User talk:GDallimore

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Smee (talk | contribs) at 18:10, 23 May 2007 (→‎The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Brewer

Very good. I might have given a bit more emphasis to his later success with Phrase and Fable rather than tucking it away as a "see also", some mention of modern reprintings, and some explanation of the theories covered by the old wives' tales, but in all it gives a nice overview (and I'm kicking myself that I didn't notice it was missing). Cheers, Yomanganitalk 12:26, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Pound sterling

Thanks for the explanation of the revert. Hadn't looked at the infobox page properly - although in my defence, I did look at the Bank of England statistics and noticed that the value of issued £50 is greater than the value of £5, which I thought must count for something! GDallimore (Talk) 13:18, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's ok. So is the bank's figure in £ or the number of notes? If it's in £, then you would need to divide 10 for £50 to be fair. What constitutes "frequently" and "rarely" is sometimes still a subject of debate, despite the fact that I've tried very hard to lay out a well defined criteria. If you're still interested, see Talk:Swedish krona#Rarity, Talk:Euro#Rarely Used vs. Frequently Used, Talk:United States dollar#Rarity of $50 bill. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 13:31, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Responded on user's talk pageGDallimore (Talk) 14:13, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A Guide to the Scientific Knowledge of Things Familiar

Updated DYK query On 6 April, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article A Guide to the Scientific Knowledge of Things Familiar, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

--howcheng {chat} 23:02, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Patents

Hey. I just wanted to say "thanks" for fixing the patent references in Atomic line filter. The article is better for them: thanks. -- Rmrfstar 23:09, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No probs, I've been gradually working on the templates until I had them in a workable form and finally got around to turning my attention back to the article that started the whole thing! GDallimore (Talk) 23:11, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Introduction to special relativity

Its good that you have offered to help on this. The problem with teaching modern relativity is that there is a shared misunderstanding of the topic. Academic research has identified that this misunderstanding originates in the standard approach to teaching the subject (reference frames, Galileo, MM, Einstein etc.) - see Talk:Introduction to special relativity. Sixty six percent of physics undergrads get relativity wrong. Basically if Wikipedia goes for the old approach we will just be providing large numbers of extra contributors to newsgroups who are convinced that "Einstein was wrong". Einstein's assumption of the speed of light as a constant without reference to the way that this is a feature of spacetime seems absurd to most students and they go away thinking this is just a "fix". Worse still some of them waste their time trying to work out how a 3D Euclidean universe could give the illusion of a constant speed of light. A simple intro to the invariance of the space-time interval ("proper time") in a flat Minkowskian spacetime will prevent these misunderstandings from the outset. This sounds complicated but its just a minor extension to Pythagoras' theorem. Geometer 15:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It is interesting that I was probably one of those undergrads who misunderstood SR for a long time. It wasn't until I started studying General Relativity and so had to go back over the development of SR that I really understood it - but there's so much of that when studying science. It's not that the teaching is bad or that the students are incapable, it's just that, often, you have to understand something far more complex to be able to properly understand the thing you're being taught. So, basic chemistry is still taught in terms of electron energy levels even though that is a flagrant simplification of the true situation.
So, we have a dilemma. We don't want to teach SR using over-simplifcations because that would be wrong. However, we can't teach SR properly because that gets too complicated. My initial thinking as to how to resolve this dilemma is to avoid entirely the article's current approach of trying to "teach" SR and instead just "explain" SR. To explain what I mean by this: idiot's guides on all sorts of topics and most basic self-learning books for computer programming are based around presenting lots of examples to the reader. They don't try to teach the fundamental building blocks, because those blocks are actually trickier to understand than the overall concept.
I think a similar approach might work on the SR article - trying to choose some examples to illustrate and explain SR that are devoid of mathematics and pythagorean theory. For those who are able to grasp those initial concepts, we can then build on that understanding by introducing some of the mathematics. This means that we would end up with a tiered article which ends up explaining SR at several different levels - but level one must be completely absent of mathematics in my view. I need to think about this further, but hopefully will be able to drop by at the article itself in a couple of weeks and try some edits. GDallimore (Talk) 16:20, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good. I contemplated this but is it possible to explain Pythagoras' theorem (the metric of 2D euclidean flat space) without any maths at all? The challenge of explaining Minkowski spacetime is similar but worse.... Geometer 16:47, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That's the thing - at it's most basic level you shouldn't need to explain any of that stuff. Those are the building blocks that SR are built on, not SR itself. They can be brought in later in the article, but they should not be the starting point. GDallimore (Talk) 17:17, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You're right, of course, there must be a way to explain this subject without too much complexity. Our problem is that all those beginner's guides to relativity have cribbed from each other and perpetuated the wrong approach so we are left with trying to explain the subject from scratch.
It might help to revisit the real origins of the theory. Einstein studies Maxwell and realises that "c" is frame independent and proposes that physical laws are invariant. He derives the Lorentz transformation (LT) and realises that the equations contain nothing but spatiotemporal quantities. Therefore no aether. Minkowski, who has studied non-euclidean geometry, realises that the purely spationtemporal content of the equations means the LT is about geometry hence Minkowski's metric and, with Noether's insight into invariance and physical laws, the modern approach is born. Einstein's original proposal that physical laws are invariant looks like a guess although it is probably based on Galileo's ship analogy.
Curiously, given Einstein's original opposition to Minkowski, there is a quote somewhere by Einstein where he says that he cracked SR after realising that time was to blame (I can find the quote if need be).
There is a lot of crud on the periphery of this story in the form of attempts to explain the aether by Lorentz, Fitzgerald, Lamor, Poincare etc. Einstein himself says that he had not even considered the MM experiment when he derived SR. Some people say this is impossible but MAXWELL + GALILEO = SR whichever way you look at it. So is the desire to weave the history of the aether into SR due to latent three dimensionalism in those 66% of physicists who dont get SR? Geometer 10:13, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Galileo does look to be a good starting point since everyone would understand that, even if they don't know what Galilean/classical relativity is. The more I think about this, though, the more I realise I need to refresh my memory of some of the intricacies. Sigh... the more I learn, the more I forget... :) Sorry I can't respond more carefully to your detailed thoughts yet, but it has been a while since I've considered all these things myself. Will get back to this soon, though. GDallimore (Talk) 10:48, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have taken the liberty of transferring this discussion to the Talk for the article. Geometer 14:00, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I know this is a lot to ask but please could you put citation notices on the text.Geometer 13:03, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Erm... I'm sorry to say this, but I think there are huge chunks which need better referencing so a collection of fact tags is unlikely to help. It's not that I disagree with any of it but, as I remember reading once, Wikipedia is less about truth, and more about verifiability. GDallimore (Talk) 13:29, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This gives us a problem. The article is an attempt to explain the modern, approach to Special Relativity. Students really need such an approach because they get the whole thing wrong much of the time. Just think, if 66% of physics undergrads get it wrong what percentage of lay readers must get it wrong? The problem is that beginners guides using the Minkowski metric as an approach do not exist. Advanced textbooks use it exclusively.
Breaking the problem down, the first part, invariance to translations and rotations on the plane is standard maths. Unfortunately most authors do not go from Pythagoras to Minkowski, a few make this jump see: http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March01/Carroll3/Carroll1.html - Carroll is a highly respected cosmologist. But Carroll immediately leaps into a hyperbolic rather than Cartesian treatment of Minkowski space (rightly because it is hyperbolic).
Herman Weyl in "Space, Time, Matter" explains the whole thing but the translation is very poor in the Dover edition. The invariance of the spacetime interval is stated in all advanced textbooks on SR and GR but not explained in the contextb of general, topological invariance.
So the second part, the invariance of the space-time interval in Minkowski space, can be referenced but not easily directly quoted.
The third part, the derivation of time dilation from the invariant interval is just kiddies maths. Does this need a reference?
The tilt of the x-axis due to the relativity of simultaneity is covered by Carroll and many other authors (see Carroll's diagram).
There is not much else to the article except some pretty pictures. Geometer 17:01, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Patent referencing templates

Thanks for your message on my talk page. I've just dropped a question on Template talk:Cite patent. Cheers. --Edcolins 19:59, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thrud the Barbarian

Updated DYK query On 18 April, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Thrud the Barbarian, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

--howcheng {chat} 23:13, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

List of software patents

Just want to say the article is good and interesting, and I am almost sorry to oppose the nomination. I feel I had to. The main issue is the lack of clear definition of a software patent (endless discussion ahead..). Unless there is an official definition, how can the list ever be complete and comprehensive? --Edcolins 21:22, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Spoken article

Hi. I've noticed that you appear to have been working on converting the article The Four Stages of Cruelty into a spoken version for over two months now, according to your entry on the In Progress section of Wikiproject Spoken Wikipedia. If you are no longer working on the article, please either remove yourself from the list, or notify me so I can do so, so other editors will know they can work on the article instead. If you don't reply within a week, I will assume you are no longer working on the article. Cheers, -Panser Born- (talk) 15:09, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the reminder :). I've been suffering a series of (wiki-stress induced?) colds over the last couple of months which have removed my ability to speak as clearly as I would like (Fuh Sages of Cruely wouldn't have the same impact!) I'm just getting over the most recent bout and will start work on it next week. Promise! GDallimore (Talk) 15:13, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Alright, I'll leave you on the list then. =) Cheers, -Panser Born- (talk) 22:20, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As it is

Thanks for the fix. :-) Gouranga(UK) 14:48, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

St Kilda, Scotland

Thanks for amending 'kph' to 'km/h' at St Kilda, Scotland. Editore99 13:05, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If I might make a friendly suggestion, it probably would have been productive to explain the reason for your edits when faced with resistance rather than simply sending out a call for help. GDallimore (Talk) 13:07, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
OK. Thanks for the friendly suggestion. Noted. Editore99 11:54, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar

The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
I, Smee, hereby award The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar to GDallimore. You let me know you had fixed some infobox issues, a long while after I had forgotten about it, which was very kind and thoughtful of you. Thank you. Yours, Smee 18:10, 23 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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