Recent content by neilparker62

Deepest condolences - Robert to you and all the family. It's been an honour to share this forum with stalwarts such as your Dad. We'll hugely miss his always sage and thoughtful posts.

Seconded. And if I may put it this way - it's reward enough to be part of the PF community and (occasionally) to post something that others find useful/interesting . Or to start a thread which usually yields any number of useful responses.

@PeroK . Stop complaining about AI - you're better by far!

Yes - as mentioned above the technique is strikingly similar to that employed in Diophantus II VIII which is "to divide a square into two other squares" - I take the liberty of copy/pasting the image from Wikipedia which illustrates the technique when the given square is 16. y=mx-4 is...

Perhaps worth noting (in retrospect) that you will get this equation directly by implementation of @GiorgioPastore 's suggestion in post #73. Very interesting discussion on parameterization of this problem. Am still trying to get my head round some of those posts! See also...

Definitely the most efficient solution!

Most of his posts were on topics way beyond my 'ken' but I will remember him as a very clued up 'no nonsense' physicist. Here's a very characteristic post from him - note the reaction from the OP: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/best-rocket-stopping-method.1066619/post-7129301

or ##RL^2 = (2x)^2 - (2)^2 = 4x^2-4## We can also draw the other diagonal and apply Ptolemy directly: ##2x + 22x = \sqrt{4x^2-4}\times\sqrt{3x^2}=2x\sqrt{3x^2-3}## etc

Thanks - just once though! Since one triangle is right, Pythagoras will there suffice.

Diophantus Book II Problem VIII. To divide a square (of a rational number) into two other squares - also of rational numbers. Let the first of these be N and the second an arbitrary multiple of N diminished by the square root of the chosen square. Solve for N.

All the best - can scarcely even imagine what it takes to be a PF admin!

Apologies so long responding. We are using 230 volt contactors and the same for the contactor control coils.

Yes - I have now taken a few pics of the same area of sky and the 'smudge' persists. So it's not some aberration of the camera. Also our light polluted but otherwise clear sky picks out very clearly neighbouring stars which can be identified from Stellarium. The "smudge" seems to be positioned...

Delphinus: 26th July 2025 05:10am Taken from (approx) -26 degrees S, 28 degrees E.