Decimal Time, Oskar Numbers and The Rock Python.

Such a lot has happened!

I think the best way of leading into all this is to cover some history of an Austrian mathematician called Erdos.
Erdos was, in some ways, an itinerant mathematician. That is to say, he wondered around Europe working for board and lodging. In this capacity he co-published some 1200 papers.
Later, while studying academic networking, some of his colleagues (not entirely jokingly) came up with the 'Erdos Number' system. They gave Erdos himself an Erdos Number of zero. Anyone who had co-published with him directly was given and Erdos Number of 1. If these people co-published with someone, they would give them an Erdos Number one value higher than their own. Those who have no publishing link to Erdos have an Erdos Number of infinity.

Upon learning all this, I decided that I needed to start a similar system for myself. I decided that since publishing papers is a bit beyond me at this stage, the interaction that I would track with Oskar Numbers would be the high-five. I explained the system to a few people and high-fived them. I now know of about 15 people with Oskar Numbers of varying magnitude. No doubt this number will grow as the high-fives spread.

I have also (with some prompting on the 'other people coming up with good ideas' front) decided that time needs to be decimalized. From now on you will use the following time keeping system:
The basic unit of time is the jasecond (often shortened to 'second). This is the equivalent of 4.32 seconds in the old system. There are 1000 jaseconds in an oskhour (often shortened to 'hour) and 10 oskhours in a day. What we used to call midnight is now 'time zero' and the time is counted from 0-10 oskhours after this time.

There are now 100 days in a year and the seasons no longer correspond to the year. There are 10 months, each of 10 days; Monember, Duember, Triember, Quadrember, Quintember, Hextember, Heptember, Octember, November and December.

Naturally, our system of angles will also have to be changed (angles being ultimately derived from our time keeping system). There are now 10 degrees in a circle (the Earth rotates one degree every oskhour). We will continue to use radians for simplicity of calculation, but I'm sure you'll all agree with me that 5 degrees=pi radians is much easier than 52.whatever it was under the old system.

In other news, I found out that each of the jungle book names that me and my fellow cub-leaders adopt has a meaning beyond its animal type:

Baloo- the bear- teacher

Rama- the great herd bull- leader

Chil- the kite- observer

and of course, me:

Ka- the rock python-
... wait for it...
TREE CLIMBING!

I am awesome, thank you for reading,
'Skat.

Things People Should Realize.

Stuff is older than you can possible imagine.

Exponential growth cannot be sustained.

Learning is FUN!

Everything is really little balls and wiggly lines.

Public library books are free.

They should look around more.

The universe is bigger than you can possibly imagine.

People aren't always nice, but it can help to pretend they are.

Maths is art.

Most people don't realize the above.

Once more I walk through the hallowed halls of our noble University

I can't quite place what it is, but there's something wonderful about being back at uni. I've visited it many times during the holidays, but it wasn't the same. There's something about being a part of one of the country's greatest hives of intellectual activity, even if it is only as a lowly first year student, that excites me. I've already had two lectures, both packed full of lovely new knowledge about animals, oceans and winds.

Later this week ( in fact some might say at the end of it [Saturday]) I will be going on my first proper geology field trip. I am excited about it, not least because it means I get to sped a WHOLE day wandering around the beach looking at rocks and finding fossils.

I'm sure to look the part of course. My dress sense was described recently to me as a cross between lumberjack and Hagrid (possibly when Hagrid is going hiking?). This coupled with my sturdy, but almost antiquated equipment (grandpa's geological hammer, great grandma's hand lens [they really built stuff to last back then]) will make me look like a professional, I'm sure.

With this in mind I came up with a great idea for a T-shirt: A picture of a T-Rex skull and underneath it the words "Geologist, cleverly disguised as a Palaeontologist". I will work on making this brilliant design a reality.

I was recently told that some gelogists can tell what kind of rock they're dealing with by tasting it. I have set myself the goal to be able to do this and have been practicing with my collection. for some rocks it is pointless, as they look different, but there are some things that tongues are really useful for determining. An example is differentiating between mudstone and fine sandstone, impossible with the eye and very difficult by touching them with your hands. The tongue on the other hand is much more sensitive to sedimentary grains (if you can distinguish grains it isn't mudstone).

Just last night i found out that my new ability qualifies me for a badge from the 'science scouts'; the 'Rock Licker' badge. There are several other badges they have that I feel I quilify for, perhaps I should look further into them and update you later.

In other news: my mother now has a blog. If you're interested in cooking, but not very good at it then you might be interested.


Note: You will now find the science scout badges that I have earned displayed down the side of the page. For a description of what they represent see the link in this post.

Because I'm NOT a biologist...

Those of you who are like me (notice patterns obsessively) will no doubt have checked and found that a large number of my recent posts have gone up at around the same time. This is because it is the time when I have nothing else to do. On Mondays and Wednesdays from 11:00-12:00 I have nothing on, while almost everyone I know at uni has Biology. Two days a week the same thing happens with chemistry, but I often sit in on chemistry lectures (my physics/maths background allows me to get a lot out of them, even though I haven't done any chemistry since high school). I even take notes (much to the disapproval of those whop know that I don't need to).
I can't seem to bring myself to sit in on biology lectures. This is strange, because I actually do a (fringe) biology subject. I suppose I turned my back away from cell biology and genetics when I decided not to turn up and collect the subject prize for biology at the 2007 graduation (actually I was in year 11 and didn't know that it was happening).
Anyway, enough of projecting my internal musings into a domain for public viewing, I have a Climate Change lecture to got to (Not that I expect to get much out of it, I can't seem to understand a word our current lecturer says [to make matters worse, he's not talking about science or economics, but SOCIAL IMPACTS! What is this, an arts subject?] ).

Also, apparently I haven't done a post on Non Linear Thinking for a long time and Reuben is getting annoyed (perhaps he should look at his recent track record with his OWN blog?). I might do something on integers and continuity in nature or something.... might...

Oskar.

For when you need some consistancy in life.

I recently met someone who was able to reel off about pi to about 17 decimal places. This impressed me a great deal, and showed me I was being slack in my remembering of constants.
I then wondered which physical or mathematical constants I would most like to memorize.
I have always had a soft spot for the speed of light, as well as the charge of an electron (the actual charge, not some dodgy Faraday's constant {I really admire Michael Faraday and am disappointed that he has such a boring and unnecessary constant stuck to his name [if you know the charge of an electron and what a mole is then you can work it out /no animals were harmed in the calculation of this constant/]})

1.60217646 × 10^{-19 Coulomb}

See what I mean, such a lovely number, more than half of the digits are divisible by two.
Lightspeed, on the other hand, is a lot nicer when you stick to just three significant figures.

3.00*10^8 ms^-1

When you go any further you start getting all sorts of crazy 9's and 7's.

I don't mind Avogadro's constant either (though it is fairly arbitrary).

One of my more mathematical posts in a while, but you know how you sometimes get in the mood for some nice numbers. I also managed to embed four sets of brackets into each other, no meant feat, even for someone like me who thinks that brackets are the pinnacle of literary...goodness.

Yours,

Lindenosk,
Oskar,
Oskat,
'Skat,
Lewie,
Esky,
Osk,
Captain,
Ka.

God created the integers? I thought she was more of an arts person.

In time I'll probably write some kind of well thought out, structured essay on why I don't think integers occur in nature, until then rest assured: they don't.

According to the head of the school of physics at Melbourne Uni, arts students (like Americans) are likely to be religious.

There are a whole lot of things that are mildly annoying in a highly intelectual way. I've decided to list them for your reading pleasure.

People think Earth Science is about saving the environment. It isn't; it's far more rigerous and self interested than that.

Some people take way too long to say things that could be said in a single sentence. They sometimes do this because they think it makes them sound smarter.

Some rocks are difficult to break, while others have dirt in cracks and just look brown inside when you smash them.

I can't remember where I put the key to my bike lock, currently attached to both my bike and a public fence.

Magneto from X-men can control all metals, though most are not ferromagnetic.

People are always going on about saving impressive animals, but not boring ones.

Politicians are the ones who relate scientific data to policies.

Thank you for reading.

The Present is Past, The Zombie Apocalypse is NOW!

I have had an action packed last few days.
On Saturday I went to a friend, E1's birthday party. This involved dressing up as a zombie and seeking the nourishment of grey matter in the CBD. This was excellent fun, although my costume was more of a 'homeless person who had been run over my a lawn mower' costume. A highlight was our visit to Macdonalds, in which we made up for driving customers away by buying a miniature game of monopoly. After an encounter with a group of slightly more impressive, but perhaps less apocalyptic zombies (they were in period costume), we went back to E1's house. There I tried one of the infamous 'alco-pops' for the first time (with purely academic motivations). It tasted suspiciously like red cordial, a fact that was both appealing and worrying for different reasons.



Here is a photo of the zombie crew. We really do look like we've been beaten up, don't we.

Yesterday (Sunday) I volunteered at The University of Melbourne's open day. I was working to promote the Department of Earth Sciences. My job involved handing out fliers, holding a balloon and telling people that they wanted to do subjects offered by the department. Our recruitment was not helped by the confusing nature of our surroundings and advertising material. All the pamphlets/stickers/magnets had 'Earth Sciences' written on them and the sign above our booth proclaimed us 'Atmosphere and Ocean Science-Geology'. On top of all this we were located opposite the boothes for 'Geography' and 'Environmental Science'.
I will have some photos (ok, so I ended up with one photo, but what a photo it is) of my action packed weekend up in a few days.
Until then,
Lindenosk.