• @[email protected]
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    211 year ago

    My favorite class in grad school. I absolutely loved deriving the laws of thermodynamics from first principles based the random motion of atoms. It was beautiful.

  • Troy
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    1411 year ago

    My third year thermodynamics course opened with a similar quip by the lecturer. Entropy is actually depressing. You can’t fight it. You can’t not fight it. It just wins.

    • tate
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      91 year ago

      Boltzmann is “riff-raff” now?!? I get what you’re going for, but c’mon.

  • @[email protected]
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    1141 year ago

    One opening line that’s always stuck with me is:

    “The doctor said I was a paranoid schizophrenic. Well, he didn’t actually say it, but we knew he was thinking it.”

    • @[email protected]
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      13
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      1 year ago

      …and then we take the partial derivative of the log of this infinite sum wrt molar volume to find that–

      - Why?

      Why what?

      - helplessly gestures at the whiteboard

      Oh, yeah, it’s so the math works out later! Anyway, for small Θ, the derivative has a nice closed form that we can Tailor expand in f-

      • @[email protected]
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        161 year ago

        Yeah lol, lots of physics and math was invented by multidisciplinary geniuses who saw equations that seemed to have no answer and said “oh yeah, this looks like a problem from biology that I’ve seen solved with this bit of fluid mechanics, and that problem can be solved with this complex trick from differential calculus. And you know, after we do that the whole system is starting to look like a circuit that uses properties from thermodynamics…”

        Then your teacher and the textbook throws it on a white board and says “some smart dude figured out this was the way to solve this problem. It looks like this and it boils down to this equation. Don’t ask questions.”

    • @[email protected]
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      51 year ago

      Why do we have a 🌫️ emoji instead of a cymbal? It would compliment the drum emoji so well.

  • @[email protected]
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    81 year ago

    There’s a mechanics textbook called “there once was a classical theory” and it opens with:

    There once was a classical theory Of which quantum disciples were leery. They said, “Why spend so long On a theory that’s wrong?” Well, it works for your everyday query!

    • h6a
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      231 year ago

      We all are vast collections of harmonic oscillators.

        • @[email protected]
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          71 year ago

          I’m not entirely sure of that. You can’t have comp sci without algebra and potentially calculus. I could see a society that developed all three fields before they codified Physics

          • @[email protected]
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            31 year ago

            How do you have computer science without calculus? Calculus is literally necessary for computer science, otherwise it’d just be like… shitty statistics with a little programming

            • @[email protected]
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              71 year ago

              Care to expand? Things like complexity theory and type theory, for example, have nothing to do with calculus

              • @[email protected]
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                11 year ago

                In general, a lot of the stuff computer science shares with data science uses calculus, a lot of the statistics too, but also visuals and modelling other sciences (e.g. simulations) use calculus heavily. I recall utilising vector calc a decent amount when working with Vulkan, for example

                • @[email protected]
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                  11 year ago

                  Sounds like programming more than CS, in that case, fair enough. Also the linear algebra in computer graphics is, well, algebra, not calculus.

            • @[email protected]
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              21 year ago

              It would be inelegant as all fuck, but you could get away with just algebra, there are comp sci courses that only need algebra as the foundation.

              • @[email protected]
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                21 year ago

                as far as i can tell, the ones that do that are usually just programming courses with “computer science” slapped onto the title. but i havent exactly gone to many colleges so i don’t have the experience to say so.

          • LoudWaterHombre
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            21 year ago

            Do you really think people could make programmable microchips and processing units before they figured out physics?

        • @[email protected]
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          21 year ago

          Sure you can. Physics is describing what is, computer science is building what could be

          The two things require very little overlap. Even physics systems in video games don’t use real physics - it just feels better when you fudge it