Dave

I now see why your nick is so appropriate however, your apparent obsession with masturbation is somewhat disturbing.

heh explain why I was in a relationship for 6 months then? just because i like talking about science does not been i don't know how to go out and have a good time at the pub/club. please don't insult people you don't even know. thanks.

thanks yeah, that day was pretty crazy, had my picture taken for the paper and everything, really wierd (and ofc the drinking)

I had a look at engineering but decided that it'd be better to do maths. I was looking at Aeronautical Engineering, possibly structural or civil. If you live in the UK, you might want to try and find some details on the Headstart course, which is a course for people interested in engineering - this runs at the end of 6.1. I went on it and had a bloody good time.

If you have a look on http://freshmeat.net/ you'll find a neural network library that's written in C++. I think it's called libneural or something. You basically feed it test data, which creates a bias. Anything over (or under, I can't remember) that value fed to the 'neuron' causes it to fire. Beyond this, I don't really know that much about it.

'testing the physics engine'

I think they've learnt their lesson. Having said this, I thought this after reading as a kid that Challeneger exploded.

I eat too much pizza also I'm not sure to be happy or worried about this..

let's just hope it doesn't go the way of the mir. in somewhat related matters, what's so wrong about putting 'niggles' in a post? whoops

Hmm, quite unironically, mine was the solution to an arc length problem by using the method not outlined in the question. There we go

PS2 rocks mainly because I don't have a PC Will be getting one shortly for uni though, so w00t

who knows? not I, for sure. do a statistical analysis on it and let us know the results

Anyone else around here receive their A-level results? I got 4 A's (maths, further maths, physics and computing) and a B (general studies, which I don't care about since they made me take it), plus a merit in the AEA maths. Off to Warwick in the autumn

That's a pretty common one. A pretty good one over here was Edexcel (exam board over here) setting a question on a P1 or P2 exam (can't remember which) which had no real solutions - not clever.

z^3 = 1 z^3 - 1 = 0 (z - 1) is a factor (z = 1 is a root) (z - 1)(z^2 + Az +1) = 0 equating co-efficients in z^2 gives A = 1 therefore the other roots (by solving the other equation) are (-1 +- sqrt(3)*i) / 2

phi's pretty cool too, although I do have to agree that pi is (a) more important and (b) more interesting.

pi's pretty cool (and yes, that sounds extremely sad ) One of the most fasinating formulas associated with pi is this: pi/4 = 1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 + ... Although it's not particularly efficient, it's quite incredible such a simple formula could lead to a value that mathematicians have been trying to obtain accurately over 2000 years.

Anyone got a copy of this paper around?

Does this mean the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch exists too? (for all you people who don't get this, it's from the film 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' or some such title, too tired to care/remember)

how come you're a nun all of a sudden? </offtopic>

lo there make sure to post some maths threads in the forums

clearly my rocket propelled shoes rock

You guys better start posting some damn maths threads around here, I went for 2 weeks holiday and not a single one in the calculus forum

Not really thought about it. I'm mainly a mathematician, and from what I gather it's kindof hard to get a proper paper out unless you're pretty damn good (which i'm not - yet ).

The problem is the method we are using to achieve fusion. There are 3 basic methods that I know about. You use gravity (like the sun), superheated gases and another method I can't remember - I believe it was bombarding a small amount of deuterium/hydrogen mixture with extremely high speed matter from all around, causing a huge amount of pressure to overcome the nuclear force and cause fusion. Obviously, we're not going to be building our own star replica anytime soon, so a lot of research is going into the other two methods. The problem with superheated gases (plasmas) is trying to keep the things going around long enough because they just want to disappear very quickly. At the moment, we're using magnetic fields along with a taurus (torus?) shape to try and sustain a reaction. It's getting towards being self-sufficient, but it's definately not there yet. I believe they can keep it going for about 3 seconds before the plasma becomes unstable (could be wrong about this though). About the neutron radiation - I believe this is the main way that they get the power from the thing by heating water and running a generator, so you can expect the level of radiation to be around about the same level as you'd get in a fission plant, although you don't have to worry about the fuel rods etc. Overall its a very clean way of obtaining energy. And the problem with the third method is that obviously the energy will come in bursts which is rather annoying. There's some other problems with it as well, but I can't really remember these offhand.