For Reactor & Einstein
- Thread starter RainmanTime
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RainmanTime
Timekeeper
As always with Einstein...change it up, change the premise, wiggle around...anything but answer the precise point made by the poster. Why are you not eager to prove to us that you do not need math with a MUNDANE, proven technology such as flight? Hmmmmm?
The problem with your sleight of hand here, Einstein, is that the jury is still out on time travel. Moreover, I have made it clear on this forum that I do not believe that "time travel" in the romantic sense that most think of it, will ever come to pass. So why would I wish to enter into a competition to build a time machine when I know these things? Neither of us would build one... even though you would make statements along the way of "if I am right this will be the big breakthrough I have been looking for." Unfortunately, you never are right and those breakthroughs never materialize.
The point is to show you can do something complex without math. No need to make it a task that is even questionable that it can be done. An airplane is perfectly acceptable. I will use all my math, and you can "visualize". And we see who flies first and if their vehicle survives.
RMT
RainmanTime
Timekeeper
Hot air and crackpottery. So let me get this straight, just to make sure I clearly understand your response:
So you are saying you think it is perfectly acceptable scientific practice to come to a conclusion about reality based on a SINGLE data point with only subjective data (experience) rather than objective data (measurements)?
Did I get that right? This is what you are saying?
RMT
Einstein2087
Timekeeper
Actually, It can go both ways.
And it is only natural that you prefer one direction over the other, since you believe math isn't a good predictive tool. If a person believes math to be useless, there's little point in basing a visualization on it, right?
But remember that my claim wasn't about how it is "supposed" to be done. I was talking specifically about the real Einstein, and how he came up with his visualizations. And he followed the exact path I've told you. You can disagree with what he did, if you wish, but you cannot claim that he didn't work in this way, because he did.
Yes, but he would never have gone as far as he did without the math. For one thing, he would never have discovered E=mc² without the math. And there are many other effects predicted by the equations of relativity that seem to defy any sort of "visualization", yet they were confirmed by experiments.
I'm not so sure that this is necessary.
The orthodox approach gave us nuclear power, lasers, computers, genetic engineering, men walking on the moon... And the rate of progress continues to be mind-boggling.
So why not antigravity?
And you still haven't answered my most important points. You keep steering the discussion away from the crux of the matter, which is a tactic I find niether respectful nor honest.
Einstein2087
Timekeeper
Well, Einstein, until you actually have a working time machine at your disposal, this is kind of a moot point, isn't it? Right now, the score of this challange is 0:0. So if we want to know whose theory is more useful, we'll need some other yardstick.
Now, the conventional approach to engineering has pretty much all of modern technology - from airplanes to computers to organ transplants to interplanetary probes - to show for itself. What have you got?
Don't get me wrong here. I'm not claiming your visualizations are necessarily wrong. Maybe you are really on to something. But ideas alone are not enough to revolutionize physics. You also have to make them work.
RainmanTime
Timekeeper
Can we get a rimshot from the drummer for Einstein's favorite punchline?
In reality, Einstein, Einstein2087 has been exceedingly fair to you and never even approached my level of "attacks" as you call them. Let's be clear here: You have no one but yourself to blame for you becoming a "sporting pasttime" on this forum. Because if you do not like the way practitioners of honest science (like some of us here) grill you, then you do not have to reply at all.
Did I tell you what my latest unclassified project is at work that I will be using math to make happen? Autonomous Aerial Refueling:
AFRL Announces AAR Phase II
The "integrator" that the article discusses that AFRL was looking for turned out to be the 3 way team that my company (Northrop-Grumman) formed with Boeing and Lockheed-Martin. And I am the chief system architect for this effort. So it is a good thing you did not take-up Darby's challenge... because I am already well ahead of you in creating an autonomous airplane that will be able to refuel itself at an air refueling tanker.... thanks to the wonders and utility of
mathematics! /ttiforum/images/graemlins/devil.gif
RMT
Darby
Timekeeper
Wrong. I get to choose the experiment, not you. It would be self-serving for you, as a participant in the contest, to choose the method.
Design the airplane, sans math, and test fly it with you at the stick.
You chose the name of the game, no bunk math trial and error vs bunk math scientific method. I chose the method for you to prove your point. If you're correct then there should be no unreasonable risk to your health and well being. If you're a loon and wrong then there may well be some degree of risk.
Game on. Just do it.
Einstein2087
Timekeeper
Huh? Attack? What on earth are you talking about?
I simply said that you have ignored my most important points. How is that an attack? It's the simple truth.
Good, because I wasn't trying to impress you. I was trying to have an honest conversation with you. But you aren't making it easy for me, Einstein.
Anyway, I want to tell you that I got absolutely nothing against you. Just because we disagree on some things, doesn't mean I don't respect you as a human being. And if you ever want to have an open and honest discussion with me about any topic in the world, I'm listening.
Have a nice and wonderful day, my friend.
Einstein2087
Timekeeper
Well, this challange isn't very fair... After all, Darby, you can't design an aeroplane either, can you? (And even if you can, the average engineer cannot - at least not by himself).
Einstein, feel free to choose your method of proof. It doesn't even have to be a working piece of technology. After all, the real Einstein wasn't required to build a nuclear bomb in order to prove relativity, was he? His demonstration was something as simple as predicting the effect of the sun's gravity on starlight during an eclipse. If you present us with this kind of evidence, I'll be satisfied.
Of-course, there is no penality for achieving something bigger. If you want to build an actual working device, go for it. And if you prefer to tackle the incredibly difficult problem of time travel over building an aeroplane, that's your choice.
But whatever you have in mind, just do it. Because boasting about things that you haven't done yet is a little silly.
KerrTexas
Timekeeper
Just to throw my two-cents worth into the fray here.
I know that Tesla did many experiments through thought only. When he passed away, many people were dissappointed because there was little in actual notes to go on, as far as building upon his work. He took alot of his ideas with him when he went to the great beyond.
I also experimented around with all kinds of devices, and through the use of mathematics, did not have to spend as much time on some of my ideas, because the numbers didnt support the theory.
It seems to me that it is crucial to have a mathematical adept person involved to be able to save time, effort, and money on many "ideas" since they can run the numbers to see if it even has a chance.
The airplane idea as put forward by Darby brought up images of those humorous films of people trying to build a flying machine. Some of those devices were seriously considered to possibly function.
An aerospace engineer might have saved those pioneers from alot of trouble, and kept them from being included in a future film.
Wish I had an engineer run the numbers first...
However, on the other hand, it is a good thing to have as many people trying to come up with anything, and there might be a chance that somebody "stumbles" onto something.
I know that Tesla did many experiments through thought only. When he passed away, many people were dissappointed because there was little in actual notes to go on, as far as building upon his work. He took alot of his ideas with him when he went to the great beyond.
I also experimented around with all kinds of devices, and through the use of mathematics, did not have to spend as much time on some of my ideas, because the numbers didnt support the theory.
It seems to me that it is crucial to have a mathematical adept person involved to be able to save time, effort, and money on many "ideas" since they can run the numbers to see if it even has a chance.
The airplane idea as put forward by Darby brought up images of those humorous films of people trying to build a flying machine. Some of those devices were seriously considered to possibly function.
An aerospace engineer might have saved those pioneers from alot of trouble, and kept them from being included in a future film.
Wish I had an engineer run the numbers first...
However, on the other hand, it is a good thing to have as many people trying to come up with anything, and there might be a chance that somebody "stumbles" onto something.
Darby
Timekeeper
2087,
First I don't recall that I offered to make the challenge anything like "fair". Fairness is over rated. Standing up for what he believes, "math is a bunch of bunk", and literally putting his life on the line sounds good to me. Second, I didn't say that math is bunk and that trial and error is how its best done; he did. And third, he tried to change my experiment by making it a contest to build time machines.
Gimme a break. He's already built a time machine, a time wave generator and an anti-gravity wave generator in his garage through trial and error, a few Radio Shack parts, a magnet, stick of chewing gum, 3 feet of bailing wire, 110 vac household current and absolutely no math. He's also published a fully developed theory of gravity (condensed explanation: in his theory of gravity space blows rather than matter sucks). Think I'm kidding? Just ask him.
Given that, what the frack is unfair about asking the the galaxy's most brilliant scientist, inventor, as yet undiscovered Nobel Prize recipient and general gad about town to build something as simple as an airplane?
If you're worried about what is and what isn't fair, you should be thinking about poor ol' Ray. He's at a serious disadvantage. All he has going for him is bunk math, his education, training, knowledge and experience. Compared to the God-like qualities of Einstein's brain he hasn't a chance.
It's not unfair to ask him to build an airplane without using math. It's fair as hell, actually.
First I don't recall that I offered to make the challenge anything like "fair". Fairness is over rated. Standing up for what he believes, "math is a bunch of bunk", and literally putting his life on the line sounds good to me. Second, I didn't say that math is bunk and that trial and error is how its best done; he did. And third, he tried to change my experiment by making it a contest to build time machines.
Gimme a break. He's already built a time machine, a time wave generator and an anti-gravity wave generator in his garage through trial and error, a few Radio Shack parts, a magnet, stick of chewing gum, 3 feet of bailing wire, 110 vac household current and absolutely no math. He's also published a fully developed theory of gravity (condensed explanation: in his theory of gravity space blows rather than matter sucks). Think I'm kidding? Just ask him.
Given that, what the frack is unfair about asking the the galaxy's most brilliant scientist, inventor, as yet undiscovered Nobel Prize recipient and general gad about town to build something as simple as an airplane?
If you're worried about what is and what isn't fair, you should be thinking about poor ol' Ray. He's at a serious disadvantage. All he has going for him is bunk math, his education, training, knowledge and experience. Compared to the God-like qualities of Einstein's brain he hasn't a chance.
It's not unfair to ask him to build an airplane without using math. It's fair as hell, actually.
RainmanTime
Timekeeper
:D :D :D It is a rainy day here in SoCal, and it is a non-working Friday for me. I am getting great entertainment out of this thread as I sip my coffee and decide where to go for lunch.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
RMT
RainmanTime
Timekeeper
Good points, Kerr. And let me share one of the most difficult aspects of what I do for a living (control systems) with regard to this idea of how much time is involved with a trial and error approach... and if it is even feasible. Of course, I know Einstein will not accept it at all, but then again has he ever designed any kind of closed-loop, dynamical control system? However, others may glean something from it.
It is fairly easy to understand the high-level basics of a closed-loop control system. I have a physical object or process that I wish to control (we call it "the plant") and this plant has certain physical dynamics. Quantifying those physical plant dynamics in terms of its response to varying frequencies of command stimuli is a whole problem unto itself, and one which would take years by trial and error if you did not use math. Guaranteed. But for the sake of showing how hard it is just to design the control algorithms, let's say we already know the dynamics of how the plant responds to any type of time-varying command.
The high level of the controller structure seems deceivingly simple:
1) I want the plant to achieve a specific value for a specific state...we call that value the COMMAND. For an example, I want an airplane to hold a specific altitude (altitude is the state, the value of altitude I want it to hold is the command). Hence, let us call this the altitude command.
2) I use some form of device that observes the current state of the plant that I wish to control. On aircraft we use a barometric altimeter (a presure sensing device) to determine the actual altitude of the airplane (the plant) above the ground via understanding characteristics of how pressure varies in the atmosphere with respect to altitude. We call this measurement of the actual plant state FEEDBACK. So for the airplane, the barometric altimeter provides us with altitude feedback.
3) We define the difference between the state I want the airplane to be in (COMMAND) and the state that the airplane is currently in (FEEDBACK) as being the ERROR. In this case, the difference between the desired altitude of the airplane and the current altitude of the airplane is called the altitude error.
Already we see we cannot escape mathematics, for the equation to compute the altitude error is:
Altitude Error = Altitude Command - Altitude Feedback
Granted, this is very simple math... and that is what makes the problem to come so much more difficult, because these concepts are pretty damned simple.
So I wish to command the plant (the airplane) to do something to make this error become zero (or as close to zero as I can get). The altitude error signal is the artifact I will use as the basis for what we call the "control law" that will command the airplane to make the error approach zero.
But now I have the first problem: The device used to control the airplane's altitude is the elevator and it moves in an angular displacement on a hinge on the tail of the airplane. So we measure elevator displacement in terms of its deflection in degrees. But the error signal I am measuring is in terms of feet. How do I convert (properly!) so that the altitude error in feet becomes an elevator command in degrees? The answer is a conversion factor that, in the controls world, we call the "gain". (Things are already getting more complex, but wait until you see what lies ahead!).
So if I multiply the altitude error by some gain, whose units would be [degrees/foot] then at least we know how to go from feet to degrees.
Elevator Command (Degrees) = Altitude Error Gain (Degrees/Foot) * Altitude Error (Feet)
But now how do I know what the right value is for this gain? That is an entire mathematical problem in itself that I will not go into here. Suffice it to say it takes time to figure out even if you use math. To figure it out via trial and error will take a lot more time.
We call the above the "proportional control command", because the command of the elevator is propotional to the altitude error. The constant of proportionality is the Altitude Error Gain. Many might think "great! I am now done with my control law design." Wrong. If you were to only implement a proportional control command for altitude control in an airplane, you would very quickly find that the performance of the airplane would be pretty sloppy over most of the flight envelope (altitude and airspeed) range that the airplane could fly.
Using trial and error you MAY have gotten lucky enough to find the right gain for ONE combination of altitude and airspeed. But it would be guaranteed this gain would not work for all combinations. At other altitudes and airspeeds we might see the airplane oscillate above and below the desired altitude over time...sometimes with LARGE oscillations (maybe even hundreds of feet if the gain is REALLY off). This response is a sign that the gain is too high, which induces the oscillations. Other times we may see airplane seem to be perfectly "happy" to hold an altitude that is (for example) 100 feet below the desired altitude with no attempt to correct it. This is a sign the gain is too low. So how do we fix this?
Well, the classical way to fix it is to add MORE control paths in addition to the simple proportional command. This is where calculus comes in handy. This leads to a classical control scheme called a Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller. We have already talked about the proportional component, so what are the other two?
The "INTEGRAL control command" is where we take the Altitude Error signal and run it through a calculus integrator (basically it is continuously summing the errors over time). The units that go into this integrator are (same as before) in terms of feet of error in holding altitude. But the output units of this are in feet*seconds (because an integrator operates over time...in seconds). This integrating process will "amplify" the error signal as a means to fix the problem where the airplane constantly holds an altitude too high above or too low below the desired altitude (i.e. the problem where the proportional gain is too low). Suffice it to say, we will also need to apply a gain on the integral control command to make sure the output of the integrator commands the elevator in degrees*seconds and not feet*seconds. Another task to find the right gain!!
The "DERIVATIVE control command" does the opposite of the integral command. It runs the altitude error signal through a rate-taker (it takes the calculus derivative of the error). The output of this process is in units of feet/second (as opposed to feet*seconds with the integrator). This control command path is intended to fix the other problem we talked about before...oscillations about the desired altitude. By selecting the right "derivative gain" for the altitude error signal, we can tame down (dampen out) the oscillations. That is why the derivative control command is also sometimes referred to as the "damping command".
So now we get to the punchline... we have a design structure that will actually achieve altitude hold. Now all we have to do is find the right values for the three gains: Proportional Gain, Integral Gain, and Derivative Gain. Sounds easy, right? Far from it. But there are actually people who can come to understand everything I have just explained, and still think "well, all I have to do is run an airplane simulation over and over, and use trial and error of setting these gains until I get perfect control performance." Each aerospace engineering controls student is actually FORCED to try this "trial and error" method with a simple aircraft simulation, and a simple PID control scheme. The task I give my students is, within one week, to come back and tell me what the gains should be to get good altitude hold performance over the entire flight envelope, using only trial and error. To-date, NO ONE has ever been able to succeed...and one class asked for another week....still couldn't do it.
That is when we introduce the students to the complex mathematics of LaPlace Transforms and frequency domain analysis. We use this difficult (but valuable) mathematics to analyze the dynamics of the plant and the controller as a whole. Using this mathematics process, an engineer can arrive at the proper gains for the PID controller in a matter of hours.
Even if Einstein was not willing to take Darby's entire airplane challenge, I would enjoy just humbling him a little with ONLY a single-axis control law like this. I would even be willing to GIVE HIM a Simulink model of an airplane, and then let him build a controller all on his own through trial and error.... heck, I would even be willing to give him a PID control law structure, and leave ONLY the task of finding the right gains to him via trial and error. I can guarantee everyone that Einstein would not be able to find the correct gains through trial and error, even if I gave him MONTHS to do so.
This has been a little window into my world. Anyone (like Einstein) who claims that you don't need math for difficult problems like this, and that trial and error will get you where you want to go, is hopelessly uninformed and clueless. And I am willing to prove it to him.
RMT
reactor1967
Timekeeper
Well I guess better late than never. I finally caught this post. I will take a look at those videos. I have been downloading some stuff from dvdmathtutor.com. I have calc 1&2, algebra2 and matrix algebra, and probability and statistics. I know how to save the videos from youtube. What I don,t have is stuff on physics. So, will go check it out.
Dang, I'm not sure mathtutordvd holds a candle to all them videos. I got some downloading to do. And, I also want my kids to look at them. My oldest daughter is already dreading summer coming around because I told her she would spend 30 minutes a day on math. It will be good for her.
reactor1967
Timekeeper
Einstein you are right. I have been heavy into my code lately. I have been improving my code (making it faster.) to decode a weak checkum into a file and writting helper bots to weed through the hundreds of gigs of data I have sitting on my hard drive. I will never be able to read or look at it all so I have been writing and improving code to sort through all that stuff.
reactor1967
Timekeeper
Actually this is not a bad suggestion but as Ray probably already knows this is easier said than done. Which brings me to the point that I have been trying to do exactly that lately but it is more of a robotic hoover craft that looks like a helicopter. I found I have to calculate thrust, since I am using brushless motors I have to build my motors because they are expensive and I have to program pic(microcontrollers or basic stamps.) to make the motors run. I have to be able to calculate the power my motors will draw and design a proper power supply using lithium batteries. I have to know the RPM's of my motors and the voltages they will be using. The more voltage the faster they turn. Since I am using duct fans I have to be careful to use good parts so my motors don,t fly appart. I am sure ray could add a lot more to this. I downloaded open flight linux from openflightlinux.org to run operating system since I want it to be robotic. I took a old mother board from a compaq I am hoping it will work with that. Right now I am on building a pic programer. Basicly my design is three duct fans facing up. two up front and one in the back. I reduce the power in the back to make it back up and reduct the power to the front two motors to make it go foward. I will drop the power a little on the right or the left to make it go left or right. I probably will crash it if I can get it up but that is the process of learning. I plan to fly it using morse code (The computer will send it I just push the buttons.) and make my own transmitter and receiver. I agree with Darby here. Making something fly is way easier said than done. But, the RC group forum I joined those guys make it sound easy. They go out to their shops and throw stuff together and fly it several days later. Im still stuck on getting my circuits built. I don,t won,t to buy anything I don,t have to so I have my work cut out for me. To make matters worse the FAA has rules too. In a populated area 4 pounds is the max weight and I think in a unpopulated area 12 pounds is the max weight. And, It has to be line of sight only I can,t send it out on private missions. It is hard to have fun when the goverment gets involved.
