theCPE

The problem with that logic is that sooner or later there is an actual LIMIT to what is physically possible.

Maybe we can't truly say that c is the speed limit of the universe, but sooner or later there is/are limitations to our physical world.

Not an actual "infinite" amount of energy, as say a spacial dimension is infinite, but the potential to store infinitely increasing amount of energy. There is no "ceiling".

There is a ceiling.... the ceiling being what is physically POSSIBLE.

I think someone else mentioned that 'what if' != possible.

And of course your talking about storing energy in a fast moving massive body....well energy is required to make that massive body fast moving to begin with, which means to store it you have to extract it from elsewhere to begin with.

Eh, I'm pretty sure that Relativity doesn't suggest infinite energy capabilities.......

BTW what spacial dimension are we talking about that is infinite?

why would a PhD limit an engineers job possibilities?

Not many corporations are willing to hire PhDs when they can hire a B.S. or M.S. with just as much smarts and know how and at a much lower cost.

A PhD is an EXTREME specialization....meaning you pick your topic and spend years researching just ONE specific topic.....that doesn't benefit corporations much unless you just happend to research the exact topic that that company is developing a new product in.

As an engineer a M.S. leaves the most job oppurtunity.

Other fields however are the exact opposite. I can't think of too many jobs that look for people with a B.S. in philosophy.

Having the paper means that your knowledge and experience met the qualifications of (usually) high standards of an institution. Yeah, you can study by yourself, but then there's no standard for your education.

Absolutely, hence my brain surgeon example, I would much rather have someone with the official papers working on me.

However, the notion that a PhD makes you smarter or the leading expert in a field is false and exaggerated.

If anything a PhD measures your drive/perseverance.

And depending upon your field a PhD can harm you. Specifically, for engineers if you have a PhD you are limiting your job possibilities, whereas other fields it is almost a necessity to have a PhD.

Probably around 765 papers for 2007.....

Hopefully by 2010 its only about 100-200.

Oopps. I assumed by deleting duplicates you were referring to within the search list.

Yeh, adding already added duplicates to the check list is a waste of time.

All degrees are just a way of having a list of names of people that believe you know enough knowledge for a specific subject. The list of names being of course the university you received the degree(s) from and the faculty that you received passing grades in.

A B.S., M.S. or PhD in NO way means that you are smarter or know more than someone without them. Someone can learn just as much or more on their own accord but wont earn the slip of paper that gives corporations and other universities the warm fuzzy they need.

Of course id feel much better about having my brain or heart worked on by someone with that slip of paper rather than someone who assures you they studied all the same stuff!

Its all about data structure.

If your list is just a simple file or an array then without re-structuring you have to do it just how you are, checking every word with all duplicates.

As far as suggestions for deleting duplicates, that would take just as long as finding since in order to delete you have to first find.

I suppose the best method of attack would be like someone else mentioned, first alphabetize the list before removing duplicates that way you significantly reduce the compares that must be done with the duplicate words.

Usually CE = civil engineer, unless of course your school doesn't offer Civil engineering.

Which leaves CPE for computer engineer.

Or you can always call computer engineers EEs because they are close enough:)

BTW, when is there going to be a push to recruit more males for nursing or elementary education, fields that are heavily dominated by women?

I've always felt that one institution of racism doesn't correct a previous institution of racism.

It is fine that it is your opinion that "speed" and "velocity" aren't different,

Wooooh wooh wooh. I never said speed and velocity aren't different, so don't say I did. I have from my first post said they are different but similiar concepts that are simple to understand.

Try to at least be honest and truthful when you paraphrase people.

I don't think we, and I know myself, that we aren't "eager" for a fight, it is just that we are trying to be as clear as possible.

I don't think people are eager to fight, but instead eager to provide their symantec two cents just to see text they wrote on the page:)

But, I (and I think the rest) are just trying to make sure that any beginners or new students to physics makes sure that they understand the very fundamental difference between speed and velocity. That's all.

As am I. Hence why I told the guy that speed and velocity are different, albiet slightly, because they are related concepts and that he should try google for some good resources.....

Since then actually it appears you have spent the entiriety of your energy on arguing about my opinion on how large the difference between the two instead of helping the poster who had questions pertaining to speed and velocity, so how are you making sure beginners understand fundamental concepts by arguing with me and misquoting me about my opinion on how simple and slightly different speed and velocity are?

Anyone seriously considering physics, science, or some technical field of study I don't think can consider vectors complex if they expect success. I figured anyone with the iniative to seek aditional help on the topic was serious and thus why I referred to speed and velocity as very similar concepts.

And again, it was an opinion, just like yours that they are very different.

I was shocked at the eagerness for some to contradict and fight such a harmless comment.

Every piece of information you have ever received, from artwork to mathematical laws, has come from one source: your senses.

Well, this is a little misleading.

Our senses may be the final bridge data crosses before entering our brain but currently most observation and scientific discovery is not directly a result of our senses (what we see, hear, smell) but a result of instrumentation.

This means that no matter the descrepancies in individuals senses, due to instruments the observations of our "reality" are equal.

Also, this really sounds to me a lot like Descartes, "I think therefore I am".

Sure it is slightly altered, but it is the same idea.

"How do we know this isn't all just a dream/movie."

There are some obvious reasons that movie going and reality are different, one being we have prior knowledge of hollywood, it isn't an act of desception at all.

My experience as a physics instructor puts you in the minority in thinking they are easy concepts.

Are you a highschool instructor?

I really can't fathom vectors or scalars being considered anything but easy concepts, unless of course you are talking about the opinions of average high school students or average freshmen undergrad taking physics as an elective.

One source of problems with internet discussions occurs when people assert opinion as fact, and subjective experience as if it were objective truth.

Yes, your opinion is that vectors are a complex concept and speed and velocity are vastly different concepts.

My opinion is that vectors are a basic idea that if you can't grasp easily you should probably not be in the science or math field, and speed and velocity are very similiar concepts that can be mastered and understood at the same time.

You say I am in the minority from your experience as an instructor. I say you are in the minority, as I have yet to come across another engineer in grad school or in industry that struggled with vectors or scalars. Now, if you are also polling individuals that have no use for knowing about vectors and scalars like say bank tellers etc, then I am sure the majority of people in the world feel vectors are complex. Of people in the science and engineering fields however, I doubt that is the case.

Neither of these view points is an objective truth, they are of course subjective opinions.

But hey, everyone has an opinion.

I have a very good grasp of vectors and scalars...they are easy concepts...hence my point, but thanks for you concern.

I still find it amusing that there are actually people that are willing to put such energy in fighting over the fact I described the difference between speed and velocity as slight.

And again, if you are someone that classifies the difference between speed and velocity as a "BIG descrepancy" (direct quote from someone previously) I would really love to see you describe the difference between more complex and unrelated concepts from later courses.

Again, I think it really comes down to some people having a need to always put in their semantec two cents, it is after all the internet where everyone is an expert!

the issue of eventual death in whatever form hot-or-cold does not seem even remotely relevant and I dont see why people's attention always gravitates to such an issue.

The same could be said about the issue of the eventual evaporation of our atmosphere in 1.1 billion years....

I think if people's attention gravitates toward that issue it is because people are always attempting to see the BIG picture...doesn't get much bigger than that.

What do you mean by "reset the gene pool completely"? If you mean literally what you said, you are wrong. Instead, we have seen massive extinctions from strikes -- particularly the K-T boundary. But none of them have come close to wiping out even phyla, much less resetting the gene pool.

Here let me help out the sensitive folk....

insert "kill the majority of life" for "reset the gene pool completely"

Its a moot point of course as NEOs were brought up to point out why looking out too far into the future is ridiculus, first things first and all that nonsense.

Yes, the universe will continue to expand until there is "heat death" -- no energy available to do work (second law of thermodynamics). There won't be a crunch.

That we know of!

However, what is or is not "pointless" is a philosophical problem. It's called the Problem of Meaning. I would argue that our lives have meaning irregardless of what happens to the universe (or life on earth) in the far future. Nihilism is not justified.

Sweet.

I see, and you expect whatever conscious life to passively allow the strike.

Or I expect whatever conscious life to worry about first things first, ie worry about NEOs before worrying about our Sun beginning to expand etc....

Of course I wont be around so its not making me lose any sleep;)

What is pointless? Are you just striking a pose for effect?

The original post was about the infinite future.....well the even further infinite future is the death of the universe.

Wow, this is pretty sad. I can't believe people want to argue over someone saying speed and velocity are slightly different conceptually to prove their superiority.

They are day one physics concepts......if those concepts are examples of huge descrepancies I don't think the forum has enough bandwidth for some of you to describe the difference between more complex and unrelated concepts from higher physics.

And btw the difference in the above example isn't HUGE. The numeric value difference might be large (X - 0) but the conceptual differene is hrm...SLIGHT. The difference of course being displacement and distance...yeh vector vs scalar.....

Well the difference between the two in my mind is slight, and I haven't run into any difficulties yet but each to his own I suppose.

Severian, you missed the point of my theory. What I said was that I believe that we actually live in a universe that is made of more than 4 dimensions and the only reason that we think it is made of only 3 is because our brains cannot process information in more than three dimensions.

 

And believe it or not, there is some indirect evidence of higher dimensions; virtual particles. They are particles that appear out of nowhere in a vacuum, and then just as fast disappear. And I remember reading that some scientists believe that they come from higher dimensions through quantum tunneling.

It doesn't matter if we can imagine, conceive, or work conceptual problems in more or less than 3 dimensions, if our instrumentation that observes, interacts, and manipulates matter on what we know as the fundamental level does not provide the emperical evidence of more dimensions than it is boogus.

Again and this seems like a lost concept but:

If there is something more fundamental that we are currently unaware of how ever many dimensions it has is how many dimensions ALL of the Universe will be made of.

Can you construct different dimensional things from legos of X dimensions?

That being said, if any version of string theory were right the fundamental particles of the verse would have that many dimensions and therefore we would have that many as well.

Yeh, speed and velocity are ever so slightly different.

Speed being scalar velocity being a vector.

Google is really good, you can find a lot of amazing resources for general questions like that instead of waiting for responses here.

If you googled

classical mechanics

or

classical physics

or

newtonian physics

You would have ample reading material to understand all of those basic concepts.

==quote Baez latest TWF==

 

* In 1.1 billion years the Sun will become 10% brighter than now, and the Earth's atmosphere will dry out.

 

* In 3 billion years the Andromeda Galaxy will collide with our galaxy. Many solar systems will be destroyed.

 

..........

 

On average every 20 million years a NEO strikes earth that destroys alot of life and every 100 million years a NEO strikes earth that would reset the gene pool completely.

So thats 55 chances for apocolyptic events and 11 chances for everything to go poof before we have to worry about our atmosphere vanishing due to the sun.

But hey, while we are looking way off into the future, in a few billion trillion years the Universe will be either an ice cube or crunched up and poofed....so eh. Its all pointless.

String theory is losing support, and for reason. Its a mathematical game.

I only mention string theory because it is the most popular multi-dimensional theory which has varied from 26 to 11 to 7 to etc etc.....

A few comments on dimensions.

1) Seeing with our eyes is not a good way at all to determine the number of dimensions. Instrumentation is of course the way to do it, after all we don't base any scientific theories hardly anymore off of 'empirical' evidence gathered with our eyes.

2) The whole Abbott Flatland analogy is outdated and not very useful IMO. Sure it creates an interesting perspective that allows someone to think for a second, "wow, my imagination really is the limit", but that is about it. Why beings of different dimensions can't interact? Lets pretend there is some fundamental particle we haven't discovered yet that makes everything. Well, this particle not only builds objects in our universe, it builds the dimensions OF our universe as well. Anything existing within the said universe is therefore built of these fundamental particles. THerefore, it follows that everything would be equally dimensional.

3)Curled up, microscopic, useless, unobservable dimensions sound like the ether too me......