Friday, February 14, 2014
Hope
As a class we read a lot of depressing selections and I wanted to point out the chapter titled 'Indiscriminately From The Skies' By Rachel Carson. In this part of the novel she talks about how companies are dumping chemicals from the sky using airplanes. This means that these toxins are in our air and in a sense we are being sprayed because like rainfall, these poisons fall towards our lands where we stand. I know a lot of people would read this and instantly feel defeated. It seems like there's no chance to make the situation better. However, my reaction was that there is always hope and that's what keeps many individuals motivated. Look at what one person did with a book smaller than an average textbook. Imagine what a group of positive minds can accomplish
Hope
As a class we read a lot of depressing selections and I wanted to point out the chapter titled 'Indiscriminately From The Skies' By Rachel Carson. In this part of the novel she talks about how companies are dumping chemicals from the sky using airplanes. This means that these toxins are in our air and in a sense we are being sprayed because like rainfall, these poisons fall towards our lands where we stand. I know a lot of people would read this and instantly feel defeated. It seems like there's no chance to make the situation better. However, my reaction was that there is always hope and that's what keeps many individuals motivated. Look at what one person did with a book smaller than an average textbook. Imagine what a group of positive minds can accomplish.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Zero: The Biography Of A Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife
Summary:
The last section of the book talks about the big bang and is it posible that the universe was really made from this taking place. Einstein later made the conclusion that his equation for general theory of relativity had a specific flaw. He believed that the universe is stable, but his equation presentaed that it was destroyed ad me created over and over again. Albert changed his equation show that it would repersent that everything is balanced and nothing would be destroyed. But later on two enigereers by the name of Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson won the Noble Prize for their discovery of the universe having a beginning rather than having a stable and balanced system throughout time. The author says that zero is the secret law for a lot of things humans dont really know or understand, and it was the cause for our beginning and can be the answer for other things. There is no experiment that can completly explain the idea behind the power of zero.
Quote:
"It has always existed in the past, and would always exist "(Seife 200).
Reaction:
I wondered if the universe was made from nothing or a event that occured and caused the formation of things such as planets. The author hear believes zero is what caused everything and that idea for him is true and a dangerous one for some people. The reason for this is beacuse he is saying that something that seems meaningless has a lot of information that we might not understand quiet yet. This shocks me beacuse of all the weird explainations for how our surroundings were made and some of these ideas go through zero.
The last section of the book talks about the big bang and is it posible that the universe was really made from this taking place. Einstein later made the conclusion that his equation for general theory of relativity had a specific flaw. He believed that the universe is stable, but his equation presentaed that it was destroyed ad me created over and over again. Albert changed his equation show that it would repersent that everything is balanced and nothing would be destroyed. But later on two enigereers by the name of Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson won the Noble Prize for their discovery of the universe having a beginning rather than having a stable and balanced system throughout time. The author says that zero is the secret law for a lot of things humans dont really know or understand, and it was the cause for our beginning and can be the answer for other things. There is no experiment that can completly explain the idea behind the power of zero.
Quote:
"It has always existed in the past, and would always exist "(Seife 200).
Reaction:
I wondered if the universe was made from nothing or a event that occured and caused the formation of things such as planets. The author hear believes zero is what caused everything and that idea for him is true and a dangerous one for some people. The reason for this is beacuse he is saying that something that seems meaningless has a lot of information that we might not understand quiet yet. This shocks me beacuse of all the weird explainations for how our surroundings were made and some of these ideas go through zero.
Zero: The Biography Of A Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife
Summary:
This part of the book starts talking about the power of a light bulb and what is light. It was concluded that light is a wave of electric and magnetic fields. Now when I was reading this part I questioned what that had to do with zero. Well there is something called The Quantum Zero which is saying that an object never runs out of energy. Today we no that that is not try, but back then it was still a little bit of a mystery. A man by the name of Albert Einstein who was a patent clerk at the time wrote a paper about photoelectric effect in 1887 and won a Noble prize for his well put information. This concluded that electrons are emitted from matter depending on its wave length. This paper also forced people to accept zero for what it was because the proof was presented. Einstein was actually a man that fixed a lot of errors people made in their work and that played its part in the evolution of society. Next thing was the big bang theory and what it was saying. This theory really says that nothing came out of nothing. So back than if you believed in the big bang theory, you could not go against the existence of zero. Some people say zero should be banished because of the meaningless answers sometimes gives in things like equations, but I disagree with such an idea.
Quote:
"the black hole, a star so dense that nothing can escape its grasp,not even light. "(Seife 179).
Reaction:
I was interested in this quote because I was not quite sure what a black hole was and here the definition is a kind of star. Then I wondered if it was a star how come the light does not shine bright so we can spot it. Then I kept reading and I learned that the reason it does not shine is because the "event horizontal" prevents it from being seen. Anything past this horizontal can be seen in the black hole and to me that was kind of cool and shocking and I wonder whether society will ever come up with a safe way to see past this and observe what is beyond the event horizontal.
This part of the book starts talking about the power of a light bulb and what is light. It was concluded that light is a wave of electric and magnetic fields. Now when I was reading this part I questioned what that had to do with zero. Well there is something called The Quantum Zero which is saying that an object never runs out of energy. Today we no that that is not try, but back then it was still a little bit of a mystery. A man by the name of Albert Einstein who was a patent clerk at the time wrote a paper about photoelectric effect in 1887 and won a Noble prize for his well put information. This concluded that electrons are emitted from matter depending on its wave length. This paper also forced people to accept zero for what it was because the proof was presented. Einstein was actually a man that fixed a lot of errors people made in their work and that played its part in the evolution of society. Next thing was the big bang theory and what it was saying. This theory really says that nothing came out of nothing. So back than if you believed in the big bang theory, you could not go against the existence of zero. Some people say zero should be banished because of the meaningless answers sometimes gives in things like equations, but I disagree with such an idea.
Quote:
"the black hole, a star so dense that nothing can escape its grasp,not even light. "(Seife 179).
Reaction:
I was interested in this quote because I was not quite sure what a black hole was and here the definition is a kind of star. Then I wondered if it was a star how come the light does not shine bright so we can spot it. Then I kept reading and I learned that the reason it does not shine is because the "event horizontal" prevents it from being seen. Anything past this horizontal can be seen in the black hole and to me that was kind of cool and shocking and I wonder whether society will ever come up with a safe way to see past this and observe what is beyond the event horizontal.
Zero: The Biography Of A Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife
Summary:
In this section of the book a mathematician idea of creating the probability theory is brought up. This man was named Pascal and his reason for making this was for the rich people of his society to win more money in gambling. I thought it was for a more education purpose, but I guess not. His experiments included amounts of money and the chance of winning it, and here zero popped up. There was a chance of winning nothing and this theory was needed by some of these people to understand that. A problem that Descartes( a mathematician ) did not like more than zero was the number you got when a negative number was square rooted. That was its own little situation and the way he dealt with it was simply, just call those numbers "i". Back to zero, tangent lines was used to deal with this number. All one had to do was think of random points and find their slope and that would be thier tangent line. As one decreases the distance between the two lines, zero is approached and to some people that was meaningless. Through experiments like this, Calculus was brought up and zero was ignored for a while, but then people noticed they had to deal with it no matter what.
Quote:
"...he came up with a scornful name for the square roots of negatives: imaginary numbers"( Seife 134 ).
Reaction:
My first reaction was that I was learning this in my math class and it was kind of confusing, but I got a hold of it later on. To see that a good mathematician had trouble with it like me was a little cool in a sense. In my mind i have to accept that there is this imaginary number that can be squared to get a negative number. I am just going to accept the rules and go with it here.
In this section of the book a mathematician idea of creating the probability theory is brought up. This man was named Pascal and his reason for making this was for the rich people of his society to win more money in gambling. I thought it was for a more education purpose, but I guess not. His experiments included amounts of money and the chance of winning it, and here zero popped up. There was a chance of winning nothing and this theory was needed by some of these people to understand that. A problem that Descartes( a mathematician ) did not like more than zero was the number you got when a negative number was square rooted. That was its own little situation and the way he dealt with it was simply, just call those numbers "i". Back to zero, tangent lines was used to deal with this number. All one had to do was think of random points and find their slope and that would be thier tangent line. As one decreases the distance between the two lines, zero is approached and to some people that was meaningless. Through experiments like this, Calculus was brought up and zero was ignored for a while, but then people noticed they had to deal with it no matter what.
Quote:
"...he came up with a scornful name for the square roots of negatives: imaginary numbers"( Seife 134 ).
Reaction:
My first reaction was that I was learning this in my math class and it was kind of confusing, but I got a hold of it later on. To see that a good mathematician had trouble with it like me was a little cool in a sense. In my mind i have to accept that there is this imaginary number that can be squared to get a negative number. I am just going to accept the rules and go with it here.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Zero: The Biography Of A Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife
Summary:
In this part of the book famous names of mathematicians are referred to such as Bede. One of the interesting facts about this man was that his counting method ignored zero. For example he would count -3 ,-2, -2, 1, 1,2, 3 because he did not believe in zero. The author starts to talk about how we still have this in our mind and how we constantly avoid zero. Say you are going on on a ride. The countdown would usually start 10, 9, 8.....1 and liftoff!No zero. Some people were afraid of this idea, but not all people like the east ( Indian and Arab). As they started to evolve in their number system society noticed numerals being changed all the way from Brabmi to Diirer. Other problems that some ancients did not pay much attention to was negatives. They disregarded it because their brain told them that if you have 2 of something, you cant take away 3 of that object. Soon the Muslims started to conquer land around them such as India and who ever they over powered, they wanted to obtain their knowledge as well. This soon became a religious thing where people questioned the existence of a higher power if zero is nothingness. One of the most valuable things made by a man from Europe named Descartes was the Cartesian coordinates(coordinate grid). In this part of the book we start to get closer and closer to a point were the existence of zero can not be denied.
Quote:
"...the symbol (4,) represents a point four units to the right and two units upward"( Seife 94 ).
Reaction:
This quote is referring to plotting something on a graph and its exact location via coordinate points. My reaction to this was that I was surprised in how people used this fact to come up with the fact that their is a zero out there because these points are based on the origin(0,0). People in the ancient times who ignored this idea would have to start to believe now. Their process to accepting this was near and using a cooordinate grid to enlighten this idea was nice.
In this part of the book famous names of mathematicians are referred to such as Bede. One of the interesting facts about this man was that his counting method ignored zero. For example he would count -3 ,-2, -2, 1, 1,2, 3 because he did not believe in zero. The author starts to talk about how we still have this in our mind and how we constantly avoid zero. Say you are going on on a ride. The countdown would usually start 10, 9, 8.....1 and liftoff!No zero. Some people were afraid of this idea, but not all people like the east ( Indian and Arab). As they started to evolve in their number system society noticed numerals being changed all the way from Brabmi to Diirer. Other problems that some ancients did not pay much attention to was negatives. They disregarded it because their brain told them that if you have 2 of something, you cant take away 3 of that object. Soon the Muslims started to conquer land around them such as India and who ever they over powered, they wanted to obtain their knowledge as well. This soon became a religious thing where people questioned the existence of a higher power if zero is nothingness. One of the most valuable things made by a man from Europe named Descartes was the Cartesian coordinates(coordinate grid). In this part of the book we start to get closer and closer to a point were the existence of zero can not be denied.
Quote:
"...the symbol (4,) represents a point four units to the right and two units upward"( Seife 94 ).
Reaction:
This quote is referring to plotting something on a graph and its exact location via coordinate points. My reaction to this was that I was surprised in how people used this fact to come up with the fact that their is a zero out there because these points are based on the origin(0,0). People in the ancient times who ignored this idea would have to start to believe now. Their process to accepting this was near and using a cooordinate grid to enlighten this idea was nice.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife
Summary:
While explaining the history of zero and how it was brought up, the author uses facts and humor to keep readers interested. Today the Babylonians are considered the ones who invented zero. Zero was feared by a lot of people because they never wanted to accept the fact that something could start at nothing. This idea just scared people so they just pushed it to the side and pretended it did not exist. Even the smartest mathematicians in ancient time lived without this number, such as the Greeks and Egyptians. Yet, the Mayan system included zero in its own numbering system, but most groups stuck to their own ways. No acceptance in zero meant that these people could not accept an end to such things such as a race. For example the Greeks believed the race would start as a whole distance and the race just gets smaller by the fractional distance of speed. Zero is not yet confirmed as a number to all and this causes some like of understanding when the value is talked about in these ancient times.
Quote:
"Eureka! Eureka! Of course Archimedes forgot that he was stark naked"(Seife 47).
Reaction:
What I like about this line is that it provides some humor in the process of explaining to me when am reading the book. The reason why this quote is funny is because this engineer was told by the King of Syracuse to find out if his crown is made out of pure gold. So when day as Archimedes settles in a tub of water he realizes that he can use the water to figure out properties such a the density of an object. He then goes running out of his home feeling so joyful, but how happy are the people that witness this view.
While explaining the history of zero and how it was brought up, the author uses facts and humor to keep readers interested. Today the Babylonians are considered the ones who invented zero. Zero was feared by a lot of people because they never wanted to accept the fact that something could start at nothing. This idea just scared people so they just pushed it to the side and pretended it did not exist. Even the smartest mathematicians in ancient time lived without this number, such as the Greeks and Egyptians. Yet, the Mayan system included zero in its own numbering system, but most groups stuck to their own ways. No acceptance in zero meant that these people could not accept an end to such things such as a race. For example the Greeks believed the race would start as a whole distance and the race just gets smaller by the fractional distance of speed. Zero is not yet confirmed as a number to all and this causes some like of understanding when the value is talked about in these ancient times.
Quote:
"Eureka! Eureka! Of course Archimedes forgot that he was stark naked"(Seife 47).
Reaction:
What I like about this line is that it provides some humor in the process of explaining to me when am reading the book. The reason why this quote is funny is because this engineer was told by the King of Syracuse to find out if his crown is made out of pure gold. So when day as Archimedes settles in a tub of water he realizes that he can use the water to figure out properties such a the density of an object. He then goes running out of his home feeling so joyful, but how happy are the people that witness this view.
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