Timeline: 1980s Place: Texas A&M, Department of Physics Problem: Chinese grad students*(CGSs) are blowing American Grad students out of the water in terms of grades in classroom work. However, once the CGSs are appointed to research assistantships they, and the profs running the labs they're doing their research in, experience major difficulties.
*Disclaimer: I would caution readers of this post that I'm speaking in general terms about CGSs in the above context, and have no intent to imply that the above situation was, or is universal. I've never had a problem with CGSs on a presonal level etc..
From what I could tell the Chinese students had been through a system as undergrads that emphasized theoretical of physics, and placed little emphasis on experiential work. Many of the CGSs hadn't the faintest idea of the proper use of power tools. One story, I can't vouch for it's accuracy, was how a CGS had been ask to paint a steel box beam. He allegedly placed the beam on the concrete floor of the lab, and begin to paint the beam by brushing on latex house paint sans primer.
Again, this story may be apocryphal. However there were a number of incidents that I witnessed where CGSs would go about doing experiential work by starting way out in left field. I suspect that there is a cultural biases that predisposes CGSs toward theory, and American students to be more gizmonically inclined. In my case very gizmonically inclined. Well, Dad was an *master* aircraft mechanic.:)
Well you could do what my cousin Patti does when she hits the mall, and say...
I'll take them both, and charge it!;)
Seriously,
I've no idea of the budgetary constraints that you're under, but you ought to consider getting both of these software packages, given that you're doing real science. Further, as you're doing medical science the imperative is all the greater to get your research, and analysis right.
Double, triple, and quadruple checking your work is the way to go. Thus, analysis via more then one software package is *quite* advantageous.
" But if they were to do it weekly, they could probably be arrested for stalking."
Methinks not. Politicians are very public figures just looking through their garbage alone is *probably* insufficient to bring a charge of stalking. Furthermore, many states have statutes on guaranteeing freedom of information. Anyone can claim that they are simply performing research on a public figure, and are not engaging in any illegal activityn
While it is statistically valid to draw an inference about a population from a statistic/s it is *not* statistically valid to draw an inference about any single member of that population.
"Well, then Spock would be offering testimony, possibly poisoning the jury, and certainly causing grounds for appeal, if not a mistrial."
Partner, you're very much mistaken. Once a defended has been found not guilty in a criminal trial there can be no appeal due to the double jeopardy clause in the Fifth Amendment.
"Actually, one of the judge's duties is to interpret the law."
True enough, but it is the jury's duty to determine issues of *fact*. Thus, it is a juror may find that the facts in the afore mentioned case does not support a verdict of guilty.
"There is also an issue of information which has not been presented as evidence and examined by both the prosecutor and defense entering into the jury deliberations."
Facts which are considered to be with in the realm of 'common knowledge' do not have to be presented as evidence during the trial. A fact which a juror has, or may have retained from a normal public school education is considered to be within that realm. In other words if a fact is presented to students in a high school physics class as a matter of course then that fact may not be considered to be special knowledge. Indeed, a fact that is presented as a part of a general undergraduate physics course is highly likely to be ruled to be a matter of common knowledge. What is considered to be common knowledge is not a set of facts that the majority of the populous retains in their memories, but rather a fact of common knowledge is considered to be a fact that a member of the general public has a reasonable chance of encountering during his/her life. The likelihood off the retention of that fact is not at issue.
"My textbooks never made the distinction between real and fictitious forces as explicit and dependent upon the kind of coordinate system as your citation; they were much more pragmatic: choose the coordinate system that's best suited to the problem at hand."
I've no idea of what level of physics courses that you've taken. I hold a M.Sc. in Physics, and am currently serving as Adjunct Professor of Physics at a small college in Texas. The books that I referred you to in a previous post are upper division (Jr./Sr.) level texts for physics majors. Both are considered classics for advanced undergraduate mechanics courses. Many of the lower level texts do not go into *any* detail with regard to nature of fictitious forces / pseudo-forces. This is a falling on the part of the authors of such texts. The better text will touch briefly on the fact that centrifugal forces are fictitious and give an elementary treatment of the nature of real forces vs. fictitious forces. Still one does not get to the meat of the matter till an advanced undergraduate analytic mechanics course.
"Inertial frame. A non-accelerating coordinate system. One in which F = ma holds, where F is the sum of all real forces acting on a body of mass m whose acceleration is a. In classical mechanics, the real forces on a body are those which are due to the influence of another body. [Or, forces on a part of a body due to other parts of that body.] Contact forces, gravitational, electric, and magnetic forces are real. Fictitious forces are those which arise solely from formulating a problem in a non-inertial system, in which ma = F + (fictitious force terms)" -- http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/jarrett/LiU/r esource/misused_glossary.html
We're talking classical mechanics here *not* relativistic mechanics.
I can confirm the parent. I'm a physicist. When selected for jury duty here in Texas you fill out a juror form, which among other things has a space for occupation. I've never spent more than a morning over the past ten years in the *many* times I've been call for jury duty.
The reason that lawyers don't like 'techies' on juries is that they, as rule, don't have 'tech' backgrounds, and having someone on a jury that does gives them nightmares.
My favorite example is one where a teen was charged with the position of an illegal knife, specifically a butterfly knife. The teen's attorney ask the manger of the store that sold sold him the knife if she would testify on behalf of his client, and she consented.
I'm addicted to Swiss Army Knives, multi-tools and the like, so the store was one of my favorite haunts. I was in the store just after she consented to testify, and she filled me in. As it turns out the portion of the Penal Code the the teen was being charged with was
Section 46.01 (11) "Switchblade knife" means any knife that has a blade that folds, closes, or retracts into the handle or sheath, and that:... (B) opens or releases a blade from the handle or sheath by the force of gravity or by the application of *centrifugal* force.
You'll note that the term centriFUGAL for is used rather than centriPETAL force.
No doubt that physics type has chuckling now, as centriFUGAL force is not a real force but a pseudo-force. I loaned her three of my physics, and engineering texts with the pertinent sections marked.
When the defense counsel ask her if the knife opened via centriFUGAL force she said no. That caused the prosecutor to *vigorously* object. Which of course gave the defense counsel an opening to introduce the section of the texts that I had loaned her. To say the least the prosecutor had a conniption, and as I understand it made the judge more than a tad unhappy. The prosecutor argued that the the law had really meant centriPETAL which the judge allowed.(Doesn't give one a lot of confidence in judges, does it.)
To conclude: The teen was found guilty, but won on appeal. The appellate court was persuaded that centriPETAL does not have the same meaning as centriFUGAL by the following argument. The latin meaning of PETAL means to seek, where as FUGAL means to flee, thus the former means to seek the center, while the latter means to flee the center. Ergo, the words have diametrical opposite meanings. Example: gravity is a centriPETAL force thus is by definition a *downward* force, lift however is an upward force and thus centriFUGAL. Thus, to allow centriFUGAL to be used in the place of centriPETAL is equivalent to allowing the word UP to be used for DOWN.
How this post got mode so far up is a mystery to me. All that is being said is that some poor folk spend their money unwisely on entertainment, and other nonessentials. This is, or at least ought to be, common knowledge.
There are people who will cough up major bucks going to casinos, playing lotto, and getting drunk or stoned. Others will spend big cash on sporting events, and/or sporting goods that they can ill afford. Still others will spend more than is prudent on homes that are in "exclusive" neighborhoods, sports cars, big @$*!^ SUV with all the bells, and whistles, or parade float sized limos. The list is finite but none the less large.
I'm not immune to this sort of behavior, though I do like to think that my case of consumeritis is a mild one. I spend way more than I need to on fishing tackle. Not to mention computer gear, and associated gadgets, and gizmos.
"...but ask yourself if you'd rather have three meals a day, or some new LOTR costume that you can prance around the woods in."
Given the obesity rate here in the US I'd say that a lot more Americans need to be vigorously prancing around around (be it in the woods or elsewhere, or in costume or no) than consuming three meals a day.
"Dickey cautioned that the study is not entirely conclusive, as the changes in sea level are measured in millimeters and represent a "daunting task" that requires numerous corrections to account for various known factors, such as natural short-term fluctuations." --space.com (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth/pumpkin_planet_021205.html)
Another article on space.com stated that:"The instruments will sense a difference in position of one micron, or about one-fiftieth the width of a human hair."
For a bit of perspective you'll need to consider that the radius of the Earth at the equator is about 6.378 x 10^8 cm or 6.378 x 10^9 mm. So the fluctuation in the Earth's radius is something like one part in a billion.
I'll now address the subject of posting to/. and other such forums. If you're not good at spelling and use MacOS X you should consider using OmniWeb as you browser for such activities as it has a spell checking feature. Spell checking in OmniWeb actually works and thus alleviates the need to compose your response in a word-processor.
Mr. Fusion at present cannot use garbage, beer cans, etc. for fuel. Currently you must use a combination of cold cream, and corn margarine as fuel as a part of the cold fusion reaction.
Only if mass is constant. Newton actually said: F = dp/dt. Recall that p = m*v, thus d/dt (m*v) = m * dv/dt + dm/dt * v.
Now if mass is constant, then dm/dt => 0, & the second term goes to 0 as well; leaving only the first term: m*a, ergo for constant mass, & only for constant mass does F = m*a.
"1....Of course it does raise the cost of opening the refrigerator door, in comparison to the cost ratio now...."
Now we get to one of my pet peeves. Why doesn't any of the major, or minor for that matter, fridge manufactures make a chest style fridge. There are many chest style deep freezes, but no fridges. With a chest style fridge you'd only loose very little of the cold air in it when you opened it, rather than dumping darn near every bit of cold air out onto the floor as with the cabinet style fridges.
Slashdot Mirror
Timeline: 1980s
:)
Place: Texas A&M, Department of Physics
Problem: Chinese grad students*(CGSs) are blowing American Grad students out of the water in terms of grades in classroom work. However, once the CGSs are appointed to research assistantships they, and the profs running the labs they're doing their research in, experience major difficulties.
*Disclaimer:
I would caution readers of this post that I'm speaking in general terms about CGSs in the above context, and have no intent to imply that the above situation was, or is universal. I've never had a problem with CGSs on a presonal level etc..
From what I could tell the Chinese students had been through a system as undergrads that emphasized theoretical of physics, and placed little emphasis on experiential work. Many of the CGSs hadn't the faintest idea of the proper use of power tools. One story, I can't vouch for it's accuracy, was how a CGS had been ask to paint a steel box beam. He allegedly placed the beam on the concrete floor of the lab, and begin to paint the beam by brushing on latex house paint sans primer.
Again, this story may be apocryphal. However there were a number of incidents that I witnessed where CGSs would go about doing experiential work by starting way out in left field. I suspect that there is a cultural biases that predisposes CGSs toward theory, and American students to be more gizmonically inclined. In my case very gizmonically inclined. Well, Dad was an *master* aircraft mechanic.
Well you could do what my cousin Patti does when she hits the mall, and say...
;)
I'll take them both, and charge it!
Seriously,
I've no idea of the budgetary constraints that you're under, but you ought to consider getting both of these software packages, given that you're doing real science. Further, as you're doing medical science the imperative is all the greater to get your research, and analysis right.
Double, triple, and quadruple checking your work is the way to go. Thus, analysis via more then one software package is *quite* advantageous.
FWIW
" But if they were to do it weekly, they could probably be arrested for stalking."
Methinks not. Politicians are very public figures just looking through their garbage alone is *probably* insufficient to bring a charge of stalking. Furthermore, many states have statutes on guaranteeing freedom of information. Anyone can claim that they are simply performing research on a public figure, and are not engaging in any illegal activityn
Take care with statistics...
While it is statistically valid to draw an inference about a population from a statistic/s it is *not* statistically valid to draw an inference about any single member of that population.
"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do."
Only if the lefts are right angles...
"Well, then Spock would be offering testimony, possibly poisoning the jury, and certainly causing grounds for appeal, if not a mistrial."
Partner, you're very much mistaken. Once a defended has been found not guilty in a criminal trial there can be no appeal due to the double jeopardy clause in the Fifth Amendment.
"Actually, one of the judge's duties is to interpret the law."
True enough, but it is the jury's duty to determine issues of *fact*. Thus, it is a juror may find that the facts in the afore mentioned case does not support a verdict of guilty.
"There is also an issue of information which has not been presented as evidence and examined by both the prosecutor and defense entering into the jury deliberations."
Facts which are considered to be with in the realm of 'common knowledge' do not have to be presented as evidence during the trial. A fact which a juror has, or may have retained from a normal public school education is considered to be within that realm. In other words if a fact is presented to students in a high school physics class as a matter of course then that fact may not be considered to be special knowledge. Indeed, a fact that is presented as a part of a general undergraduate physics course is highly likely to be ruled to be a matter of common knowledge. What is considered to be common knowledge is not a set of facts that the majority of the populous retains in their memories, but rather a fact of common knowledge is considered to be a fact that a member of the general public has a reasonable chance of encountering during his/her life. The likelihood off the retention of that fact is not at issue.
"My textbooks never made the distinction between real and fictitious forces as explicit and dependent upon the kind of coordinate system as your citation; they were much more pragmatic: choose the coordinate system that's best suited to the problem at hand."
I've no idea of what level of physics courses that you've taken. I hold a M.Sc. in Physics, and am currently serving as Adjunct Professor of Physics at a small college in Texas. The books that I referred you to in a previous post are upper division (Jr./Sr.) level texts for physics majors. Both are considered classics for advanced undergraduate mechanics courses. Many of the lower level texts do not go into *any* detail with regard to nature of fictitious forces / pseudo-forces. This is a falling on the part of the authors of such texts. The better text will touch briefly on the fact that centrifugal forces are fictitious and give an elementary treatment of the nature of real forces vs. fictitious forces. Still one does not get to the meat of the matter till an advanced undergraduate analytic mechanics course.
"Inertial frame. A non-accelerating coordinate system. One in which F = ma holds, where F is the sum of all real forces acting on a body of mass m whose acceleration is a. In classical mechanics, the real forces on a body are those which are due to the influence of another body. [Or, forces on a part of a body due to other parts of that body.] Contact forces, gravitational, electric, and magnetic forces are real. Fictitious forces are those which arise solely from formulating a problem in a non-inertial system, in which ma = F + (fictitious force terms)"r esource/misused_glossary.html
-- http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/jarrett/LiU/
We're talking classical mechanics here *not* relativistic mechanics.
I would also point you to a couple of text where you may look up centrifugal force.
Mechanics by Keith Symon
Classical Dynamics of Particles and Systems
by Jerry B. Marion, Stephen T. Thornton
The Fourth edition I believe covers this material on pages 385-387
I can confirm the parent. I'm a physicist. When selected for jury duty here in Texas you fill out a juror form, which among other things has a space for occupation. I've never spent more than a morning over the past ten years in the *many* times I've been call for jury duty.
The reason that lawyers don't like 'techies' on juries is that they, as rule, don't have 'tech' backgrounds, and having someone on a jury that does gives them nightmares.
My favorite example is one where a teen was charged with the position of an illegal knife, specifically a butterfly knife. The teen's attorney ask the manger of the store that sold sold him the knife if she would testify on behalf of his client, and she consented.
I'm addicted to Swiss Army Knives, multi-tools and the like, so the store was one of my favorite haunts. I was in the store just after she consented to testify, and she filled me in. As it turns out the portion of the Penal Code the the teen was being charged with was
Section 46.01 (11) "Switchblade knife" means any knife that has a blade that folds, closes, or retracts into the handle or sheath, and that:...
(B) opens or releases a blade from the handle or sheath by the force of gravity or by the application of *centrifugal* force.
You'll note that the term centriFUGAL for is used rather than centriPETAL force.
No doubt that physics type has chuckling now, as centriFUGAL force is not a real force but a pseudo-force. I loaned her three of my physics, and engineering texts with the pertinent sections marked.
When the defense counsel ask her if the knife opened via centriFUGAL force she said no. That caused the prosecutor to *vigorously* object. Which of course gave the defense counsel an opening to introduce the section of the texts that I had loaned her. To say the least the prosecutor had a conniption, and as I understand it made the judge more than a tad unhappy. The prosecutor argued that the the law had really meant centriPETAL which the judge allowed.(Doesn't give one a lot of confidence in judges, does it.)
To conclude: The teen was found guilty, but won on appeal. The appellate court was persuaded that centriPETAL does not have the same meaning as centriFUGAL by the following argument. The latin meaning of PETAL means to seek, where as FUGAL means to flee, thus the former means to seek the center, while the latter means to flee the center. Ergo, the words have diametrical opposite meanings. Example: gravity is a centriPETAL force thus is by definition a *downward* force, lift however is an upward force and thus centriFUGAL. Thus, to allow centriFUGAL to be used in the place of centriPETAL is equivalent to allowing the word UP to be used for DOWN.
"Isn't it nice to know that if you did ask, they'd have to tell you?"
Somebody mode this one way up.
IANAL
I believe that you can not only get the price of the tickets and court cost, but also receive compensation for you time.
"Now what's really going to be cool is Mars's opposition coming up in August, which is going to be the closest in thousands of years"
Yep...
It ought to be a really striking opposition. This would be a good Christmas to get that promising young scientist a not so shine new telescope.
Right after Santa pays a visit he/she can go outside and see great views of both Saturn, and Jupiter and still not miss their bedtime.
A telescope, a microscope, and chemistry set, all on one Christmas morning! Not to mention that Radio 100 in 1 electronic experiment set!
Ah! The joy of being a young nerd!
"Add in the fact that Atlanta is still living in the 1980s and there are almost no good sushi joints..."
Atlanta--
Don't just watch That 80's Show, live it!
Sushi?
What you don't like catfish?
Gives an new meaning to the phrase "Skin as smooth as silk."
How this post got mode so far up is a mystery to me. All that is being said is that some poor folk spend their money unwisely on entertainment, and other nonessentials. This is, or at least ought to be, common knowledge.
There are people who will cough up major bucks going to casinos, playing lotto, and getting drunk or stoned. Others will spend big cash on sporting events, and/or sporting goods that they can ill afford. Still others will spend more than is prudent on homes that are in "exclusive" neighborhoods, sports cars, big @$*!^ SUV with all the bells, and whistles, or parade float sized limos. The list is finite but none the less large.
I'm not immune to this sort of behavior, though I do like to think that my case of consumeritis is a mild one. I spend way more than I need to on fishing tackle. Not to mention computer gear, and associated gadgets, and gizmos.
"...but ask yourself if you'd rather have three meals a day, or some new LOTR costume that you can prance around the woods in."
Given the obesity rate here in the US I'd say that a lot more Americans need to be vigorously prancing around around (be it in the woods or elsewhere, or in costume or no) than consuming three meals a day.
Tleilax eyes eh?
"Dickey cautioned that the study is not entirely conclusive, as the changes in sea level are measured in millimeters and represent a "daunting task" that requires numerous corrections to account for various known factors, such as natural short-term fluctuations." --space.com (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth /pumpkin_planet_021205.html)
Another article on space.com stated that:"The instruments will sense a difference in position of one micron, or about one-fiftieth the width of a human hair."
For a bit of perspective you'll need to consider that the radius of the Earth at the equator is about 6.378 x 10^8 cm or 6.378 x 10^9 mm. So the fluctuation in the Earth's radius is something like one part in a billion.
Class...
/. and other such forums. If you're not good at spelling and use MacOS X you should consider using OmniWeb as you browser for such activities as it has a spell checking feature. Spell checking in OmniWeb actually works and thus alleviates the need to compose your response in a word-processor.
I'll now address the subject of posting to
Class dismissed...
No, no, no!
The Lotta is a SI unit, not a prefix for SI units.
It's the SI basic unit for the odds of winning a lottery, and is equal to 10^27 to 1.
Warning!
Mr. Fusion at present cannot use garbage, beer cans, etc. for fuel. Currently you must use a combination of cold cream, and corn margarine as fuel as a part of the cold fusion reaction.
Ponds and Fleishman strike again!
"f=ma"
Only if mass is constant.
Newton actually said: F = dp/dt.
Recall that p = m*v, thus
d/dt (m*v) = m * dv/dt + dm/dt * v.
Now if mass is constant, then dm/dt => 0,
& the second term goes to 0 as well; leaving only the first term: m*a,
ergo for constant mass, & only for constant mass does F = m*a.
My two minutes are up...
"1. ...Of course it does raise the cost of opening the refrigerator door, in comparison to the cost ratio now. ..."
Now we get to one of my pet peeves. Why doesn't any of the major, or minor for that matter, fridge manufactures make a chest style fridge. There are many chest style deep freezes, but no fridges. With a chest style fridge you'd only loose very little of the cold air in it when you opened it, rather than dumping darn near every bit of cold air out onto the floor as with the cabinet style fridges.
Just my $0.02
" with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle futzing around with that electron."
Somebody mod this way up...