freelancejak

As for the orginial question: I wouldn't count continuous math out just yet. Computer science might be fuelling discrete math; however there's also growing interest in space technology, which will require engineering, and, I assume, the continuous math that goes into structural design. That's just my opinion though.

Discrete math deals with numbers that are discretely separated from each other, like the integers. Logic and Finite state machines are aspects of discrete math. Continuous math deals with numbers with no defining edge between them. Calculus is the core of a lot of continuous math, because it deals with an infinite number of infinitely small quantities.

I've been thinking about this problem for a few months now, are irrational numbers feasable as Cryptographically Secure PseudoRandom Number Generators (CSPRNG). I know on their own the digits of an irrational number would do a terrible job of this, because of the predictability once anyone found what number was being used. I also know that irrational numbers become periodic when expressed as continued fractions. Also, calculating more than a few thousand digits of even a square root costs a lot of computer power. But what if you only use a few digits from a number of irrationals, and not the first few digits either, and then transposed those digits so that they were in a completely different order. Would that be a feasable psudeorandom number generator for encryption? I don't think so, but how would one go about predicting it? I had something like this in mind: If you only used about 200 digits from each of x irrationals, not neccessarily the first digits (and different lengths for each one), and added them together in such a way that you ended up with a string of length roughlly 200^x before it repeated (by taking the sum of the first digits of each string, then the second, and so on looping back for each string when it finishes so that the loops don't line up again until 200^x digits have been produced), Transposition could work according to another irrational number, which each digit being a key for how many spaces a digits should be moved ahead or back. Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSPRNG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continued_fractions

Try this: 1. Draw an arc of greater than halfway (just estimate) from point A so that it crosses the line AB. 2. Draw an arc of greater than halfway from B so that it crosses the line AB. 3. There should be two points where the arcs intersect, one on each side of AB, connect those two points. 4. The new line should cross AB and be orthogonal to it, where they meet should be the midpoint from A to B.

There's a really fun mnemonic on songstowearpantsto.com , search for "I am the first 50 digits of pi" Man, I can't, I shan't formulate an anthem, where the words comprise mnemonics, dreaded mnemonics for pi... you get the idea.

Thanks for the links. I've tried the first few pages of results already, and unfortunately most of it was a basic overview, save for one article on the role of chaos theory in the engineering of slides. http://www.discover.com/issues/jul-05/departments/physics-of-waterslides/ I'll admit, I wasn't quite sure what I was looking for, but this is a good start. Thanks.

No, that's probably a real whiteboard. I remember my calculus professor telling me about such a board three years ago, when there were only one or two around, so it wouldn't be a stretch to see a video of one now. I suspect that it works by similar technology to the Nintendo Wii, multiple sensors keeping track of the movements of a stick and translating that into a GUI input.

Information on the physics of roller coasters and bumper cars seems to be ready and easy to find, but it seems to be quite a bit harder to find more than a few articles about waterslide physics. Does anyone know where I could find some larger sources of information on the physics or engineering of waterslides, like textbooks? It's a bit of a personal obsession of mine.

Is "harvesting" friction this creature's only or primary means of feeding? If so, I'm with ecoli that the environment would have to be very windy. I suppose that to rest and feed, the creature may need to teather itself to something stationary to let wind pass by without actually moving. This might be more feasable with a different atmosphere than the 100 kPa Nitrogen/Oxygen one of earth. What sort of environment does this creature live in?

I find a few examples are often helpful, my physics class was flabbergasted about vector notation until tehy were put in more concrete numbers. Does this help? A particle moving 10 m/s north and 15 m/s east would have component notation like this: (10, 15) m/s, or... (10i + 15j) m/s. If the particle accelerates constantly north at 2 m/s^2, then the velocity is: (10 + 2t, 15) m/s or... ( (10 + 2t)i + 15j) m/s. It's basically a conversion from the co-ordinate system into a single equation.

I've heard a little bit about Ramanujan, I think when I looking up possible formulae for the Reimann Zeta Function Zeta(n) = 1 + 1/2^n + 1/3^n + ....