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| Significant moment in science history
Posted: 7/14/2009 10:12:16 AM | | Thankyou :) I've had quite a few people state that they love the name. I've also had a few people state that I shouldn't use the name because children use the internet. I find that hillarious. | |
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| Significant moment in science history
Posted: 7/14/2009 10:26:41 AM | I've also had a few people state that I shouldn't use the name because children use the internet
haha. yeah because u know all those 8 year olds who troll POF. Like bumfluff would harm thier little heads, not after butt face, booger head, snot brain and the like.
sorry all, off topic. | |
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| Significant moment in science history
Posted: 7/16/2009 6:55:23 AM | I was just PLANTAIN the idea of bananas in your discussion. I bet youve never even considered their fundamental importance in the evolution of man.
I bet you open bananas from the other end and didnt know there was another way.
Some people even open oranges from the other side.
Then there are people who peel potatoes from the top. | |
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| Significant moment in science history
Posted: 7/16/2009 9:15:56 AM |
nobody mentioned the "spork" as one of mankinds most interesting and useful inventions?
My favorite scene in WALL-E... | |
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| Significant moment in science history
Posted: 7/16/2009 9:50:45 AM | Significant moment in science history
The invention of the perpetual motion machine
Being able to travel faster than light
Going back in time
Creating a microscopic black hole…sorry that’s been put off till October
Landing on the moon
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| Significant moment in science history
Posted: 7/16/2009 9:58:06 AM | | The invention of moveable type, which made books vastly more available. What good is great knowledge, if it cannot be spread widely and built upon? | |
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| Significant moment in science history
Posted: 7/16/2009 2:11:49 PM |
Consider that, prior to that, if anyone was attempting to attach significance to the sky, it was as omens and portents. Yes, it served a practical purpose as a calendar. However, it also was thought to tell people what they wanted to hear. Often, to someone else's detriment. Do you ever consider that it may have been the other way round? The calender was absolutely essential to know the best time to plant seed, harves crops, expect migrations etc. Once peope recognized an ability to predict future events, then the way was open for the gullible to be persuaded that the right person could predict anything. It seems just as reasonable to think that astrology evolved from astronomy.
Does fire count? I guess the wheel may. Mathematics? - where would astronomy have been if we couldn't count. Oh - and writing to help remember all those observations. Economics and social organization, so some people had the time to stargaze. Weapons to hunt efficiently and improve the economy. It's tough to choose. | |
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| Significant moment in science history
Posted: 7/19/2009 4:59:17 PM | The Incas tied knots in cord to carry information.
How do we know that mankind didnt carry information on cord for hundreds of thousands of years before cuniform clay tablets were available?
Consider the Abacus ; a highly efficient counting system without electronics made from cord and a few beads.
And cord was obviously used to set out circles to form Stonehenge and to line up the Pyramids.
So cord has to be a major advance.
Is likely that a cord with a weight used to spin it was used as a plumbline and used to time the movement of the stars. | |
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| Significant moment in science history
Posted: 7/19/2009 7:38:01 PM |
The invention of the perpetual motion machine
Being able to travel faster than light
Going back in time
Creating a microscopic black hole…sorry that’s been put off till October
Landing on the moon
Only one of those things happened, so I guess that is your selection for the moment. Fyi, I'm also hoping for the LHC to work this time.
However, at this point, my favorite moment in science history is either Rottingen's discovery of the x-ray or Fermi's development of the nuclear reactor. | |
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| Significant moment in science history
Posted: 7/20/2009 11:50:10 AM | Astrology promoted the learning of the constellations and planets through story and significance. This promoted astronomy through observation and thus science. The divergence
As for a base ten number system, nah. A number system based around 12 makes more sense practically. It is position that is more important than the base. Ten is not evenly divisible by 3 or 4 and who divides by 5? Computers use base 2 although some memory technologies now use base 4 internal to the chips for density. In digital systems, any base other than two requires considerable conversion. | |
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| Significant moment in science history
Posted: 7/20/2009 2:04:28 PM | Dave...
Why would base12 numbering be better than base10? I had a hard time learning octal, split-octal and hexadecimal... and you think a system based on 12 would be better...? 
I've never heard of a computer system that uses base4 for anything - could you point me in a direction to find this out...? | |
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| Significant moment in science history
Posted: 7/20/2009 4:00:48 PM | Significant as in having a great cause or effect.
Splitting the atom.
But I will be first in line for that time travel machine. | |
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| Significant moment in science history
Posted: 7/20/2009 4:09:47 PM | The human brain can count on sight up to 4 at max but typically 3 before subdividing. It gets tedious if too many digits are involved. In everday life, we typically divide by 2, 3, or 4 but rarely more. A dozen of something lends itself to such division while base ten does not because you can't evenly divide ten by 3 or 4. The only advantage claimed about base ten is actually an advantage of position, not numerical base.
The roman numeral system was limited because of its lack of consistent position or a concept of zero as a number. Binary, as used in digital systems, works so well because of digit position. By comparison, analog computers typically used voltage levels or charge to do computation where the value of a single wire had a wide range, not just two values. It was less accurate but less complicated. The techniques employed by analog computers are still used today but are often modeled by digital computers. Its much like slide rules verses calculators. Log calculations in analog are generally simple but very tedious in digital systems. Apollo went to the moon with less computing power than your cell phone and much of its engineering was done with slide rules. When it comes to weights and measures for the general public, I am not a fan of forcing everything decimal. When it comes to engineering, I use machines to do the calculations anyway. Its all binary floating point then so the number base we use to examine the data means nothing. Humans aren't machines, why try to make us emulate them?
Binary, octal, hex etc. are symbolic abreviations for binary numbers where groups of binary digits are represented by a familiar symbol. Again, our brain does not count visually beyond 4 so grouping strings of bits simplifies binary for our brains and visual perception. That is where octal was first employed as groups of 3 bits but hex using groups of 4 bits is more common these days. Still not many people can visually translate four but to a hex value on sight. If kids were taught to count in hex on their fingers, they could count to 255 without even using their thumbs.
The base 4 I was refering to is internal to some newer high density memory chips typically flash memory. Instead of storing just two charge levels per cell, they store four charge levels thus doubling the capacity per cell. Borrowed from analog computers? There are tradoffs in retention quality. High data rate communications tend to squeeze more bits per baud by using encoding schemes that could be thought of in terms of higher number bases. Many people confuse baud and bit rate. A baud is a symbol. It may be a bit or several bits. | |
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| Significant moment in science history
Posted: 7/20/2009 8:15:08 PM | I completely agree with cinsav regarding the ground-breaking work of Rosalind Franklin that allowed Watson and Crick make their discovery of the double-helix..the most important discovery of the 20th centurty. Unfortunately for Franklin, she died of cancer, probably as a result of years of exposure to radaiation, and Watson and Crick win the Nobel Prize.
It's too bad that is has taken nearly 50 years to finally give her the recognition that she deserved. | |
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| Significant moment in science history
Posted: 7/28/2009 6:47:06 AM | 50 years to finally give HER the recognition that SHE deserved.
I think there is a clue in that sentence Debra. Dont think to deeply on that! | |
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| Significant moment in science history
Posted: 7/28/2009 8:09:33 AM | i personally think language was the biggest scientific discovery. its what lead to all others being possible and set us apart as a species.
some will claim its not a science, but what is a science? from wikipedia
Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") refers to any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome. In this sense, science may refer to a highly skilled technique or practice.[1]
i think developing a language system counts as a science using this definition.
this is the one thing which seperated us from all other life. assuming we mean advanced language, as apes meercats etc have been shown to have limited vocalisations for nouns. | |
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