I’ve heard a story (so like 4th hand at this point) where an astrophysicist was talking about galaxy rotations or something. “And for this model, we can simplify pi to 10.”
My thermodynamics professor made so approximations in his derivations that all of his equations had an “O” term to represent the inaccuracy. Every time he made another approximation he’d say “and, of course, the O sucks up the error”.
After calculus though, they just expect you to cope with fucked up coefficients. In Diff Eq, sometimes you do just get something like 3/111 cos (6/111 x). It gets harder to come up with examples that work out with nice integers.
Physics can also have some really beautiful math, look at Lissajous figures. Once you understand the connections between e, the imaginary plane, and sine/cosine, you get some profound understandings about how electric and magnetic fields work.
Numbers like that are why I quit majoring in mechanical engineering. Physics took the beauty of math and made it ugly.
You knew something was wrong in calculus when you got a fucked up coefficient that wasn’t a nice number.
I actually really like physics, and it’s 100% because I’m fucked up and evil
Respect. Physics is way up there in terms of hard science nerd cred.
the philosopher floating on a cloud: So how do you guys really know what’s real?
“no you see, its better to just isolate yourself in a mountain. thats how you like, find out who you truly are, man”
The trick is to round everything. Pi? Basically 3.
I’ve heard a story (so like 4th hand at this point) where an astrophysicist was talking about galaxy rotations or something. “And for this model, we can simplify pi to 10.”
My thermodynamics professor made so approximations in his derivations that all of his equations had an “O” term to represent the inaccuracy. Every time he made another approximation he’d say “and, of course, the O sucks up the error”.
After calculus though, they just expect you to cope with fucked up coefficients. In Diff Eq, sometimes you do just get something like 3/111 cos (6/111 x). It gets harder to come up with examples that work out with nice integers.
Physics can also have some really beautiful math, look at Lissajous figures. Once you understand the connections between e, the imaginary plane, and sine/cosine, you get some profound understandings about how electric and magnetic fields work.