Spyke
lemmy.ca

My third year thermodynamics course opened with a similar quip by the lecturer. Entropy is actually depressing. You can't fight it. You can't not fight it. It just wins.

143

So.. that's why I never tidy up my room. I'm just too smart!

42
lemmy.dbzer0.com

Man, you humans are going to be really upset when you find the universal wall....

I mean uh....

Hey, how was the game last night amirite?

25

Yeah he played his most popular hit "Move" and people went nuts as usual.

1

All we have to decide is what to do with the entropy that is given us.

12

Life is a temporary win over it, just enjoy it while you can.

5

Well I mean yeah. It wasn't my first existential crisis - you get used to them eventually. Or you do what those guys did I guess.

4

One opening line that's always stuck with me is:

"The doctor said I was a paranoid schizophrenic. Well, he didn't actually say it, but we knew he was thinking it."

113
lemmy.ca

We are all gas with a slightly denser particle distribution.

🔫

50

We all are vast collections of harmonic oscillators.

23
RGB3x3reply
lemmy.world

Can't have computer science without physics.

27
lemmy.world

I'm not entirely sure of that. You can't have comp sci without algebra and potentially calculus. I could see a society that developed all three fields before they codified Physics

7
forcereply
lemmy.world

How do you have computer science without calculus? Calculus is literally necessary for computer science, otherwise it'd just be like... shitty statistics with a little programming

1
Miaoureply
jlai.lu

Care to expand? Things like complexity theory and type theory, for example, have nothing to do with calculus

7
forcereply
lemmy.world

In general, a lot of the stuff computer science shares with data science uses calculus, a lot of the statistics too, but also visuals and modelling other sciences (e.g. simulations) use calculus heavily. I recall utilising vector calc a decent amount when working with Vulkan, for example

1
Miaoureply

Sounds like programming more than CS, in that case, fair enough. Also the linear algebra in computer graphics is, well, algebra, not calculus.

1
lemmy.world

It would be inelegant as all fuck, but you could get away with just algebra, there are comp sci courses that only need algebra as the foundation.

2

as far as i can tell, the ones that do that are usually just programming courses with "computer science" slapped onto the title. but i havent exactly gone to many colleges so i don't have the experience to say so.

2
lemmy.dbzer0.com

Do you really think people could make programmable microchips and processing units before they figured out physics?

0
lemmy.world

No, but mechanical computers existed before microchips. They just weren't terribly useful

5

Once I get my mechanical computer to run crysis we'll see who's laughing.

5
Honytawkreply
lemmy.zip

Wouldn't you also need to know physics in order to make a mechanical computer?

1

What kind of argumentation is this? Are we talking about mechanical engineering or computer science? Please don't bent reality the way it fits your shape.

-2

Sure you can. Physics is describing what is, computer science is building what could be

The two things require very little overlap. Even physics systems in video games don't use real physics - it just feels better when you fudge it

2
midwest.social

My favorite class in grad school. I absolutely loved deriving the laws of thermodynamics from first principles based the random motion of atoms. It was beautiful.

22
Avgreply

Is the grad school in the room now? Do you need help?

5
Avgreply
lemm.ee

If you didn't study this in elementary school, I don't know what kind of bullshit school you went to.

8
lemmy.world

Umm, this is the first thing we were taught on the first day of kindergarten.

6
lemmy.world

I don't know. I like Griffith's Quantum Mechanics which opens saying if you think you're starting to understand this stuff, you really haven't.

20

Boltzmann is "riff-raff" now?!? I get what you're going for, but c'mon.

8
lemmy.ml

I dunno, I usually open a textbook by turning over the front cover 🥁

10

Why do we have a 🌫️ emoji instead of a cymbal? It would compliment the drum emoji so well.

5
mander.xyz

...and then we take the partial derivative of the log of this infinite sum wrt molar volume to find that--

- Why?

Why what?

- helplessly gestures at the whiteboard

Oh, yeah, it's so the math works out later! Anyway, for small Θ, the derivative has a nice closed form that we can Tailor expand in f-

13

Yeah lol, lots of physics and math was invented by multidisciplinary geniuses who saw equations that seemed to have no answer and said "oh yeah, this looks like a problem from biology that I've seen solved with this bit of fluid mechanics, and that problem can be solved with this complex trick from differential calculus. And you know, after we do that the whole system is starting to look like a circuit that uses properties from thermodynamics..."

Then your teacher and the textbook throws it on a white board and says "some smart dude figured out this was the way to solve this problem. It looks like this and it boils down to this equation. Don't ask questions."

16

There's a mechanics textbook called "there once was a classical theory" and it opens with:

There once was a classical theory Of which quantum disciples were leery. They said, “Why spend so long On a theory that’s wrong?” Well, it works for your everyday query!

8