/sci/ - Science and Mathematics

>>2913

(not mine btw copy pasted from /tg/ so if grammar and spelling is off ain't my fault)

"Kill me?" he choked. "You think that's going to make me help you? The hope of getting killed?"

They looked at him almost compassionately.

"You may find," said the doctor, "that death may be something you will want very much, only for the purpose of putting a close to a life you've become weary of. Look,"—he gestured around him—"you are locked up beyond any chance of ever escaping. This cage will be illuminated night and day; and you will be locked in it. When we leave, the bridge will be withdrawn, and the only thing crossing that moat—which is filled with acid—will be a mechanical arm which will extend across and through a small opening to bring you food twice a day. Beyond the moat, there will be two armed guards on duty at all times, but even they cannot open the door to this building. That is opened by remote control from outside, only after the operator has checked on his vision screen to make sure all is as it should be inside here."

He gestured through the bars, across the moat and through a window in the outer wall.

"Look out there," he said.

Eldridge looked. Out beyond, and surrounding the building the shallow trench no longer lay still and empty under the sun. It now spouted a vertical wall of flickering, weaving distortion, like a barrier of heat waves.

"That is our final defense, the ultimate in destructiveness that our science provides us—it would literally burn you to nothingness, if you touch it. It will be turned off only for seconds, and with elaborate precautions, to let guards in, or out."

Eldridge looked back in, to see them all watching him.

"We do this," said the doctor, "not only because we may discover you to be more dangerous than you seem, but to impress you with your helplessness so that you may be more ready to help us. Here you are, and here you will stay."

"And you think," demanded Eldridge hoarsely, "that this's all going to make me want to help you?"

"Yes," said the doctor, "because Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>2914

He could not believe it as the days piled up into weeks, and the weeks into months. But as the seasons shifted and the year came around to a new year, the realities of his situation began to soak into him like water into a length of dock piling. For outside, Time could be seen at its visible and regular motion; but in his prison, there was no Time.

Always, the lights burned overhead, always the guards paced about him. Always the barrier burned beyond the building, the meals came swinging in on the end of a long metal arm extended over the moat and through a small hatchway which opened automatically as the arm approached; regularly, twice weekly, the doctor came and checked him over, briefly, impersonally—and went out again with the changing of the guard.

He felt the unbearableness of his situation, like a hand winding tighter and tighter day by day the spring of tension within him. He took to pacing feverishly up and down the cage. He went back and forth, back and forth, until the room swam. He lay awake nights, staring at the endless glow of illumination from the ceiling. He rose to pace again.

The doctor came and examined him. He talked to Eldridge, but Eldridge would not answer. Finally there came a day when everything split wide open and he began to howl and bang on the bars. The guards were frightened and called the doctor. The doctor came, and with two others, entered the cage and strapped him down. They did something odd that hurt at the back of his neck and he passed out.

When he opened his eyes again, the first thing he saw was the doctor's woolly face, looking down at him—he had learned to recognize that countenance in the same way a sheep-herder eventually comes to recognize individual sheep in his flock. Eldridge felt very weak, but calm.

"You tried hard—" said the doctor. "But you see, you didn't make it. There's no way out that way for you."

Eldridge smiled.

"Stop that!" said the doctor sharply. "You aren't fooling us. We know you're perfectly rational."

Eldridge continued to smile.

"What do you think you're doing?" demanded the doctor. EldridPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>2915

Still, time went on and nothing happened. Eldridge paced his cage and lay on his cot, face pressed to the bars of the hatch, and staring at the outside world. Another year passed; and another. The double guards were withdrawn. The doctor came reluctantly to the conclusion that the human had at last accepted the fact of his confinement and felt growing within him that normal sort of sympathy that feeds on familiarity. He tried to talk to Eldridge on his regularly scheduled visits, but Eldridge showed little interest in conversation. He lay on the cot watching the doctor as the doctor examined him, with something in his eyes as if he looked on from some distant place in which all decisions were already made and finished.

"You're as healthy as ever," said the doctor, concluding his examination. He regarded Eldridge. "I wish you would, though—" He broke off. "We aren't a cruel people, you know. We don't like the necessity that makes us do this."

He paused. Eldridge considered him without stirring.

"If you'd accept that fact," said the doctor, "I'm sure you'd make it easier on yourself. Possibly our figures of speech have given you a false impression. We said you are immortal. Well, of course, that's not true. Only practically speaking, are you immortal. You are now capable of living a very, very, very long time. That's all."

He paused again. After a moment of waiting, he went on.

"Just the same way, this business isn't really intended to go on for eternity. By its very nature, of course, it can't. Even races have a finite lifetime. But even that would be too long. No, it's just a matter of a long time as you might live it. Eventually, everything must come to a conclusion—that's inevitable."

Eldridge still did not speak. The doctor sighed.

"Is there anything you'd like?" he said. "We'd like to make this as little unpleasant as possible. Anything we can give you?"

Eldridge opened his mouth.

"Give me a boat," he said. "I want a fishing rod. I want a bottle of applejack."

The doctor shook his head sadly. He turned and signaled the guardPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>2916

Certain mild but emotion-deadening drugs were also known to the woolly, bearlike race. The doctor went out and began to indulge in them. Meanwhile, Eldridge lay on his cot, occasionally smiling to himself. His position was such that he could see out the window and over the weaving curtain of the barrier that ringed his building, to the landing field. After a while one of the large ships landed and when he saw the three members of its crew disembark from it and move, antlike, off across the field toward the buildings at its far end, he smiled again.

He settled back and closed his eyes. He seemed to doze for a couple of hours and then the sound of the door opening to admit the extra single guard bearing the food for his three o'clock mid-afternoon feeding. He sat up, pushed the cot down a ways, and sat on the end of it, waiting for the meal.

The bridge was not extended—that happened only when someone physically was to enter his cage. The monitor screen lit up and a woolly face watched as the tray of food was loaded on the mechanical arm. It swung out across the acid-filled moat, stretched itself toward the cage, and under the vigilance of the face in the monitor, the two-foot square hatch opened just before it to let it extend into the cage.

Smiling, Eldridge took the tray. The arm withdrew, as it cleared the cage, the hatch swung shut and locked. Outside the cage, guards, food carrier and face in the monitor relaxed. The food carrier turned toward the door, the face in the monitor looked down at some invisible control board before it and the outer door swung open.

In that moment, Eldridge moved.

In one swift second he was on his feet and his hands had closed around the bars of the hatch. There was a single screech of metal, as—incredibly—he tore it loose and threw it aside. Then he was diving through the hatch opening.

He rolled head over heels like a gymnast and came up with his feet standing on the inner edge of the moat. The acrid scent of the acid faintly burnt at his nostrils. He sprang forward in a standing jump, arms outstretched—and his clutching fingers closed on the end of the food arm, now halfway in the process of its leisurely mecPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>2917

The doctor was already drugged—but not so badly that he could not make it to the field when the news came. Driven by a strange perversity of spirit, he went first to the prison to inspect the broken hatch and the bent food arm. He traced Eldridge's outward path and it led him to the landing field where he found the commander and the academician by a bare, darkened area of concrete. They acknowledged his presence by little bows.

"He took a ship here?" said the doctor.

"He took a ship here," said the commander.

There was a little silence between them.

"Well," said the academician, "we have been answered."

"Have we?" the commander looked at them almost appealingly. "There's no chance—that it was just chance? No chance that the hatch just happened to fail—and he acted without thinking, and was lucky?"

The doctor shook his head. He felt a little dizzy and unnatural from the drug, but the ordinary processes of his thinking were unimpaired.

"The hinges of the hatch," he said, "were rotten—eaten away by acid."

"Acid?" the commander stared at him. "Where would he get acid?"

"From his own digestive processes—regurgitated and spat directly into the hinges. He secreted hydrochloric acid among other things. Not too powerful—but over a period of time—"

"Still—" said the commander, desperately, "I think it must have been more luck than otherwise."

"Can you believe that?" asked the academician. "Consider the timing of it all, the choosing of a moment when the food arm was in the proper position, the door open at the proper angle, the guard in a vulnerable situation. Consider his unhesitating and sure use of a weapon—which could only be the fruits of hours of observation, his choice of a moment when a fully supplied ship, its drive unit not yet cooled down, was waiting for him on the field. No," he shook his woolly head, "we have been answered. We put him in an escape-proof prison and he escaped."

"But none of this was possible!" cried the commander.

The doctoPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

Just don't do it. You need more than just Calculus I to grasp differential equations, especially partial differential equations.

>>2886

but it's so interesting. ever since i heard of Grigori Perelman using it to solve the Poincare conjecture, i've been enamored with trying to understand it better. stuff like Sobolev spaces, Monge–Ampere equations, Navier-Stokes equations, i feel like they are connected to some of the hardest bust most valuable representations of nature.

The formula depends on the fitted regression of the thing in question. You plot the amount of organisms killed against the dose level used in trials and then fit the points to what is usually a logistic regression. Then you just plug in the whatever X% of dead organisms is to get back the dose required to kill them or the "LDX" value.

>>2862

>>2863

samefag please

if done with precise mathematics they're…. Possible, but in 100-1000 years with the need for them they might be able to create something similar, some think a Laser cable would be better (don't fucking ask me how that works), but anyways I think Fusion powered Rail guns that launch space shuttles would be better.

how would getting a Mar's thats warmed up to have a proper Biosphere without shit fucking up?

>>2626

>or in more advanced terms more protons reflect off the surface

>protons

Protons??

>>2865

>fusion powered rail guns

Why not just a massive series of electromagnets that launch you to space. Way cheaper and doesn't sound like a huge disaster waiting to happen.

>>2900

>Why not just a massive series of electromagnets that launch you to space.

That's what a railgun is. And nuclear fusion could be a viable form of power generation.

Humans, when we realize that we cant save africa.

I guess. I didnt know 8chan /sci/ was so slow and cancerous

>>2894

Vacuum energy.

>>2897

Virtual particles can't be used as energy source as far as i know.

>>2837

>>2837

What im watching at?

Whats your point?

>>2838

ok, basically, science data is good

>the smart kid's parent is black

>the okay kid's parent is gay (blue hair)

>the so-so kid's parent is a beta male engineer

>the idiot kid's parent is a normal middle class white mom

kek, dat SJW reversal. In real life the scale literally looks like the exact opposite of that.

Anyway,

>Is it better to study in a shit place and have good GPA or to study in a good place and have shit/average GPA.

Depends on your goals, but having studied at good places with both good GPA and shit GPA, and also having known people who had good/bad GPA from shit places, I can tell you that you're better off in a shit place. Classes in shit places are easy so might as well have a decent GPA (maybe 3-ish) but even at shitty places but otherwise striving for best GPA is pointless unless you get concrete benefits (like a scholarship for being above 3.50).

There are two reasons to strive for good GPA at a good place: Either you want to be a rock star in your field (eg. CEO of multinational company, director at Bank of America, surgeon general of USA, google project manager, lead engineer at boeing, etc) or you want to go to grad school (at several stages of academic careers the vast majority of people get kicked out and only like the top 5% get to progress to the next stage, like PhD, postdoc, professorship, tenure, etc).

Grad school is a shitty place to be so I don't recommend it, but if you really want to, you're better off being at an ez-pz college, racking up a 4.0, and spending your free time (you should have lots since classes are so easy you hardly ever have to study) volunteering at a lab and getting published. Getting published looks very good on your resume, and it's a lot easier to convince a committee that

>I'm totally smart guys! Trust me, the 4.0 GPA and being valedictorian isn't just because because my shitty no-name uni has no standards!

than

>I'm totally smart guys! I may have gotten a 2.3 GPA, but that's just because my uni is really hard, honest!Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

isn't D considered a failing grade in US unis ?

>>2703

No.

Just no. Okay?

xDDDDDD

>>2882

>bumping shitpost threads

>>2841

Badass

>>2832

solved for r = ∫∫a dt, where a = G*m/r^2, and solved for t = ~329 seconds(less than an hour). Since the ISS isn't a singularity you acn expect your results to be closer to a few days in real life.

>>2879

>Since the ISS isn't a singularity you acn expect your results to be closer to a few days in real life.

that's not how physics works, at least to the radius of longest axis of ISS it will be almost the same as if it were

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_heating

Basically

>magnets

>>2451

any ferrous metal will heat up, but a magnet will float like in the gif.

I recall a decent selection of science/maths pdfs in the gentoomen library. The site is down (probably for good) but you can still look at the site if you use something a service like wayback machine.

The ftp where the files are hosted still works. You can find the address, username, and password on Google. Also there's probably a MEGA with all the files somewhere. It's like 17 GB of pdfs, mostly computer stuff. But I think there's some good science pdfs in there too that you might like.

What I have anyways

http://1drv.ms/1HsCSP9

>>2683

>>2709

>>2742

Take your baggage back to /pol/ please.

>>2744

The 11-15 % differnces between human races isn't negligible.

Granted they're continuous rather than discrete.

>>2744

You first!

>>2349

>this is what held us back during the dark ages

what?

>>1552

Impossible to tell, lesbianiism is quite a bit more complicated than buttloving. But it's almost certainly a combination of genetic predisposition combined with environmental stimulus.

>>2804

What if they're "programmed" to learn to how from start the way human babies are programmed to learn how to walk? Your question is kind of ambiguous. That said, I think I recall somewhere that many lifeforms cannot dynamically adapt their brains the same way humans or mammals can. So maybe the answer is no.

u cant born lesbian.

if u born in town where all people are men. u cant do nothing, all your thoughts is just inheritance

from your expirience.

so if u dont like mens - its only if your parents was not good, your father was too rude, ur friends not too sincerest

>>2846

learn some actual goddamn English