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Revision as of 20:39, 10 January 2002

There was some other talk at /talk . All discussion of the page should be on THIS page, not comments or forum or anything of the sort.

I have rewritten this page from scratch, because it was flatly idiotic before. Now it is merely lame. --Jimbo Wales

Importance in understanding Fundamental Dimensions

It's important to focus on the Fundamental Dimensions used in physics, so we can understand at any given point of any given physics discussion what we are talking about.

Infact, if you add 2 apples to 2 apples you get 4 apples. But if you add 2 apples to 3 oranges... what do you get? Yes, you get 5 fruits, but you will loose the particular aspect of the apple and of the orange that you started with. So let's focus on the fact that usually we deal with 4 fundamental dimensions or units in:

Length measure

Time measure

Mass measure

Electric charge measure

... and that we CAN NOT obviously add a Time measurement (say 5 seconds) to a Length measurement (say 1 mile) because it makes ABSOLUTELY NO sense.

(1 sec + 1 mile = ???)

From these 4 dimensions we can talk about the 80% of ALL physics problems existing now or in the future... (Future?? Who knows the future?)

If you want to talk of the other 20% you need to add other 3 dimensions

Thermodynamic temperature measure

Amount of substance measure

Luminous intensity measure

Once we agreed on so... How would you measure ESP ([Extra Sensorial Perceptions]?)? (LOL) :) (So we can talk about 101 % of physics now, say metaphysics)

little guru

Thanx Jimbo, for letting me appear less idiotic.

Very obliged.

)

little guru

I'm not sure about the tone of this article. Doesn't this discussion belong under 'dimensional analysis'?

The Anome

Hmm, nah, I've added this new page as a link to the physics page under the "Concepts" paragraph.

Little guru

Yes, you did that, but the question is whether a link to dimensional analysis (and maybe adding some information to that page) wouldn't have sufficed.

AxelBoldt

And whilst we're at it, what about geometric algebra? (See http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~clifford/introduction/intro/intro.html for a discussion).

The Anome

I worked as a computer science technician in 2 different Electrotechnical labs, and I can assure you that imaginary numbers exist in the calculus of alternate currents.

Is this what you were aiming to talk about?

Little guru

No, I'm not claming that complex numbers don't exist. I was talking about vector sums between quantities of different dimensions. Of course all of these notations are abstractions - do the natural numbers 'exist' in reality? How 'real' they (and all the other abstractions) are in physical theory has only to do with the falsifiability of their predictions.

The Anome

I think this material is (or should be covered) on dimensional analysis. Also, the tone is too colloquial here.

AxelBoldt

So what Axelboldt, you don't like having a [small talk]? once every while?

little guru

As a matter of fact, I don't like small talk very much, but that is besides the point. This is an encyclopedia. --AxelBoldt

... and that we CAN NOT obviously add a Time measurement (say 5 seconds) to a Length measurement (say 1 mile) because it makes ABSOLUTELY NO sense.

It would make quite lot of sense. In fact, it's quite often being done in physics.

5 seconds + 1 mile = 5.0000053681938 seconds = 931412.99 miles.

Taw

Sorry, but i got to disagree with that Taw.

Because V=S/t where

- V = Velocity

- S = Space

- t = Time

Because 1 mile=1.609 Kilometers

Because the speed of light is 300,000,000 km/sec that is 186,451,211 miles per second

Because of the fact that a light ray needs 0,000005363 seconds to "run" for a mile (that is 5,36E-6 in exp notation)

What are you adding?

Duh?

5 oranges + 1 apple = 5.0000053681938 oranges = 931412.99 apples

LOL

We could become MILLIONAIRES? at the speed of light in selling fruit! (apples of course)

ROTFL

Q.E.D.

little guru