Knowledge Definition and 373 Threads

Dear all, My question is a bit philosophical. Can humanity reach complete/total/absolute knowledge and control of the world, where there is nothing new to be known?! Thnx :)

Okay guys - I hope you all can help me ... maybe someone out there has gone through similar experiences. There are some smart guys out there in my college and I feel very jealous when they score and I do not. Earlier I didn't care about how others performed, I was only focused on my knowledge...

I graduated high school nine years ago. The highest math I took then was Algebra II, as I had little interest then. After a seven year career, I was able to go back to school and have made it to Calculus I this semester. I struggled some in college algebra, finding out that there were...

Homework Statement Please click on the link for the question. http://i1154.photobucket.com/albums/p526/cathy446/physicsquestion_zps49e16ab1.jpg Assume that air spreads out after coming out from the tube at 2. The speed over tube 1 is almost zero. Homework Equations Knowledge problem on...

Homework Statement The statement that the simple surface F has gradient at the ordered pair ((x,y),F(x,y)) of F means that there exists only one ordered number pair (p,q) such that if c is a positive number then there exists a rectangular segment , S, containing (x,y) such that, if (u,v) is in...

I am a very curious guy and I often wonder about how stuff around me works - like when I speak how does my mouth produce sound and how my ears interpret it,what are quarks and boson...I might learn later on but currently I don't know these things. Its a bit irritating for me to not know...

guys, I want to design a electromagnet. but i do not know how to start. so could you please tell me what knowledge is needed for electromagnet design? Or you can recommed some data that i can find and buy myself. thanks in advance!

Greater Knowledge = More Evidence for Design?? I was studying bacteria. With better technology we have been able to determine that bacteria have an extremely detailed motor that allows for transportation. It is equivalent to a human swimming thru thick grease at 60 miles an hour. It baffled...

when a body moves in a circular motion or a path,how many effects are possible..?

Does anyone has knowledge about European standards for Electrical instruments?? I want to know what MCB can be used if my instrument's power rating is 4 Kw? if anyone knows from where I can get this info ?? European standards give VDE certification.

I've seen handouts that get distributed at the beginning of first-year calculus courses spelling out the rules of adding & multiplying fractions (among other things), and all the mistakes that are made by students coming out of high school. I think that was mostly based on instructors'...

Hello everybody. I am brand new to the forum, and to physics, so please forgive me if I am a total noob, or if I do not adhere to a guideline. Quick background about who I am so you know where I am coming from: I am a 22 year old licensed personal banker living in queens working in...

Hello, as I'm about to finish high school and I want to pursuit the field of physics (more interested in particle physics, theoretical physics etc) I would really appreciate if you could tell me what prior knowledge should I have in Mechanics, Electricity and Magnetism before I start college as...

Hey all I'm new to this site and I got to say after lurking around for a while and browsing this is a great site. I'm in my first year studying Electrical & Electronic Engineering and I got my heart towards getting into university to gain a HNC or HND. I have a lot of questions to answer (130...

Hello, This is my first post, I signed up especially to ask it. I recently finished reading Steven Hawking + Leonard Mlodinow's "The Grand Design" and I found it really interesting. The bits I found most interesting were the parts on quantum physics, more specifically wheeler's delayed...

Greetings everyone, This is just a vocabulary question, rather than a conceptual one. Is there a word for "qualitative knowledge"? For example, through science we have quantitative descriptions of all sorts things - the color blue, for example, is described as photons with wavelengths in the...

Hi guys , I don't know anything in electronics past how to calculate voltage and currents in circuits containing resistors and batteries . I lack the practical knowledge of how to construct real circuits . I want to know how to design real circuits . Can some one please point me to resources on...

This is incredible. This archaeological find predates Stonehenge and the Great pyramids by 6,000 years and makes Stonhenge look like rubble in comparison to this 12,000 year old find. It's before stoneage man had agriculture, before the wheel, a time of hunter gatherers. This site brings up...

Hello all, Firstly, sorry for the long post, I was just wondering if someone is in a similar position and would like to hear their thoughts and how they deal with certain things. If it is too long, just skip to the questions I have under each paragraph. I was never spending much time...

I am an Mechanical Engineering major and just recently I found myself to be very interested in Computational Mathematics. I have taken the typical 3 courses on Calculus but the problem is that since they were being taught majorly to an engineering audience, no one bothered with the epsilon...

Sort of a strange topic But I was wondering if some of you could suggest some problems for me to try to see how much math I understand. My background is I am a Mech Eng student in my last year of my bachelors degree. So I have taken calc 1-3 Diff Eq, Linear and a Applied math course for...

You may've heard this one before: 1. Time is money 2. Knowledge is power 3. Power = Work/time Therefore; Money = work/knowledge which proves the less you know, the more money you get. I was thinking about this when someone mentioned the 'pressure of time' preventing them from...

I finished my first semester of physics and calc, and now that I have a brief intoduction to physics I think I can handle reading a little more advanced phy book.. Are there any good phy books that anyone can recommend?

Im new on this forum. I hope that this is where this discussion belong. On my time off work, I take my mind off it by looking for basic information on a certain subject. Lately it's been science (specifically astronomy). As I search for answers, it's come to my attention that we have limited...

Hi, As part of my Theory of Knowledge course I am studying the areas of knowledge, more specifically, Mathematics. I am researching about the idea of absolute and relative truths. I am looking for the most basic, fundamental principle of mathematics, that is, maybe an "assumption(?)" that...

Over the holidays (very long ones), I intend on going through the two Calculus volumes of Apostol. However, I feel my pre-calc knowledge of math is very shaky. There's lots of little tricks I just can't see. I'm not saying I can't do harder problems, just that they're not very obvious to me...

My memory on this is a bit foggy, but a couple of years ago one my math professors had a digression about a system of voting where no one would be able to know what anyone else voted. It involved the graph of a polynomial, and the kicker was that this system couldn't be implemented in society...

I was invited to sign up for LinkedIn years ago by a friend, never did a profile except a job title. What made me check is that I just got an e-mail from linkedIn asking if I know this list of people that I might want to add. What is upsetting is that the people listed are old clients of...

So? why?

Suppose I have a true random number generator. It generates a string of 10 numbers. I then look at those numbers. Are they still random? If no then why, and would they be random for a bystander who did not see the numbers? If yes then consider this. I am an omniscient being. This same random...

We have had several threads lately discussing the nature of inertia and inertial forces. Here is a practical exanmple for open discussion. Take a flexible bar and closely thread several masses onto it. Clamp both ends. Arrange a disturbance to provide a flexing of the bar. This will...

I'm writing a physics simulation/game in java applets, I have a quick question about collision detection. DISCLAIMER: I am not a math or a CS major, so this is probably a ridiculously easy question for most people on here: My question regards speed when there are lots of objects. Right now...

members i need some basic knowledge about real analysis i got lot of trouble... about this topic

Hello I'm taking my first ME course in thermodynamics this fall (two or so weeks away), and was just a little curious if these intro courses are generally self-contained, or if the brief introduction to thermo found in physics I will play a pivotal role (or mechanics, as a whole)... edit...

my knowledge of superconductors is limited to the fact that they are substances whose resistnce bcme zero below a certain temperature and current once established continues to flow indefinitely. a) how can substances behave as supercondictors?(i don't know the name of any...superconducting...

Alright so a professor took me up for a research project which makes use of a Kelvin Probe. However I only have a year of introductory Physics under my belt (Mechanics and Waves & Oscillations). I started studying some of E&M which I assumed I needed to know, this summer but didn't get too far...

It would be awesome if there was a course - intro to medicine making where I would get to create a pill but there isn't. What would be the closest thing to it? I thought I could major in 1 field to get the medicine knowledge but even that's not true. Even inside pharmacology, there are more...

Hi, here's my question. If all our technology were to suddenly disappear but all our knowledge and designs were to remain, would our progress back to where we were, in terms of chip design, follow Moore's Law? In other words, could one just make a chip with speed X provided one had the...

As I've spent some time reading about careers on the internet; I've found some posts with employers complaining about how most students that are graduating from college these days don't know enough to be useful for their jobs. I've found examples of this primarily in Software Engineering, but I...

In my practical engineer degree for mechatronics, our technical mechanics test consists of 80% statics questions and 20% dynamic questions. I'm curious, why does statics appear to be more important than dynamic in this engineering discipline?

I wrapped up my BSEE three years ago and have been working as a EE since then. However, the vast majority of my work has been geared toward test/manufacturing/embedded. As a result, I fear that a substantial amount of my fundamental EE knowledge has atrophied and I'm just plain rusty. This...

Lets say we measure L_z and L^2 simultaneously and L^2 happens to be equal to (L_z)^2. This requires a zero value for the x and y components of angular momentum. Does this mean, in this special case, we know the values of L_x L_y L_z & L^2 simultaneously?

I'm interested in philosophers' opinions on a question that I posed in another forum (https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=496119). As I say in my latest post, the entire thread was sparked by the comments of the Philosopher of Chemistry, Joachim Schummer: We have no reason at...

I have a very limited knowledge of the quantum but I was wondering if it was possible, barring probability, that two electrons could end up co-locating or being in the same place at once.

I need some material on the properties and relationships between classical groups. I was using Robert Gilmore's "Lie Groups, Lie Algebras and Some of their Aplications", but it barely covers it (section 2.iv). Does someone know about a book or any lecture notes that could be used to...

I want to interpolate a function between the points A, B, C. At A and C I only know the value of the function, but at B (lying between them) I also know the function's first and second derivatives. How would you interpolate between these points?

Please elaborate it here!

Are two electrons identical in every way? I think that's what we know so far, but is there any research that proves/doubts this or any reason to expect why it should or should not be the case? I ask because no two things in (the macroscopic) world are absolutely identical, and so I wonder if...

I have been advised that the questions that I ask in another thread in the Chemistry Forum may be better assessed by those who frequent the General Physics Forum. I would be much obliged if you could take a look at the following link, and provide any thoughts, feedback, ideas that you may...

If this is the wrong place for these sorts of musings, I greatly apologize and I would be profoundly obliged if someone could point me in the right direction. Otherwise, on with the question. I have repeatedly heard it said that the number of chemical species and, by extension, the...