Recent content by Cody Richeson

As I understand it, dimension is a way of describing direction, with the first three spatial dimensions being straight lines which extend infinitely in one direction, perpendicular to each other. In string theories, several additional dimensions are required, sometimes up to nine or 10, I...

I am actually trying to approach this without the math, which I know is stupid, but I took algebra in middle school, high school and college (for a total of I believe 8 or 9 times) and never passed it, even with tutoring. So I'm not sure if I can actually get a grip on this.

When you say it is a "property of particles and fields," what exactly is being literally described? Is energy one of those fundamental abstracts that lacks an underlying framework of smaller constituents? Is it one of those concepts that is without physicality, like temperature and charge?

That's pretty much it. Are physical objects essentially clumps of energy, and that energy is measured as mass? And do objects become more massive as they receive more energy through push?

I probably took a somewhat glib approach to describing time. Perhaps I should share what I believe time is, and if I don't have it right, please correct me. I performed a thought experiment in which X subject is orbiting quickly around a gravity well for an hour (relative to X), and Y subject...

Feel free to correct anything I state here. I'm trying my best to understand some rather complex (for me) ideas about time dilation. So if I understand correctly, increasing velocity compresses time, causing you to exist more slowly relative to anyone not moving at that velocity. Similarly, the...

I found this interesting computer animation representing DNA functions in cells. My questions: 1) How precisely can we actually magnify cell functions, and what is preventing us from peering in as closely as depicted in the video (keeping in mind that I know it's probably technologically...

So any measurement of degrees radiating from a center point will necessarily be round? Makes sense. So this is not the same for triangles, I suppose, or any polygon? What about a polygon with a very large number of sides that almost appears circular?

Because a triangle comes out to 180 degrees, and yet it can only have three sides. A circle has 360 degrees, but its number of "sides" are uncountable. Can someone explain this?

Very interesting responses. I'd like to add the following: Science typically relies on approximations in order to describe an isolated aspect of reality. Huge clusters of atoms and molecules become averages because it is impossible to take into account every variable involved. I would imagine...

Is that true, or does the limited perception of humans make it seem as though that were true?

You say the additional lines "do not go in any direction in which one can point," but we are constantly embedded in however many dimensions there are. I know we only perceive three, but if the dimensions are all there, all the time, then how come we can't point in the direction of additional lines?

So are we talking about forces and fields here? Or what?

Obviously, they exist as mathematical concepts, and those concepts are real, but in physical reality, everything is made up of subatomic particles and, if the theory is ever verified, strings. So if you try to construct a curve, circle or sphere, you are necessarily stacking a bunch of subatomic...

It's okay. To be honest, I have trouble dividing and even adding/subtracting has to (generally) be done on paper if there's more than one digit in the number . I'd really like to get over this hurdle.