Re: 700/23 vs 700/25 tires ?



In article
<224132b3-39ad-42be-945c-880a6066cbca@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Frank Krygowski <frkrygow@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Feb 24, 11:22 pm, Michael Press <rub...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article
<fa370054-cfef-4a46-a832-22b229ecf...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
 Frank Krygowski <frkry...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Just a side note:  That's also how you do engineering problems; but
engineers are trained not to oversimplify, because being simplistic
won't get the job done.  Physicists are sometimes not clear on that.

Physicists do a lot of approximation; they stack approximation
upon approximation. Seriously. Go to Landau and Lifschitz,
Theory of Elasticity and look at how much approximation
they do before they get to some hair differential equations
that need further approximation to solve. Finally their
results get to the engineers.  Thing is, those physicists
are good at it. EM theory: antennae, interaction of matter
and EM, optics. More approximatons. Condensed matter, crytals.
How do we get any usable answeres out of quantum theory?
Show me where physicists go astray.

Already ansered, I think. For example, that physicist went astray
when he implied that producing holograms is not complicated - that
"it's just a Fourier transform." Dismissing all complication, all
practicalities, is going astray.

The remark is entirely out of context. I can imagine
several contexts, one of which is a clueless somebody made a
categorical statement exhibiting his utter ignorance
of the mathematics of holograms.

Why was that physicist there anyway? Was he a paid consultant?


And we see that here when (for example) someone implies that a 3 gram
drag reduction in a wind tunnel really will lead to a two-second
improvement in a race time.


In article
<fa370054-cfef-4a46-a832-22b229ecfeb0@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Frank Krygowski <frkrygow@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Sure - right. But you don't even have to understand Fourier
transforms to produce a good hologram.

But it helps. Saves a lot of time; unless they already rely
on work done by people who necessarily must understand
Fourier transforms. There is little enough to know about
FT's for all of engineering. It's like trigonometry. You
can learn enough for an engineering lifetime in a week.
The mathematics can occupy a someone for a good long time.

To do them as we did, you do
need to understand lasers, optics, process environmental control,
electronic and computer control of complicated machines, geometry,
machining, plating chemistry, etc. etc. (Not to mention economics,
business, OSHA...) There's a LOT of stuff beyond the math theory. But
that guy was interested only in the theory. He could never make a
hologram.

Are you saying that research and development for this product
did not include a couple desk-high stacks of offprints from
physics journals?

--
Michael Press
.



Relevant Pages

  • Re: 700/23 vs 700/25 tires ?
    ... Physicists are sometimes not clear on that. ... Physicists do a lot of approximation; ... results get to the engineers. ... Condensed matter, crytals. ...
    (rec.bicycles.tech)
  • Re: 700/23 vs 700/25 tires ?
    ... Physicists do a lot of approximation; ... results get to the engineers. ... Show me where physicists go astray. ...
    (rec.bicycles.tech)
  • Re: Bidirectional logic level shifting from positive to negative supply
    ... A friend who's biz went belly up once told me "Yeah, it hurts. ... There aren't so many among the experimentalists and gizmo-builders, for the same reason as the engineers. ... Examples are Shockley's eugenics, 'quantum logic', multiverses, and Hawking's theology. ... Physicists are almost all shockingly bad philosophers and theologians, because they're taught to use leaps of intuition supported by very sloppy math and relying on Nature to correct them via experiment. ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • Re: Epistemology 201: The Science of Science
    ... Metaphysics examined by physicists and engineers would begin with the ... certain small fraction of which will probably become Creative Geniuses ... Plurality of Theories and the Plurality of Theories to which every ...
    (sci.cognitive)
  • Re: Epistemology 201: The Science of Science
    ... Metaphysics examined by physicists and engineers would begin with the ... certain small fraction of which will probably become Creative Geniuses ... Plurality of Theories and the Plurality of Theories to which every ...
    (sci.physics)