Cyraxior In reply to Enidehalas [2010-05-04 15:09:36 +0000 UTC]

I enjoyed it too. I tutor a lot of engineers here and not as many of them as I'd like have as good a grasp of cosmological theory.

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Enidehalas In reply to Cyraxior [2010-05-04 16:03:56 +0000 UTC]

22 years old, aren't you a bit young to tutor engineers already ?
Well, I always had a thing for space, I remember taking my first english astronomy book at 6, it almost weighted just as much as me haha. But Usually, engineers are more... let's say, down to earth, we usually have more interest into practical things and Newton mechanic rather than quantum mechanic

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Cyraxior In reply to Enidehalas [2010-05-05 00:49:44 +0000 UTC]

Yeah, I figured out that when you say "pi" to an engineer, they see 3.14159. When you say "pi" to a physicist, they see a Greek letter.

We don't like numbers in physics. They just muddle things up.

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Enidehalas In reply to Cyraxior [2010-05-05 02:07:23 +0000 UTC]

Well, that's not completely true, maybe in the US, I believe your master degrees of engineering are verrrrry practical, but here you might find interesting that in France, we are taugh to never use numbers, unless at the very last line, if the client really wants the answer, or to check there is no irregularities in our calculation by checking the "ordre de grandeur" (don't know what would that be in English, but it's just to check if you didn't say that an apple has a mass of 500 kg for exemple)

I figured it was maybe because of how France is proud of its mathematical antecedants of scientists, and how they "lead" right now in Maths in the world, while US domination is more about physics

So I agree with you on this one, only times we use numbers are for interger coefficients and big "blurring" in mental calculation to check we are not doing something incoherent... I don't know if you understood, the way I said it, it's like when you have a * pi * g, with a= 12.325 and g = 9.8 you just say "it's ~360", just to be sure of the calculation, and then you go back to your letters to resume your thinking
If there happen to be a name for that in English, I would really like to know it

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Cyraxior In reply to Enidehalas [2010-05-05 05:01:02 +0000 UTC]

Yeah, at least in France everyone uses the metric system. It's 9.8 meters per second squared, NOT 32 feet. And mass is measured in slugs? Eh? The only professions stateside that use metric units are chemists and physicists.

But on the other hand, at least our unit of weight is an actual force. You metric weight should be in Newtons, not kilograms.

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Enidehalas In reply to Cyraxior [2010-05-05 06:02:02 +0000 UTC]

Oh my, never though of that, must be a hell to use inches, feet, once and whatever..

But I don't follow you about the weight, we actually use newton for weight, and kilograms for mass

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dragon2demon In reply to blueexe [2007-05-15 02:54:17 +0000 UTC]

hi cow.

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blueexe In reply to dragon2demon [2007-05-15 14:39:43 +0000 UTC]

AAAAH!
SHE'S AFTER MY BRAINS!

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dragon2demon In reply to blueexe [2007-05-15 14:53:50 +0000 UTC]

MWHAHAHA

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