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26 Feb 12
Originally posted by Shallow BlueI don't mean to sound ignorant, but when it comes to these types of questions I am...It just seems to me at the current level of discussion things aren't black and white any more, which could be a result of my lack of education in the field. I was having a personal math talk with my prof. and some how through several winding topics in linear algebra, I led the conversation in to geometries, and axioms, ect... and he went on to explain how a couple non-euclidean geometries work, and at the end I confessed to him that I really wasn't concerned with the specific mathematics of different geometries, but really I was just concerned with the philisophical implications of using that geometry. I feel if we had began with a different set of goemetry, that while existance would be the same, our entire preception of that existance would be different, pehaps the very words I write now would not make sense. So when you say I'm acting silly, thats just how I think.
No, don't be silly. Of course the ratio does exist. There's no "may" about it. Yes, there is such a thing as a temperature of pi degrees, and yes, it is not only possible but necessary to pass through it* if you raise the temperature from frozen to room temperature. Nobody denies that, AFAICT - certainly I do not.
What I do deny is that it is ...[text shortened]... liquid (certainly of single molecules) are essentially undefinable, even that is nigglable.
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22 Apr 12
Originally posted by Shallow BlueHmm, how about a system where you measure the temperature inside a sphere by measuring the frequency and strengths of the particles hitting the sphere surface, except that when a particle hits the sphere surface you work out how much kinetic energy it lost (on average) in the collision and inject heat to counteract the loss.
Yeah, but if there's a readable thermometer attached, the system isn't completely closed, and the Brownian motion cannot be totally internal...
After all, even if you enclose the entire system in a vacuum with a glass window to read the thermometer, photons will enter and escape, changing the energy level ever so slightly, perhaps hitting an atom just right to excite it, and cause its motion to change.
Richard