Science Stuff

CrittaMagic69

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I hated maths, but my maths teacher was actually one of the most respected teachers in the school, and THE teacher who I most respected across all level of education I've ever had. As a result, maths was the highest score I got on both my SC and HSC.
I pretty much done well in everything early on, but a better teacher defenitely made the difference and actually made me push myself. I just dropped off completely towards the end and never really had a good teacher to try and pull me back up again.
 

south of heaven

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If you're fascinated with the sun/stars, then you'll LOVE this!

You could give the biggest planet to Indian and I bet you in a month they would still manage to get it covered in SHIT and plastic
 

Hacky McAxe

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I was in school when they first started bringing in the Macs and phasing everything towards technology. The teachers at the time used to spy on us with screen sharing but in the end that completely backfired on them when a few of us got admin permissions and just started using it to cheat off others groups work and just play games or Skype our mates in other classes most the day.

Looking back I can now tell that those years were really where I started going down hill, bloody useless teachers not actually teaching and not knowing how to use technology. Or maybe the issue was dropping out and not trying to cheat my way through the final year lol.
I hate bad teachers. Back in school I was decent at maths but the head maths teacher didn't like me so he wouldn't let me progress to the higher maths class.

He was completely right though. Even though I aced every test, I was a lazy prick. The teacher never bothered asking for my homework 'cause she knew I didn't do it. Being an arrogant prick, I ended up changing schools and got in trouble in the first class becuase I pointed out that the teacher screwed up an equation. That was a bad teacher. Lasted there a few months before moving to another school to finish off my HSC.

I hate bad teachers. If I was a teacher and I screwed up I would say, "Damn son, you're right. Let's get this shit right!". This teacher instead yelled at me in front of the class then demanded that the principal expel me.
 

KambahOne

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One thing in the world of science I find most interesting is relativity. When I first learned about relativity as a kid my mind was blown. Relativity (General and Special) is too complex to go into detail for but here's some of the aspects of relativity that I find most interesting.

In special relativity, time is relative. I have seen many confusing explanations of what that means but the simplest way I have found to explain it is by saying, "Time is only relative to you based on where you are". A simple way to explain this is to imagine two trains driving along. If a train is driving at 60km/h and you're standing on a platform then the train passes you at 60km/h. If you're on another train driving alongside it and you're doing 40km/h then the train you're looking at is doing 20km/h.

That explanation may seem a bit stupid because you're still moving at 40km/h and the other train is still moving at 60km/h relative to the earth. But think of it another way...

Earth spins at different speeds depending where you stand. If you stand at the equator then you're spinning at the speed of 1,670km/h. If the train is travelling in the direction of the spin of the earth, then the train that's doing 60km/h is actually doing 1730km/h. But that's not the only speed. The Earth travels around the sun at around 107,000km/h. So your train is actually doing about 109,430km/h (Average. You're occasionlly going faster and occasionally going slower depending on the spin of the earth and your point on the earth at the time)

So speed is relative to where you are. That's the utter basics of special relativity.

But it's all affected by gravity too. When you look at a black hole, its gravity is so strong that light slows down. When it approaches the even horizon light slows down so much that it's barely moving. But light in the universe is constant so it's still moving at the same speed as everywhere else. What is actually slowing down is time.

Time is affected by two factors (both of which are actually related but that's a lot more complex). Gravity and speed. Under extreme gravity, time slows down. We have tested this. Using atomic clocks we put one on a plane and one on the ground. The one on the ground runs slightly behind the one on the plane. So every time you take a flight somewhere, you age slightly less than everyone else. Only a tiny bit.

The other factor is speed. No object can ever travel at the speed of light (based on our current undertstanding), but we believe we can get close to it. But the faster you travel the slower time goes. Again, this is that special relativity. Two trains travelling side by side. One at 60km/h, one at 40km/h. For passangers on the 60km/h train time is actually slowed ever so slightly. And we have been able to record this difference in time. It's inconceivably small though. But if we could travel fast enough then it becomes different.

The closest star is around 4.5 light years away. It would take us around 10,000 years to get there with current technology. But if we could develop technology to travel faster then we could get there quicker. If we could travel at close to the speed of light then we could get there is around 10 years. But travelling at that speed affects time. So we fly there and back and 20 years have passed. But when we get back to earth, 50,000 years have passed.

This gets even more interesting when you bring in concepts like Worm Holes. Based on Einstein's theories and work by Professor Kip Thorne, if you had an infinite amount of energy and a way to do it, you could use a wormhole to create a time machine effectively. Open a wormhole, grab one end and put it on a starship, send that starship at 90% speed of light to a distance star then step back through the wormhole and you're travelling back in time. It's probably the most useless time travel though as due to relativity, you couldn't go back past events that you already know about because your observation isn't going to travel faster than you can travel.
Great write up man. I cannot wait till they prove a theory linking relativity with quantum physics. That will give us an understanding of our reality like nothing before.
 

CrittaMagic69

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I hate bad teachers. Back in school I was decent at maths but the head maths teacher didn't like me so he wouldn't let me progress to the higher maths class.

He was completely right though. Even though I aced every test, I was a lazy prick. The teacher never bothered asking for my homework 'cause she knew I didn't do it. Being an arrogant prick, I ended up changing schools and got in trouble in the first class becuase I pointed out that the teacher screwed up an equation. That was a bad teacher. Lasted there a few months before moving to another school to finish off my HSC.

I hate bad teachers. If I was a teacher and I screwed up I would say, "Damn son, you're right. Let's get this shit right!". This teacher instead yelled at me in front of the class then demanded that the principal expel me.
Yh I was really lazy so I always done enough to just be up there rather than right up there If I actually put in genuine effort. I was just so much more interested in doing other things until it got to the point where I just wasn't interested at all.

Were you one of those kids that would try and catch the teacher out at every opportunity? I had one at my school but he was next level, he's now a politician so I guess that explains that haha.
 

Nano

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I wouldn't have a clue about science to be honest ;)
 

Hacky McAxe

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I wouldn't have a clue about science to be honest ;)
Anyone who says that Engineering isn't real science, can suck my left one. Engineering is scientists if they got to build cool stuff.

I mean, I studied psychology and I'm happy to admit that it's more fairy tale than science.
 

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Nano

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Anyone who says that Engineering isn't real science, can suck my left one. Engineering is scientists if they got to build cool stuff.

I mean, I studied psychology and I'm happy to admit that it's more fairy tale than science.
Engineering is top tier maths, physics, chemistry and other sciences to be honest (not civil engineering thats for plebs who can do high school maths decently). Theory and learning about how things work is cool and all but when you can break it down and engineer something that opposes it or specialises parts of it for a use its far more challenging.
 

Hacky McAxe

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If you want to know about psychology and psychiatry you should read about the Rosenhan experiment - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment
Yeah, I've read about that. More recently there was a review of Psychological papers in Australia that found that 95% of the papers were not able to be replicated. In any other field of science those papers never would have passed peer review.

Psychology's problems aside, I love the study of the human mind. It's really bloody interesting but something we know very little about. If I had the time, money and patience I would study neurology.

Of you get bored, read a book called "The Brain" by David Eagleman. David Eagleman is a brilliant neurologist and the book is written for the general public. It goes into details about some of the amazing things about how the brain works. There's also an audible version of it on Audible which is narrated by the author and it's really bloody interesting.
 

Mr 95%

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Yeah, I've read about that. More recently there was a review of Psychological papers in Australia that found that 95% of the papers were not able to be replicated. In any other field of science those papers never would have passed peer review.

Psychology's problems aside, I love the study of the human mind. It's really bloody interesting but something we know very little about. If I had the time, money and patience I would study neurology.

Of you get bored, read a book called "The Brain" by David Eagleman. David Eagleman is a brilliant neurologist and the book is written for the general public. It goes into details about some of the amazing things about how the brain works. There's also an audible version of it on Audible which is narrated by the author and it's really bloody interesting.
One thing in the world of science I find most interesting is relativity. When I first learned about relativity as a kid my mind was blown. Relativity (General and Special) is too complex to go into detail for but here's some of the aspects of relativity that I find most interesting.

In special relativity, time is relative. I have seen many confusing explanations of what that means but the simplest way I have found to explain it is by saying, "Time is only relative to you based on where you are". A simple way to explain this is to imagine two trains driving along. If a train is driving at 60km/h and you're standing on a platform then the train passes you at 60km/h. If you're on another train driving alongside it and you're doing 40km/h then the train you're looking at is doing 20km/h.

That explanation may seem a bit stupid because you're still moving at 40km/h and the other train is still moving at 60km/h relative to the earth. But think of it another way...

Earth spins at different speeds depending where you stand. If you stand at the equator then you're spinning at the speed of 1,670km/h. If the train is travelling in the direction of the spin of the earth, then the train that's doing 60km/h is actually doing 1730km/h. But that's not the only speed. The Earth travels around the sun at around 107,000km/h. So your train is actually doing about 109,430km/h (Average. You're occasionlly going faster and occasionally going slower depending on the spin of the earth and your point on the earth at the time)

So speed is relative to where you are. That's the utter basics of special relativity.

But it's all affected by gravity too. When you look at a black hole, its gravity is so strong that light slows down. When it approaches the even horizon light slows down so much that it's barely moving. But light in the universe is constant so it's still moving at the same speed as everywhere else. What is actually slowing down is time.

Time is affected by two factors (both of which are actually related but that's a lot more complex). Gravity and speed. Under extreme gravity, time slows down. We have tested this. Using atomic clocks we put one on a plane and one on the ground. The one on the ground runs slightly behind the one on the plane. So every time you take a flight somewhere, you age slightly less than everyone else. Only a tiny bit.

The other factor is speed. No object can ever travel at the speed of light (based on our current undertstanding), but we believe we can get close to it. But the faster you travel the slower time goes. Again, this is that special relativity. Two trains travelling side by side. One at 60km/h, one at 40km/h. For passangers on the 60km/h train time is actually slowed ever so slightly. And we have been able to record this difference in time. It's inconceivably small though. But if we could travel fast enough then it becomes different.

The closest star is around 4.5 light years away. It would take us around 10,000 years to get there with current technology. But if we could develop technology to travel faster then we could get there quicker. If we could travel at close to the speed of light then we could get there is around 10 years. But travelling at that speed affects time. So we fly there and back and 20 years have passed. But when we get back to earth, 50,000 years have passed.

This gets even more interesting when you bring in concepts like Worm Holes. Based on Einstein's theories and work by Professor Kip Thorne, if you had an infinite amount of energy and a way to do it, you could use a wormhole to create a time machine effectively. Open a wormhole, grab one end and put it on a starship, send that starship at 90% speed of light to a distance star then step back through the wormhole and you're travelling back in time. It's probably the most useless time travel though as due to relativity, you couldn't go back past events that you already know about because your observation isn't going to travel faster than you can travel.
You are God..
 

Jabba the Mutt

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I half assed my Network Engineering studies. When it came time for one of the tests, I had to write a bunch of networking scripts. Simple enough, but I had to write them using only their methods which I hadn't bothered studying. So I hacked into one of the other students machine's during the test and stole his stuff, then passed the test. Personally I blame them for not having any real security on their network.
It reminds me of a science experiment I was doing with two other students (a long time ago) trying to synthesise aspirin from salicylic acid which wasn't going well at all. To cut a long story short, I fortunately had an aspirin tablet in my pocket which we crushed up, placed on titre paper, and gave to the lab technician to check. He was quite impressed by how pure the substance we 'synthesised' was.
My first 'A' in inorganic chemistry! :D
 
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