h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There are some people who truly are teachers (I am not one by profession - I try to make business and raise my daughter in my spare time - if that what it is called).

I had a teacher when I was 8 who gave up teaching science at the higher levels for the reasons you mentioned - that children need to be shown these things at a young age and encouraged to explore. Like prof. E. this is another person I remember after a couple of decades.

Cool. Or really, really hot. One of the two. Anyway, please fill out my questionnaire at http://www6.bravenet.com/vote/vote.asp?userid=ow288909

      o      o       o      o
° ° ° °

That is very true - teachers are born, not made (sorry about the cliché). The first lecture I went to at university was given by a Nobel Laureate, so wow, but what I remember is that he drew a map of physics. I still use that today and it is the most useful thing I ever learned. It helps other people because it gives a human face to what is, generally speaking, a mathemtical science which puts people off at the start before they realise that it can be exciting and interesting. (And if you read this and think... what a sad person, you haven't seen the map).

This map of your sounds really interesting. Any chance of getting a copy?

Actually I'm kinda curious about this map thingy too. Sounds like it's a fun/useful thing. Is there any chance of a copy ?

Well if you will appear on the front page, you will get comments.
Anyway, a) I am (damn, was) a scientist of the, paid by the government to bumble around in old rickety buildings with unsafe equipment, school. It was great fun, and I got to play with ickle electrons and very cold stuff. I personally did this, because I want to know how stuff works. It can be anything, I just want to know how it works. I do, however, find that the ability to suspend your disbelief (as learned from many a dodgy book and film) helps as you attempt to get your head round a particularly strange theory.
So much in physics, I find, sounds improbable when first heard. You have to, temporarily, ignore that fact until after you have tested the theory, i.e. the wave/particle thing works in explaining the experimental results, it just sounds like a load of dingo's kidneys.
And b) I read a shedload of books. Not many other people in the departement did though. You may be right on your Arts/Science split thing.

Incidently, I have photographic evidence of myself and a friend performing the Schroedingers Cat experiment, but I have left them in a box, so who knows what has happened to them!

Did you know that Quantum Mechanics allows teleportation and instantaneus communication across distance? It's all true you know.

Better keep your eye on that computer (or anything else) to make sure that it doesn't just decide to shift into a lower energy state by decaying into something else, say a spoon

I would have thought a spoon is at a higher energy level than a computer. A computer has to be supplied with energy to do anything more than be a paperweight, or a stand. Besides, in 1 yr, your computer will be so obsolete it will not run the latest bloatware and you will not be able to do anything on the internet with it, as you will need several orders of magnitude more bandwidth and storage space, processing speed etc.

A spoon however, will always function with a minimal amount of energy applied to mainpulate it. It will never become obsolete, until you need an IV drip to live, and even then could survive for future generations providing a use. Until, perhaps a catastrophic, entropy enhancing event turns it into a non-spoon.

Probably decay into one of those Spork things.

As you say, a spoon requires minimal energy to be used and will not become as obselete as a computer in the same amount of time. Thus I contend that it is a more fundamental thing than a computer.
You do say that a computers half life is very short these days...

I had a "Pentium PCs are bookends conversation today". I saw a 1981 vintage Apple II on sales in a 2nd hand store for $150 - I thought why (the one I got then cost about $1500). At the same time my daughter is using the same spoon I used 34 yrs ago, it works fine.

Perhaps it has more entropy then.

This probably works along the lines that everything in the universe will eventualy decay into holey socks (Socks with holes, not religious icons). Presumably the spoon is a long lived isotope, only slightly more energetic than the sock.

An interesting idea, but I was told that it would all turn into string (or is it that it's all made up of string anyway ) or was it the plasic outer bit of a biro....

Sorry to be picky, but I thought it was...

Billy Jones is dead and gone
His face we'll see no more....

Which scans better.

It's true of course - I'm a programmer and Physics student, but I'm also a musician. My musician friends look down on my sciency computery friends as 'soulless individuals' as my English teacher calls them. My computery / sciency friends think music is a very 'soft' thing to do, and not at all to be admired.
It's very deep-rooted, I think.

Definitely it is, but there's also a lot of reasons..
e.g. most artists think very subjectivly about what they and their collegues do and can never accept that something is "bad art" - it's just something that would "enlight a different soul" - scientists are used to think Boolean - its TRUE or FALSE, nothing else possible - so there's the first controversial attitude, even if they WOULD make an effort..

Interestingly enough, most genius' were committed to both of them (daVinci,...)!

I believe arts and science meet in philosophy - high art leads to something philosophical and the deepest physics is at least that much philosophical! (I'm just coming from the entry on Relativity ;o)

Still no-one has answered his question what could be done about it yet

Which were you talking about? HPR (Or is it HRP) particles, or J S Bell's ickle theorum?

God, I love knowing the names for odd bits of science. It's like becoming smart without actually working at it. Sort of like learning Latin.

Ever heard of Quantal DNA?

So go on then, what are HRP or HPR particles?
I've not heard of Quantal DNA, but have heard about mDNA and how the relationships between species are worked out...(not bad for an electronic engineer I find )

I would disagree that scientists only understand true or false.. That is more like a narrow-minded computer engineers point of view (kind of my profession.. that is not science.. The enlightened realise that computers are acually based on analog/quantum devices and are not binary - and "bugs" may happen due to this behaviour - in the old days they were really organic bugs with wings.. I could go on...).

Science is the persuit of attempting to understand why and how things are. Nothing can be simply true or false. Can it be proven or disproven, or can someone else find a better explanation ( if not then this one will have to do for now)? That's the game. You have to be sort of crazy in the conventional sense to come up with the looniest (ie. different, and rarely outstanding) new ideas.

This then is very much akin to art.

well, you've got a point there, and science IS the attempt to understand how things are, but when one forms a theory about it, it always ends up in a discussion whether this theory is valid or not..

and on such occasions humans tend to think rather binary - it IS true or it is NOT.

Anyway, deeper science always gets philosophical and for the not really understood top problems there are often several theories that explain it all different but with the same success (or lack thereof).
maybe we would need a clear definition of "science" as this one (persuit of attempting..) would classify religion as much as science as physics and most people would disagree there..