Recent content by miscellanea

  1. M

    How Do You Model Radioactive Decay in a Game When Adding Material Over Time?

    Wow. Okay, that is quite scary. I've done the things you describe in the past, so I can see where you're going with this, but it's been so long, I don't remember enough to actually apply any of that anymore. I'm going to try finding a way to simulate this instead of trying to solve it as an...
  2. M

    How Do You Model Radioactive Decay in a Game When Adding Material Over Time?

    If I understand you correctly (and it's been over two years since I last did maths on this level, so I'm sorry if I get something wrong) your solution requires a step-by-step (an iterative) calculation. And that's a somewhat valid solution, but I would much prefer to have a solution that doesn't...
  3. M

    How Do You Model Radioactive Decay in a Game When Adding Material Over Time?

    I'm looking to simulate a radioactive pile in the context of a simple computer game. The problem is, however, that for various reasons I can't use a straightforward tick-by-tick simulation. Instead I'm looking for an equation that can be solved based on time and would give me the amount of...
  4. M

    What is the relationship between evolution, statistics, and social engineering?

    Let me preface this by saying that economist Gregory Clark argues in "A Farewell To Alms" that one of the factors for the success of the industrial revolution was evolutionary in nature: disease killed off poorer members of the society and their position was taken over by sons of the wealthy who...
  5. M

    Electron-positron annihilation as an energy source?

    Would creating the isotope in a cyclotron use up more energy than positron-electron annihilation could produce? Because if the average amount of energy needed to create a single atom of the isotope is smaller than a positron-electron annihilation produces, then this could be a viable energy...
  6. M

    Electron-positron annihilation as an energy source?

    Why can't we use electron-positron annihilation as an energy source? Unlike antiprotons, positrons sometimes pop out of beta decay and positron-producing isotopes with short half lives are routinely produced in cyclotrons around the world for hospital PET-scanners. Positrons and electrons...
  7. M

    The annoying old 0.999 vs 1, hopefully with a twist

    Yes, I've heard of this theorem as well, though I don't know its name. That theorem is one of the reasons I posted here in the first place -- this difference shouldn't actually exist, but everything I've seen suggests that it does. Which is really strange.
  8. M

    The annoying old 0.999 vs 1, hopefully with a twist

    Hyperreal numbers are a proper extensions of the reals. You get reals for free and if you add non-standard analysis, you also get infinitesimals and infinitely large numbers.
  9. M

    The annoying old 0.999 vs 1, hopefully with a twist

    This question is not new by any definition of the word. However, it's been bugging me for quite a while now and I've done some reading up on the issue. The question: Is 0.999... (infinite number of 9s) equal to 1? The answer is, of course, yes. There are numerous proofs showing this. Here...
  10. M

    Can a photon get trapped in orbit around a black hole?

    I had a few questions about black holes and photons that get stuck in an orbit around them. With some Googling, I was able to get the answers I so badly needed, but, as it is with these sorts of things, I only got curioser and curioser. So, let's review what I wanted to find out in the first...
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