Science
Often a matlab script is inspired by a conversation with a friend,
a slashdot post, or an email, with the goal of exploring the physics
and mathematics of a topic in greater detail.
Despite their simplicity, typically based on elementary algebra and physics,
their results can often be nonintuitive and surprising.
I believe that humans lack the ability to easily
conceptualize outcomes determined by exponential functions.
Many topcis, such as population growth, economic growth,
energy consumption, income distribution, or taxation, when studied
with a simple tool like matlab or scilab can help guide the
intuition, cultivating an exponentially aware mind.
In response to the comments seen in a Slashdot
post,
concerning an
article
published in the Daily Telegraph, the following article
was crafted.
Often in debates such as these people migrate to one of two
opposite poles of the argument, each adopting stereotypic
viewpoints and regurgitating the
memorized pseudofactual information
expected of their position.
The two opposing views, whether they, who adopted them, were
aware of their origins or not, are the positions of the
environmentalist and economist.
The environmentalist espouses the protection of the
environment by limiting that which is extracted from it
and that which is dumped into it.
The idea is to consume only what can be replenished
and to protect that which cannot.
The economist holds paramount the sustained growth of
the economy and considers the consumption of resources as income.
The belief is that capitalism will respond to future
scarcity by finding new sources of energy and introducing
new technologies to reduce the impact on the environment.
A cycle of scientific (and sometimes pseudoscientific)
predictions of impending ecological disaster,
countered with refutations and promises of future solutions ensues.
An alternate perspective, provided by the conservation of energy,
thermodynamics, and reductionism, is offered.
It provides insight by restating the problem in simple terms,
as directed by the laws of physics.
Update: Since the creation of this document, there have been several
documented instances of conspiratorial "googlewashing."
A
Register article,
as mentioned in a
post
on
Slashdot,
which chronicles the
"
Googlewashing"
of the term
"
second superpower,"
is an excellent example of social network theory and its effect on language.
Unfortunately, the Register incorrectly assigns the blame on alluded
conspiratorial behavior of webloggers.
In fact, the phenomenon is not the result of a conspiracy,
but a natural consequence of the dense network that interconnects them.
For those unfamiliar with the article, it describes, how the phrase
"
second superpower,"
coined by Patrick Tyler in the New York Times
on the 17 February 2003,
was coopted by James F Moore in his online weblog a short time later.
Originally used to describe anti-war protests,
its meaning was altered in Moore's blog as a call to net users to
organize themselves as a
"
superpower."
What followed, was the slow but almost complete replacement
of the original definition with the new definition, as defined
by ranked returns from the
Google
search engine.
This provides a synopsis of my sister's 4
th-grade
science-fair project.
Presented in March 2003, she chose the conservation of
angular momentum as her topic.
With the help of her older sister as a model and assistant,
the hardware, photos, and movies were taken as data for the
experiment.
Below are pictures of the project with a movie showing
the conservation of angular momentum in action with a
brief explanation.
