It behooves us always to remember that in physics it has taken great minds to discover simple things. They are very great names indeed which we couple with the explanation of the path of a stone, the droop of a chain, the tints of a bubble, the shadows in a cup.
The next [major] thrust [in biology], the one that may bring us closer to the Archimedian ideal of science, we may expect to come from information theory.
At the dawn of the twentieth century, it was already clear that, chemically speaking, you and I are not much different from cans of soup. And yet we can do many complex and even fun things we do not usually see cans of soup doing.
Food is a product of economic supply and demand, so try to figure out where the supplies are fresh, the suppliers are creative, and the demanders are informed.
I don’t like a business where the assets go up and down on elevators. I like them to be fixed, hung on poles, or up in space going around.
Books have always been digital, not analog. Even when made of paper & ink, they are sequences of discrete symbols.
Books have always been digital, not analog. Even when made of paper & ink, they are sequences of discrete symbols. That is all.
— James Gleick (@JamesGleick) June 7, 2011
Artin very wisely identifies these matrix groups as more fundamental–and they are. They come up much more in mathematics. Linear algebra is the central subject of mathematics. You cannot learn too much linear algebra. That’s the basic principle for all of you going on in mathematics.
Linear algebra is presented as sort of stupid stuff, [but] you cannot learn too much linear algebra.
So, we’d better bridle our speculations, lest we run the risk that someone like LeCarre’s Smiley asks us one day: ‘What dreams did you cherish that had so little of the world in them?’
This pressure can be calculated by minimizing the Helmholtz function of the system. Details can be found in Fermi’s textbook on thermodynamics (Fermi 1956). But why does osmosis explain the behavior of a salted cucumber? This question is left to the reader as a parting gift.
Featured image by KTRYNA on Unsplash
To establish a place of work where engineers can feel the joy of technical innovation, be aware of their mission to society, and work to their heart’s content.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Hydrogen is a light, odorless gas which, given enough time, changes into people.
The central dogma of molecular biology deals with the detailed residue-by-residue transfer of sequential information. It states that information cannot be transferred back from protein to either protein or nucleic acid.
It may sound ridiculous to say that [Alexander Graham] Bell and his successors were the fathers of modern commercial architecture–of the skyscraper. But wait a minute. Take the Singer Building, the Flatiron Building, the Broad Exchange, the Trinity, or any of the giant office buildings. How many messages do you suppose go in and out of those buildings every day? Suppose there was no telephone and every message had to be carried by a personal messenger? How much room do you think the necessary elevators would leave for offices? Such structures would be an economic impossibility.
