soliciting potential science or math topics

[gumpzilla]

While occasionally amusing, I find the endless stream of posts about religion and general Sklanskyanity in this forum to be a little boring. And I'd love to see more science and math content. I'm trying at the moment to think up something interesting to post along those lines, since I think the best way to move things in the right direction is by actually producing content. But it's pretty difficult to come up with something to write that hits the sweet spot of being both intelligible to an interested lay audience and also contains deep, interesting content. It makes me appreciate the difficulty of good popular science writing.

So I guess I'm looking for ideas for good things to write about, and not necessarily for myself. There are a pretty good number of science and math types around here who I bet would have interesting things to say if prompted, or if they had an idea what people would like to hear about. I have a couple of things that once I understand them better I think would be fun to talk about - decoherence and Schrodinger's cat seems like it would be fun - but I'm not quite there yet. What are you interested in?

I am guilty of contributing to the religion topics, but I agree with you. I would like to see more science topics in this forum.

[kbfc]

There's a guy over on DailyKos who posts the most amazing science articles. I've had a good enough education so that I'm at the point where I basically know how most things work - not necessarily every single detail, but the main physical principles and ideas. I haven't really learned anything new from any of his posts, but I'm still enthralled by them. There's something beautiful about a well-written explanation about something in our universe.

Anyway, I had been thinking that a similar article might have an audience here. Something like, "how my computer works," at a pretty detailed level, but still completely accessible, even if you haven't studied electrical engineering. I dunno.....is this what you were thinking of?

[jester710]

Don't forget that this forum is titled Science, Math, and Philosophy. Most of what is discussed here is actually theology. I'm by no means an expert on philosophy, but I do enjoy reading/thinking/talking about it, and would appreciate any discussions from likeminded people who use small enough words that I can understand them.

[RJT]

I bought my first PC probably within the first year or so ('79, '80?) that they really started being practical to use (at least for me.) It was a Compaq portable with 2 floppy drives - no hard drive. I basically taught myself how to use it - it ran on DOS of course. I got accustomed to using DOS and the logical way to navigate it. When Windows came out (I never made the leap over to Apple) it took me a while to convert to Windows. I resisted. Then when I did, It took me a while to get the hang of it - again, pretty much self-taught.

Well, to make an already long story as short as I can - the technology developed so fast that I never had time to catch up to all the workings of PC’s of today. I miss not having the comfort level that I had when I understood DOS. I navigate around fine with Windows, etc. and all. And I understand you are talking more of the mechanics.

To answer your question - I would be very interested in learning “how my computer works” and things of that nature.

[chezlaw]

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To answer your question - I would be very interested in learning “how my computer works” and things of that nature.

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If you mean conceptually then not much has changed since Von Neumann and Turing. Plenty of interesting topics just from those two.

Dos was good, I go back to CPM which was much cleaner. Compaq founded in 1982.

chez

[gumpzilla]

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If you mean conceptually then not much has changed since Von Neumann and Turing. Plenty of interesting topics just from those two.

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Yeah, but that's pretty abstract. I think one could give a more concrete discussion about how a computer does what it does at the very base level, too, hitting on such topics as: what are transistors, what do they do and how do they work, how does memory work, etc.

I like the direction this thread is going, these are responses along the line I was looking for. And yes, I'm not averse to more discussion of philosophy provided the topics discussed are somewhat more diverse.

[kbfc]

This is what I was getting at. I'm talking about how it works at maybe the atomic level, and then how you build upon those foundations to make something like one of those new fangled CPUs with billions of itty-bitty parts, all so you can argue about religion with someone across the globe.

I might try to write this. I only hope that I can write in such a way that it stays interesting. I, personally, think it's fascinating; I'd like to somehow share that fascination.

[RJT]

Sounds very interesting.

Do you think you will be able to keep it readable for the layman? If you can’t (or choose not to) I understand. I’ll look forward to it either way.

[kbfc]

That's my hope. I think there's got to be a way to get it across in an interesting way that still remains understandable to everyone. I think it's a fascinating story about how the human mind was able to derive an incredible device from some very basic fundamentals. I'll try to get something together - at least a first chapter, so to speak.