How does someone become a "golden boy" as a lot of people call it? Do you get a perfect GPA, go to universities with small classes, etc?
A golden boy as people seem to refer to is: Someone who is groomed and/or mentored by someone to actually become something in a field instead of a replaceable lab rat who gets burned from going into grad school.
What the hell are you talking about
you do not become one
you are chosen
It involves really actually caring about your field, and wanting to learn, explore, and do everything there is to be done in it. And yes, the bigshots are well capable of telling that apart from fakes.
/sci/ I want to play a game.
It's called which continent is more HARDCORE.
Okay, so we all know what can happen when you introduce a non-native species to an area. If they have no natural predators their numbers will skyrocket and they will take over everything and cause a domino affect affecting other forms of life too.
The rules are you could take any quantity of different species from a continent and introduce maximum 50 members of each species to another continent.
Which continent would lose their native population and get fucked up more than the other one? Which ones will be left standing?
Which animals, plants, bacteria would you introduce.
All forms of life are allowed.
GOGOGOGO!!!!!
>>7725576
*effect
Anyway I'll go first.
I say Africa.
North America's probably last because we're constantly getting fucked over by non native species.
Australia wins, and you know it.
GRIZZLY BEARS IN AFRICA
WHAT HAPPENS?
Hey /sci/
anyone in here in the bioplastics industry? Or at least have insider knowledge?
I wanna do a back of the envelope cost-benefit analysis, TL;DR how many cents/lb to turn sugar into PLA pellets
>>7730571
No but I'm a chemical engineer. I can do a back of the envelope calc for you if I can find a general synthesis path from some commonly available sugar to polylactic acid.
>brb googling
>>7730658
well I found this
http://www.academia.edu/4705232/Cost_Benefit_Analysis_of_Bioplastic_Production_in_Thailand
but idk I don't want to sign up or is academia.edu not bullshit?
also this
http://www.ourhealthyfuture.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/the_business_case_for_commercial_production_of_bioplastics_in_maine_final.pdf
reading through it not quite at the relevant bits yet.
AFAIK first step is just lactic acid fermentation, which would be almost free. But then there's the purification to polymer grade lactic acid, conversion to lactide, and then polymerization of the lactide monomers, I have no idea how any of these would go.
Found this though http://www.gizmag.com/bioplastic-pla-cheaper-production-process/38498/
I basically have access to a lot of inedible sugar.
>>7730672
also wondering how high the yield of lactic acid would be from natural fermentation, problem being the bacteria just keep on fermenting until they die. I'm wondering if there's a way to extract or at least separate cheaply the sugars to keep the fermentation going until the bacteria just run out of sugars.
Hello, /sci/.
Complete science neophyte here.
I was having a debate about the sun today with a coworker. He said he wished the sun would just disappear because it was blinding him at that moment. Anyway, our point of contention centered around what would happen to the Earth if the sun just instantaneously disappeared. If it just "flashed" or "zapped" or whatever out of existence.
My argument was this - that after the sun disappeared, the Earth would flash freeze immediately after the ~8 minutes it takes for solar radiation to reach us - that it would actually be like those flash freezing scenes in that shitty "Day After Tomorrow" movie.
His argument was that the earth's freezing would be delayed due to stored warmth in the oceans and in earth's atmosphere, that it would take up to a day for the Earth to freeze.
I'm pretty sure I'm right, but not 100% certain. I mean, it would be going from sun to deep space in an instant.
Which one of us is right?
>tl;dr - what would happen to the Earth if the sun just instantaneously disappeared?
He is.
That scene is bunk.
>>7730562
>> https://what-if.xkcd.com/49/
Everything relevant that you need.
>>7730565
I knew it was in the context of that shit-ass Hollywood garbage, but wouldn't an immediate temperature change to almost absolute zero cause the Earth to flash-freeze? If not, how long would it take?
I'm tripping on acid right now but I was watching this video
https://youtu.be/JrOG1tKAatg
and it made me wonder why you can do this for exponentiation if you can't do this for multiplication or addition.
You can't, and it doesn't. The argument in that video shows that IF there is an x such that x^x^x^... = 2, then x must be sqrt(2) (or -sqrt(2), which the video ignores). That does not mean that such an x actually exists. (Note that this is the same process going on in your picture.)
In fact, it's not even clear whether x^x^x^... even means anything, much less what it equals. Meaningful interpretations can be given, but it's not cut and dry.
>>7730189
i could tell you, but then i'd have to kill you
>>7730189
For addition:
Any constant, regardless of how small, will not converge to a constant when an infinite number of terms are added.
For multiplication:
The expression at the top can be simplified to
[math]
x= \limit_{k \to \infty} 2^{\frac{1}{k}}
[/math]
which is evidently 1, but only because any number greater than 1 will diverge when multiplied infinite times. The same could be said for any constant.
What do you think about the relationship between religion and science?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_religion_and_science
My feelings on the subject are better articulated by Heisenberg, who said:
“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you."
They're different things. That's it. There is no relationship. They're not on a level playing field.
Someone who in 2015 is religious clearly hasn't got a clue of what evidence is and what it's for. Consequently, they can't be a real scientist; at best they can be useful grunts that get by by aping the motions of their betters.
>thinks iq is scientific
>>7729799
>just scored 115 on iqtest.com
When will this butthurt /sjw/ raid is gonna end ? We get it you don't like IQs because white people are good at it. You don't need to make ironic shitposting threads and flood /sci/ with your butthurt all day long.
>>7729818
I'm a white racist from /pol/
/lit/ on science
>>>/lit/7477592
> implying consciousness isn't completely materialistic.
>>7729652
I don't debate people who are unwilling to ever consider the possibility of their own view being wrong. Philosotards are as dogmatic as they are delusional.
>>7729959
sounds like a pretty lame excuse for lack of counterarguments desu senpai
How did you find out what's the best possible way to learn? Like, at first you struggle and don't know how to approach a topic. But now you've gotten to this point where you just execute and learn this stuff and even remember it without problems.
It seems like most things I learn are pretty fast forgotten. Any ideas?
>>7729625
As corny as it may sound, practice makes perfect.
Take time out to do homework and study well before you have to. If you always do your homework at the last second you will be in a rush to complete not learn the material.
When you do your homework write it neatly and carefully so that you learn it well at first and can review it easily later on.
In Freshman year of college I just did homework and handed it in, never bothering to save or organize my notes. After my second semester sophomore year I started to save and organize my homework in notebooks. Its a lot easier to review and read my past work now.
>>7729625
I started smoking in exam weeks. It helps you concentrate.
>>7729625
Find out what type of memory you have.
Can science make extremely retarded people normal again?
No. Thats not what "science" does
That's the plot of Flowers for Algernon
>>7729599
Yes once we cure the world of religion
Is math a meme?
Meme: An element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.
>>7729591
What isn't these days?
Do you talk like this in real life?
Every math course at uni should be proof based tbqh pham
>>7729527
what are they in your uni lol?
Even numerical methods have associated proofs of convergence.
>>7729527
I agree but I feel weird about it. I wish that everyone, not only math majors like myself, would approach mathematics through proof based problems instead of the usual 'solve it' approach. But then I think that no engineer, physicist, chemist, etc. will ever be even close to proving a new theorem by themselves so it is a bit pointless to teach them the logic of proofs.
What do you think about that?
>>Expects us to believe because he memorized a proof and it's consequences he understands the material.
ITT: Cool elementary paradoxes/unintuitive stuff
>>7729491
In general rings you can have much smaller examples. Zero char fields a shit
>>7729491
>>7729491
[math]\int_0^{\infty} \mathrm{sinc}\left(\frac x1\right) dx=\frac{\pi}2[/math]
[math]\int_0^{\infty} \mathrm{sinc}\left(\frac x1\right)\cdot \mathrm{sinc} \left(\frac x3\right)dx=\frac{\pi}2[/math]
[math]\int_0^{\infty} \mathrm{sinc}\left(\frac x1\right)\cdot \mathrm{sinc} \left(\frac x3\right)\cdot \mathrm{sinc}\left(\frac x5\right)dx=\frac{\pi}2[/math]
[math]\cdots[/math]
[math]\int_0^{\infty} \mathrm{sinc}\left(\frac x1\right)\cdot \mathrm{sinc} \left(\frac x3\right)\cdot \mathrm{sinc}\left(\frac x5\right)\cdots \mathrm{sinc}\left(\frac x{13}\right)dx=\frac{\pi}2[/math]
[math]\int_0^{\infty} \mathrm{sinc}\left(\frac x1\right)\cdot \mathrm{sinc} \left(\frac x3\right)\cdots \mathrm{sinc} \left(\frac x{15}\right)dx =\frac{467807924713440738696537864469}{
935615849440640907310521750000}\pi[/math]
>>7729535
You know what fucks me up? Infinity. Very idea of infinity is pretty crazy.
First up, real number infinity is pretty easy to grasp, because these numbers represent an definable countable object or what ever. Then you get the infinity of Pi and that shit. What ever, easy stuff.
What fucks me up is space, if you were to travel in one direction forever. You would ALWAYS find new "space". There is no edge, and if there was... would it make sense? But then how could it possibility exist infinity, and then how could just the idea of our universe exist without creation. I mean every particle, energy exists in a system, infinitely and always changing states or existing. But always existing. We exist because more matter exists than anti-matter. But what came first? The very fundamental particle we're all made up of, or the universe?
Doesn't even the idea of the string theory blow your mind? Because we can break up the quarks, then keep going, and going until we make up the fundamental particle. But what is that fundamental particle made up of? Just itself, but how does it exist just within itself that it made up everything but still it's here? Like how is this "string" particle able to make up fucking everything you see, but. It wasn't created by anything else?
It blows your mind because it's doesn't fucking exist outside of math mental wankery.
The "space" is infinite by definition. it means empty area, which is what you get by default. It's a pretty understandable concept. The matter that fills the space is finite and has a limit and ends somewhere.
It's not mindblowing at all.
>>7729388
Just because something is defined as infinite doesn't justify it to be understandable to finite minds, aka us (humans).
Schrödinger's cat is a meme-tier thought experiments that holds no real significance or scientific merit.
Its only purpose is for normies to say
> oh i am such le nerd ;) quantum physics amirite lol i love sheldon ZIMBABWE
fucking assholes pride themselves on their understanding of it, but it's so simple and dumbed down a 7 year old could understand it.
>>7729319
/sci/ is not your fucking eco chamber retard.
[spoiler]But yes.[/spoiler]
>>7729319
>normies
you do know that using terms such as the one above make you look like an über-cringe-inducing clot, don't you
>>7729324
> current year
> uses the word über
Not sure who the cringe is here