. They simply get very good at directing this wind

Of course, making low pressure pockets is only one example, there are a number of things out there that can be changed and would have dire consequences. The trick is to pick something obscure enough yet fundamental enough that most people don't immediately recognize the more pressing consequences of the fact. (like my nitrogen example? Yeah, we likely wouldn't be able to breath, live or move in such an environment, but it sounded kinda cool before you though about it for too long, right?

Anyway, that's one example, hope it helps, Cheers!

Alright OP, I'll help:

To do what you want to do, you have to employ an old Sci-Fi trick. Include the universe EXACTLY as it exists now, but include a single element or technological innovation that lies outside the scope of the universe and use that as the basis for your magic. Kind of like how Gundam uses the Minovsky Particle and Mass Effect uses Element Zero.

The 'hardness' of your magic system depends entirely on how much time you're willing to spend working out the details. The more time you dedicate to this, the more fundamental you can make the change.

For example: Let's say you don't have alot of time. I'd say make something bullshitty like "Bioelectric current (lol) can be directed in this universe and the degree of control of one's current is proportional to their brain size and how much they practice controlling it".

Now you have lighting and lightning does everything magically somehow.

I remember that High School Bio experiment,

You're in AP, aren't you?

You're correct from a social and biological standpoint, but not entirely correct from a scientific and mathematical standpoint.

Regardless of what evolutionary base a being evolved from, a circle is still a circle, and the diameter of that circle is still the diameter multiplied by a universal constant some humans call 'pi'. Granted their system of calculation could use a different base than us, but mathematical constants would remain the same.

Also, our study of physics and natural sciences is not limited to Earth either. I'll not say we know alot, but our limited knowledge is not completely crippled into nothing by being limited to a single planet.

In short: There are some fundamental truths of the universe we are capable of understanding, regardless of our origin.

Who is EK?

>>2432805
Point, but the query in question requested an answer without turning to medication.

I assume OP either has no health coverage or for some other reason cannot acquire the medication necessary to overcome his plight.

Were this condition not the case, I would immediately recommend OP see a psychologist, then a psychiatrist, then if necessary a pharmacist.

Hmmm? You're asking what the practical application of finding the Higgs-Boson is?

It is theorized the Higgs-Boson is responsible for explaining why particulate matter has mass. What waveform and collection of energy is necessary to 'produce' mass from energy.

Any of you sharp minded fellows out there can see where this is going. For those of you who can't, don't worry, the rest of the world can see the application of mass fabrication.

I admit I am no expert in the field of Psychology, so take my words with a grain of salt.

I'd treat your social anxiety like a phobia. A fear of people and social situations. And how do we handle irrational fears?

Conquer them.

It won't be easy and you'll feel retarded for years. I heard once it takes 8 months of dedicated practice to overcome bad habits, I don't know if that's even remotely true but, personally, it sounds like the kind of challenge you'll be facing.

So for the next eight months, go out, do stuff with people you don't know. Have awkward conversations, the kind where you walk away from it and yell at yourself on the inside wishing you had said or done something, anything other than what you did.

But those are the conversations you need to have, because only by facing your fear can you overcome it. People have sociable conversations all the time, so there's clearly no harm in it. And nobody ever died because somebody disliked them (well... that's not true <.<).

My point is, being a social retard trying to force extroversion will feel like an arthritic thumbless Parkinsons's patient playing pool for a while. A long while. But you need to trust that by the end of the day you'll become a better person, a better socialite, and a better leader with time, practice and patience.

Start now. No 'buts', go out and do something now.

Also get off 4chan. You won't believe how much it helps.

Given as how we don't understand the stream of conscious, I'd say not within our children's lifetime.

However, if you want to get technical...

We have transplanted a monkey's head onto another monkey's body. Granted, the monkey was completely paralyzed because we haven't figured out how to 'connect' the spinal column and the monkey's brain couldn't control any bodily functions so he died in under 5 minutes...

But it still happened... so technically I suppose we're capable of it now?

I have a crazy dream, and I joined the field of study that will allow me to pursue that dream.

>>2430502
1st Year: 'The Big Three'
Gen. Chem, Physics, Calculus

2nd Year: 'Teh Basics'
Diff EQ, Lin. Alg, Vector Calc., Statics+Dynamics, Materials Science, 1st Lab

3rd Year: 'FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-!!'
Control Systems, Dynamic Systems, Electromechanics, Material Properties, Aerodynamics, Fluids, Heat Transfer, Vibrations, System Modeling, Thermal System Modeling.

4th year: "That's it?"
Senior Design, taking what you had the good sense not to take last year, retaking whatever you failed last year (just kidding...right?), and job searching.

If possible, you want your senior year to be easy. Because as bad as senioritis was in HS, it's ten times worse in college.

Through Empiricism and Statistics, Yes.

Next Question?

>>2430524

One more thing, as to how Energy magically turned into Mass, I recommend doing some reading on the Higgs-Boson.

>>2429990

Let's assume that the universe BEFORE the universe as we know it now, the 'PreVerse' was an infinite volume of nothing, yet even that nothing has an energy associated with it. Let's also assume we have an infinite amount of time. There are a number of possible arrangements for the distribution of that nothing's energy. Over the course of an eternity, all of that nothing will cycle through all of the possible arrangements of energy distribution.

ONE possible arrangement of energy distribution is for ALL of the energy in the PreVerse to be concentrated into a single point in space. Let's call the instant that all energy in the PreVerse was concentrated into a single point 'The Big Bang', let's also call that the turning point from the PreVerse into the Universe.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Inverse functions are in general useful for algebraic rearrangement to simplify or make possible certain calculation.

Say for example I'm trying to build a graph of <span class="math">YM + BM = X [/spoiler] with Y as the dependent variable (the one usually on the vertical axis). I multiply by the linear inverse function of <span class="math"> M^{-1} [/spoiler] and I have the familiar <span class="math"> Y = M^{-1} X - B [/spoiler].

Trigonometric functions operate with the same usefulness in algebraic calculation and rearrangement, though they're more complicated and specific.

Let's create a function 'I' that does what you want it to do. You want 'I' to 'take the opposite of a percent', your examples include turning .5 into 2 and turning .25 into 4.

Let's define 'I' as a function that returns a reciprocal of a given value. To clarify, the Reciprocal of something is the mathematical inverse of that something. For example, the reciprocal of X is 1/X.

So! First let's convert your percentile notation into decimal notation. i.e. 50% become .5, 25% becomes .25 etc. Then let's divide 1 by your new number, Then we convert this new number back to percentile format by multiplying it by a hundred. So your total process looks like this with a starting value of X percent.

1. Y = .01 * X% 'Where X is in percentile format, i.e. 50 for 50 percent"

2. Z = 1 / Y

3. Final_Answer = Z * 100

Your final answer, 'Final_Answer', is given in percentile format.