Mysteries of Life

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by cooljayman, Dec 5, 2005.

  1. cooljayman Hangover's Best Friend Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    69
    Please, post (and answer) any questions you may have about the universe around you.

    Right now I have a few:

    1. Does 0.999999999....(repeating) = 1?

    2. How many yards are in one furlong?

    3. What is the average weight of a chicken's gizzard?

    4. Are the brain and "mind" one thing or separate entities?
     
    Last edited: Dec 5, 2005
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  3. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    the only one i can answer is number one and the answer is no. i don't care if you had a light-year (approx. 6 trillion miles) of nines the answer is no. i don't think chickens have livers. i believe chickens have gizzards.i also believe the brain and mind are the same.as far as furlong don't you have a search bar in your browser? just a sec. i'll be right back.typing furlong into my search bar yeilds the following for furlong:
    furlong (fur)
    a traditional unit of distance. Long before the Norman Conquest in 1066, Saxon farmers in England were measuring distance in rods and furlongs and areas in acres. The word "furlong", from the Old English fuhrlang, means "the length of a furrow"; it represents the distance a team of oxen could plow without needing a rest. A furlong equals 40 rods, which is exactly 10 chains, 220 yards, 660 feet, or 1/8 mile. One furlong is exactly 201.168 meters, so a 200-meter dash covers a distance very close to a furlong. The length of horse races is often stated in furlongs.
    damn i answered then all!
     
    Last edited: Dec 5, 2005
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  5. Killjoy Propelling The Farce!! Valued Senior Member

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    `
    1) only when it's expressed as a fraction of the price of a gallon of gas - as in when the sign reads $1.99 & 9/10/gal.
    Face it... you're paying two bucks.

    2)What if my yard is bigger than a furlong ?
    Could be a hectare, or even a league...
    Damn it, what if part of my fence is down...?
    The Guernseys could gae a-wanderin' !

    3)Before or after cooking ?
    Details, man... details !

    4)No such thing as the mind... it's a myth concocted by the brain in an attempt to conceal from itself the fact that it's naught but a bunch of chemical squirt-guns with some sparks flickering about as well.


    Shannnntiiii....

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    .
     
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  7. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    hey cooljayman why did you change one of your questions after i answered it. about the chicken liver?
     
  8. dzerzhinsky Communist Registered Senior Member

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    105
    1) My answer is yes. Well since 0.333333333333....(repeating) is accepted as 1/3, so you multiply that by 3 and you get 0.9999999999999...(repeating) and you get 1.\

    2) No idea. I prefer metric measurements.

    3) I guess it differs from chicken to chicken. Alive? Dead? Cooked?

    4) The brain is a physical object, the mind refers to a 'working' brain. A corpse has a brain but it does not have a 'mind'.

    I have just one question.

    Why do we humans have 5 fingers on our hands and 5 toes on our feet? Why not 6 or 7? Is it purely coincidental that we have an equal number of fingers and toes?
     
  9. river-wind Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,671
    1) see dzerzhinsky's reply above. 1/3+1/3+1/3=1 and 1/3=0.3333....
    the reason here is that you have an infinate number of decimal places, so there is an infinatly small difference between .999999999... and 1.000000....
    However, if you are dealing with these numbers in the real world, then you have to define a level of accuracy, and cut the number of decimal places that you look at. In these cases, 0.999 != 1.000, and 0.9999999 != 1.0000000 Only when you are dealing with the ongoing decimal values do you end up with .99999...=1


    RE dzerzhinsky's question: yeah, I think its random. There are many animals with 3 or 4 digits, and many with different numbers of digits on the fore- and rear-limbs. Primate just ended up with 5 and 5.
     
  10. duendy Registered Senior Member

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    6,585
    brain--chemcial, electrical, behaviours, etc can b meaured, mind, asin subjective mind cannotppfor ewxample see 'the Hard Problem', David Chalmers for more indepth about the 'brain/mind problem'

    heres my view....hujan brain is a kind of transformer. it doesn't produce consciousness (materialistic worldview), for ALl Nature is sentient, including sub-microscopic quantum reality........so brains are kinds of transformers of cpnsciousness. so what IS consciounsess? it is the what-it-feels-like-insideness of matter/energy
     
  11. tablariddim forexU2 Valued Senior Member

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    There is actually a difference between gizzard and liver, the gizzard is a muscular grinding organ and part of the digestive tract... before processing, it is full of ground grains and is very bitter. Offhand I would say that a gizzard weighs between 2-4 grams, according to the weight of chicken.

    The mind is the elusive process in the brain that gives us sentience; analogous to the software in a computer but not as easy to pinpoint.

    0.9999 whatever, could never be 1.

    A furlong is like the guy upstairs said before.
     
  12. river-wind Valued Senior Member

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    2,671
    tablariddim - do you agree that (1/3)*3=(3/3)=1?
     
    Last edited: Dec 6, 2005
  13. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    17,455
    1/3*3=1
    .333333 ad nausum*3 does not equal 1
     
  14. tablariddim forexU2 Valued Senior Member

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    4,795
    Sorry, not into maths so I don't really understand what the equation is implying, but I would agree that 1/3 of 3 = 1 if that is what it means.
     
  15. valich Registered Senior Member

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    3,501
    Some animals have 6, 7 or even 8 toes. Also lots of fossil evidence. Panda bears have what some consider as a 6th toe that is growing out of their wrist. Also the internal skeleton structure of whale and dolphins.

    A living person has a living brain: a corpse has a dead brain. Brain = Mind. No difference till you're dead. Then neither no longer exist.
     
  16. river-wind Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,671
    so 1/3*3=1

    doesn't 1/3=0.33333.....?
     
  17. Jinoda Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    365
    Did you guys not see my post in another thread about this very thing? (I am Ifu, but James R will be closing it down within the next few days)

    Anyway, this is what I said:

    You're likening this to:

    1/3 = .3
    2/3 = .6
    3/3 = .9 or 1.0

    Cut a theoretically perfectly round pizza into thirds, with each piece the exact dimensions as the others. Now you have 1/3, 1/3, and 1/3 of the pizza. You also have .3, .3, and .3 of the pizza. Put them back together. Do you have 1 pizza, or do you have .9 pizza?

    If you have .9 pizza, then you're missing a bit, but we know you really aren't. What we need is something called an Infinitesimal.

     
  18. lixluke Refined Reinvention Valued Senior Member

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  19. Jinoda Registered Senior Member

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    365
    Well then answer this:

    Is there any difference between 1 and .999~?

    Can you give me a number that shows the difference?

    After you have failed to do that, can you prove to me that .000~1 is unequal to .000~?

    I may be wrong, but I don't believe I am, and after you have failed to prove what I am asking, I will explain what I mean (and by the way, I am no mathematician, I just fancy things that make sense).
     
  20. leopold Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    17,455
    i believe that what you are refering to is transcendental numbers. for example we can express pi EXACTLY as the ratio of diameter and circumference but never as a number and no 1/3 doesn't=.333... for the same reason pi doesn't=3.14159265...
     
  21. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    17,455
    to all the people that posted in this thread:
    take some calculus classes and the answers will become very clear.
     
  22. river-wind Valued Senior Member

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    2,671
    edit: after re-reading Jinoda's quote I see that I misunderstood his premise.
    the following counters the idea that .3=.33333..., which he was not stating.
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------

    not at all. you don't have 1/3=.3, you have 1/3=.3333333...

    which a completely different value in this question. .3 can only be considered equal to .3333... when the important digits are so much larger that the lost 0.03333... will have an unnoticable effect on the final calculation. In this case, the lost 0.0333... has a huge effect on the final conclusion, and thus cannot be left out.

    1/3 = 0.333...
    2/3 = 0.666...
    3/3 = 0.9999... or 1.0

    .3 != 0.3333....


    a second proof:
    x=.99999....
    10x=9.99999...    (multiply both by 10)
    10x-x=9.9999...-.99999...    (subtract x(.99999...) from both sides)
    9x=9
    x=1    (divide both sides by 9)


    repeating decimals proof:
    any repeating decimal is a decimal divided by the number of 9's as thier are decimal places.

    so 59/99= 0.5959595959....
    so what fraction would make up 0.9999...? Some one digit number divided by 9.... 9! 9/9 gives you 0.999999... but 9/9=1...

    What calculus formulas better describe this math such that 0.999....!=1.0? I've yet to see any.


    edit: check the limit proof here:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_that_0.999..._equals_1
    for a more advanced explination of why the two numbers are equal.

    0.9999... != 1.0 in your minds only because you are subconsciously truncating it. 0.999...9 is not the same as 0.9999... and it is not equal to 1. however, if the 9's truely go on forever, then you have no value such that 1 - 0.9999... != 0

    edit: typo, and I see that most of this was already covered int he thread cool skill linked to. Why he would link to a thread inwhich he behaves so poorly, I don't know, but much of the mathematical reasoning is covered.
    Scifor Refugee summed it up:"So, if x = 0.999..., then it must also equal 1. They are the same number, but expressed with different representations."
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2005
  23. river-wind Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,671
    humerously, my GF brought up a good point last night that's worth sharing.

    If .9999...=1.0000..., then you could say that for any infinate decimal series x, there are two infinate decimal series y distinct from x but where there is no value q between them and x. So for every y, there are two numbers which can be said to be equal, etc,etc... Basically, for any number with an infinate number of decimals, (which is all of them, once you include all trailing 0's), the next real numbers above and below it are so close that thier infinatly repeating decimals allow us to call them equal.

    So 0.999...=1.000..., 1.000...=(1.000...1), (1.000...1)=(1.000...2) etc, etc, 1.999...=2.000... until every number is equal to every other number.

    Yes, No? I couldn't come up with a counter-arguement to this, except for the syntax issues of 1.000...1 et al (how else could you "count" reals, if you were so inclined?). The logical issue still remains, though. Given infinate decimal places, and the logic that .999....=1 (and therefore .4999...=.5 etc), then can't every real number be equal it's two closest neighbors, and thus to every other number by the principal of if A=B and B=C then A=C?
     
    Last edited: Dec 12, 2005

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