Gaius Octavius
Deity
- Joined
- Jul 28, 2006
- Messages
- 4,016
This, too, is misleading IMHO. Physics is rarely more interesting than the mathematics behind it. Einstein would have disagreed with that, but that's my experience.
Consider the problem of a particle trapped in a finite square well potential whose length is 2a. If we treat the particle as wave and apply the time-independent Schrodinger wave equation, then we require the solution to satisfy d²u(x)/dx² + 2m/hbar² *E*u(x)=0. Because this is a wave, we can also calculate the reflection and transmission coefficients, the latter of which comes out to (if I can type this correctly) T = 4Kq exp(-2iKa) / ( (q² + k²)*(exp(-i2qa)-exp(i2qa)) + kq*(exp(-2qa)+exp(i2qa)) for this particular problem, where i is the imaginary number sqrt(-1), k is the wave vector, q² = 2m(V - E)/hbar² and V and E are the potential and energy, respectively. (I have left out many steps here because this is already long enough.)
This is not a very interesting mathematical solution (just use basic calculus and algebra to arrive at the answer), but it is a PROFOUND physical one. The transmission is non-zero, so there is a probability for the particle to be in places where it shouldn't be classically. This is equivalent to saying that I can walk through a wall. (This is the classic tunneling scenario.)
A friend of mine once told me a joke: When something new is discovered, the physicist asks, "What can it do?"; the engineer asks, "What can we build to harness it?"; and the philosopher asks, "Do you want fries with that?" Does this also apply to political science?YAWN... From the back of the class... (I majored in political science...)

I think the major difference between Einstein and these guys is that most people have actually heard of him. My point was that it is more appropriate for Albert to be American than German; if you're going to base it on his relativity theories then maybe Switzerland would be better, but that's not really an option. And as for AlcibiadesThen I guess Thaomas Mann and Lion Feuchtwanger, for instance, are both on the American list, too. Heinrich Heine and Joseph Roth on the French list. Alkibiades on the Persian one.![]()

I don't like poor reasoning either. That's why I'm a physicist.I really don't care at all, I just don't like poor reasoning. Giving them numbers would be neat.

Here's a better idea: why don't we get rid of all city names, leader names, great people names, unit names, tech names, no-names, and every name in between, and then you can just play as "#17" with cities named 1, 2, 3... and you can declare war on civ "32" and take resources A, B and C away from them.

The fact that Rhye took such pains to script real-life city names based on their historical locations suggests to me that realism is important to him, and having civ-specific great people is precisely the same kind of thing. You don't like realism and historicity in Civ 4, fine; but this mod is probably not for you, then.
That's funny, most of the people I've talked to like sci-fi for this very reason! It gets them interested in their subjects. And those who don't like it usually don't because sci-fi these days is often written by people who have no scientific literacy, and they can spot the errors.Well, I like science-fiction movies and books. But part of the fun it's not understanding everything
. In fact, I have checked that many physics students do hate sci-fi because it reminds them to their classes.