No thread drift! I am sure you know what I mean.
There must be so many out there.
A starter
stenchpipes.blogspot.co.uk/
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Okaaaaaay...
What I want to know is what were you looking for when you put 'stink pipe' into Google?
:-)
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Some of us are intrigued by these little things.
www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/protista/slimemolds.html
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The insulators are great!
I like very much to take a random non fiction book from the library by facing away from the shelf and grabbing. The rule is that you must read it, not give up. It leads to really mind stretching stuff. At the minute I'm trying to get my head round this, which for me is a bit challenging as I'm not a natural but it is fascinating.
mathworld.wolfram.com/ComplexPlane.html
So, more of these please. Keep me going all winter.
Right, back to the insulators and pipes.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Sat 1 Dec 12 at 22:05
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>>Are you a chap?
I heard of an Eskimo who backed out of his igloo and got a chap on his bum.
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>> thechapmagazine.co.uk/
>>
>> Are you a chap?
I subscribe to this magazine! However, I don't meet the criteria for being a Chap, though I am working on it...
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>> I subscribe to this magazine! However, I don't meet the criteria for being a Chap,
>> though I am working on it...
Well played BW, not a subscriber but do keep an eye on that amusing site, Chap Olympiad photo gallery excellent, Shouting At The Foreigner event must have been a good wheeze, have the Am I A Chap book decent read that..;)
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>>At the minute I'm trying to get my head round this, which for me is a bit challenging as I'm not a natural but it is fascinating.
>>mathworld.wolfram.com/ComplexPlane.html
It could be worse! - I've recently been trying to teach this, along with Laplace Transforms, to some final year undergraduates. To say the students have been proving to be resistant is an understatement!
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I fell across it because I was trying to get some understanding of the solution to Fermat, but it's hard work for the interested amateur that's for sure.
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>>hard work for the interested amateur that's for sure.
For some practical uses of the theory, may I recommend the book "Essentials of Control" by Schwarzenbach - the book shows how the idea of functions defined in the complex plane are useful in the practical cases of controlling real physical systems. The really good thing about the book is that it really does just provide the "essentials" and doesn't go beyond the necessary.
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That's a kind thought, NC, and I'll see if I can track down a copy, but at first glance it costs real money and it's not in our library, so it won't be tomorrow. And I get diverted easily. I'm already worrying about whether there is such a concept as, for want of a better expression, Planck time, and if so, why exactly it's meaningless to ask "what happens between the ticks" and what constraint makes them the length they are, if they exist.
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>>mathworld.wolfram.com/ComplexPlane.html
How to make a simple idea look complicated. Can't remember if is covered as such in this book, but all your students should have one:
www.amazon.co.uk/Engineering-Mathematics-K-A-Stroud/dp/0333919394
And for Laplace transforms, this book:
www.amazon.co.uk/Laplace-Transforms-Programmes-Problems-Stroud/dp/0859500020
Got me through the first year of an Electrical Engineering degree.
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Yes!, I often point students in the direction of the books by Stroud. As reading them is an active process, they are very helpful.
I don't present the complex plane to students in the same way as the wolfram web site - I teach basic vibrating systems using Laplace Transforms to solve the differential equations, and then, as my next topic is an introduction to linear control systems, I can then use the Laplace Transfom method again, so the students get a second dose of it!
I use MATLAB to plot transfer functions in the complex plane, which students can then revolve in 3D to see the effect of pole placement on frequency response - I wish that tools like that had been available when I was learning the subject!
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>> Yes!, I often point students in the direction of the books by Stroud. As reading
>> them is an active process, they are very helpful.
>>
>> I don't present the complex plane to students in the same way as the wolfram
>> web site - I teach basic vibrating systems using Laplace Transforms to solve the differential
>> equations, and then, as my next topic is an introduction to linear control systems, I
>> can then use the Laplace Transfom method again, so the students get a second dose
>> of it!
>>
>> I use MATLAB to plot transfer functions in the complex plane, which students can then
>> revolve in 3D to see the effect of pole placement on frequency response - I
>> wish that tools like that had been available when I was learning the subject!
>>
>>
Is that in English? ("O" level maths, 1953), speaking!!!)
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>>Is that in English? ("O" level maths, 1953), speaking!!!)
I'll have a go at explaining via a crude analogy;
Compare music being listened to and music being written or read from paper. There's no loss of information between the two forms of communicating the music. Most people only appreciate music by listening to it, but, skilled musicians can interpret the written music and appreciate what the music will sound like without having to play it.
-----
We experience dynamic systems responding in time (our car's response to going over a bump, for example). We can convert from the time domain to the frequency domain, and describe the system there. There is no loss of information between the two ways of representing the behaviour of the system. Most people only think about system response in the time domain, but, people who have practiced can obtain information about the system from its frequency domain description.
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>>Can't remember if is covered as such in this book
Picked up the Stroud book from the library this morning. Looks like a hoot and a wheeze, and will take me the rest of my natural life to get through.
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>> www.insulators.info/
Oh! I see they don't have photographs of UK insulators... Hmmm.....
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OK not really unusual enough, but I fully understand this one.
cloudappreciationsociety.org/gallery/#p=1
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If you progress beyond stamp collecting www.meterfranking.co.uk
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There's just been a conference dedicated to "boring things", which actually sound quite interesting. Well, some of them do.
Here's a link about it.
tinyurl.com/c3ugggw
Last edited by: Crankcase on Mon 3 Dec 12 at 14:05
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Harvard students have formed a BDSM group. More fun than lectures, I suppose.
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I remember seeing a group online who 'spotted' electricity pylons, I'd say that was unusual.
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Encyclopedia Paranoaica
www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20649025
A book for Christmas ?
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Groups with unusual interests. - Badwolf
