Re: Engineering and math

On 12 Oct 2006 22:53:37 -0700, "Le Chaud Lapin" <jaibuduvin@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Jonathan Kirwan wrote:
Analysis using density is often child's play. But look how long it
took to discover as a useful principle. Natural philosophers were
debating the ideas of sharp and blunt as a principle for floating and
sinking, even in Galileo's day, for gosh sake. If someone told me
"density is obvious," and imagine that they are as creative,
imaginative, and smart as those who actually had to discover the idea,
I'd just smile and walk away shaking my head.

Not that I would have ever figured out calculus, but when I was 4, I
remember looking at the edge of a razor blade and trying to tell my
brother that it was not "so thin that it did not have width." We
argued about it for a few minutes until finally I said, "What if you
made some green Jello(R), and you took the razor blade and kept slicing
it over and over, a 500 times? All the little slices would have to add
up. The edges of the Jello would flop and spread out, right?" I
figured it would spread out eventually, but I wasn't sure.

He got frustrated and told my mother that I was talking about slicing
Jello(R) with razor blades and I got a spanking for playing with my
Dad's tools.

Good imagination, eh? That's important.

Jon
.

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