Wednesday, January 26, 2005
This pi-ous moment
Oy - bad pun I know.
Alright so today's update... yes yes some stuff happened today.
Stayed up rather late last night working on stuff. Finished a good quarter of the next chapter of Dawn and then helped a friend with some problems. Went to bed at 12:30am.
Woke up, decided to sleep in as I didn't have class until 10am. Went in with Vanessa on the bus, ate a wonderful breakfast (scrambled eggs, bacon, toast & homefries - my god breakfasts at school are sooo good), then went to my wonderful Linear Algebra class where we learned how to add vectors together... for the fourth time. I learned once in Math 536, again in Physics and again in Cal I. Now we did it again. For those of you who don't know what vectors are...
A normal number (we call them scalars but it's basically any number like 2,5, 100342332, or pi) has one part to it - it's magnitude (how big it is, like the magnitude of an earthquake).
A vector has two parts, a magnitude and a direction.
So think of a car. A car has a mass, however much it is. This mass is a normal number. It also has a speed, say 60km/h going directly east. 60km/h East is a vector as it has a direction.
With me? Good. Now in Math we represent vectors slightly differently. Everyone familiar with a Cartesian plane? Excellent. We represent vectors as an arrow starting at the origin (0,0) and going to another point (a, b) on the graph. Thus we represent vectors as pairs of numbers which describe this point on the plane.
Thus if we have a vector a which goes from (0,0) to point (3,2), vector a can be represented by the expression (3,2).
Note: For the people who already did this at my level, I am well aware that I am not covering n-space vectors or 3-space vectors but I'm trying to keep this simple.
We call these two numbers components, in the example above they would be a1 and a2. So any vector a can also be represented by the pair of points (a1, a2) which represent where the vector goes from the origin on the cartesian plane.
Now we have this wonderful thing called vector addition by which we take two vectors and add them together. Picture this in your mind, it's like this.
Go 12 steps north. Then go 6 steps east.
12 steps north is a vector (12 steps is how long and north is in what direction) as is 6 steps east. To find out where you actually end up, you need to add these two vectors together which you do by simply, in your mind, walking 12 steps north and 6 steps east and looking where you end up.
If you want to do it mathematically, we must give pairs of co-ordinates first. So the first vector, A (12 steps north) is (12,0) and B is (0,6) yes? (I'm assuming everyone can work on a Cartesian plane - if not just take my word for it)
So now... how do we add these two vectors together? It's very simple. We take the first number of each, add them together; then we take the second number of each and add them together and the result is our new vector which represents the direct path between the origin and where you end up after walking 12 steps north and 6 steps east.
so
12 + 0 = 12
0 + 6 = 6
new vector (12,6)
which makes sense, as if you go 12 steps north and then six steps east, of course you end up at a position (12 steps, 6 steps)
Yes? Everyone with me?
Alright good.
You have successfully learned what I learned today. For the fourth time. Yet they feel the need to drill this into us. You might say it's for the not-so-mathematically inclined but might I point out - every single person in this course recieved a 75+ mark in Math 536 and passed Physics (both of which taught this concept). Most of them also passed Cal I, in which it was taught again. Now we're getting it AGAIN
*grumbles*
alright... next...
I skipped Chemistry, it's all review. Then I went and wrote the next quarter of Dawn, posted it on-line and then went to French & Mechanics. In Mechanics...
VECTOR ADDITION!
oy.
Alright I won't bitch abotu vector addition but i've now learned it five times and apparently we do it three more times in cegep.
I am so leaving or I'll kill someone lol.
Alright so an excellent musing tonight in the process in my brain - will post that in my private journal afterwards.
So after mechanics, it's time for the "lets be made to feel guilty by Kat"-fest and then I was off to PTY which was excellent. We had a reporter from the Ottawa Sun in and she interviewed a lot of us.
Then I remembered that Jaz wanted to start a rainbow group of some form at Heritage this semester but never got around to it, so we talked about me starting that with her being the liason between PTS and the group at Heritage, with her taking over the group after I leave.
So that's on our list of things to do tomorrow - talk to the SA about getting that started. Probably going to do it either at 5 when I finish or earlier as I believe at least one of my labs is a work period.
Alright - off to bed soon, but I've got some stuff to work on tomorrow. I promise I'll finish Dawn CII sometime (maybe in the morning as I'm going to spend from 8 - 10 in the lab working on my lab so if I finish early I'll work on Dawn and if not i'll go later in the day when i get the chance. and if i don't finish it, i'll work on it when i get home.
So *hugs, kisses, love and snugs to Andy* and laterz all!
Alright so today's update... yes yes some stuff happened today.
Stayed up rather late last night working on stuff. Finished a good quarter of the next chapter of Dawn and then helped a friend with some problems. Went to bed at 12:30am.
Woke up, decided to sleep in as I didn't have class until 10am. Went in with Vanessa on the bus, ate a wonderful breakfast (scrambled eggs, bacon, toast & homefries - my god breakfasts at school are sooo good), then went to my wonderful Linear Algebra class where we learned how to add vectors together... for the fourth time. I learned once in Math 536, again in Physics and again in Cal I. Now we did it again. For those of you who don't know what vectors are...
A normal number (we call them scalars but it's basically any number like 2,5, 100342332, or pi) has one part to it - it's magnitude (how big it is, like the magnitude of an earthquake).
A vector has two parts, a magnitude and a direction.
So think of a car. A car has a mass, however much it is. This mass is a normal number. It also has a speed, say 60km/h going directly east. 60km/h East is a vector as it has a direction.
With me? Good. Now in Math we represent vectors slightly differently. Everyone familiar with a Cartesian plane? Excellent. We represent vectors as an arrow starting at the origin (0,0) and going to another point (a, b) on the graph. Thus we represent vectors as pairs of numbers which describe this point on the plane.
Thus if we have a vector a which goes from (0,0) to point (3,2), vector a can be represented by the expression (3,2).
Note: For the people who already did this at my level, I am well aware that I am not covering n-space vectors or 3-space vectors but I'm trying to keep this simple.
We call these two numbers components, in the example above they would be a1 and a2. So any vector a can also be represented by the pair of points (a1, a2) which represent where the vector goes from the origin on the cartesian plane.
Now we have this wonderful thing called vector addition by which we take two vectors and add them together. Picture this in your mind, it's like this.
Go 12 steps north. Then go 6 steps east.
12 steps north is a vector (12 steps is how long and north is in what direction) as is 6 steps east. To find out where you actually end up, you need to add these two vectors together which you do by simply, in your mind, walking 12 steps north and 6 steps east and looking where you end up.
If you want to do it mathematically, we must give pairs of co-ordinates first. So the first vector, A (12 steps north) is (12,0) and B is (0,6) yes? (I'm assuming everyone can work on a Cartesian plane - if not just take my word for it)
So now... how do we add these two vectors together? It's very simple. We take the first number of each, add them together; then we take the second number of each and add them together and the result is our new vector which represents the direct path between the origin and where you end up after walking 12 steps north and 6 steps east.
so
12 + 0 = 12
0 + 6 = 6
new vector (12,6)
which makes sense, as if you go 12 steps north and then six steps east, of course you end up at a position (12 steps, 6 steps)
Yes? Everyone with me?
Alright good.
You have successfully learned what I learned today. For the fourth time. Yet they feel the need to drill this into us. You might say it's for the not-so-mathematically inclined but might I point out - every single person in this course recieved a 75+ mark in Math 536 and passed Physics (both of which taught this concept). Most of them also passed Cal I, in which it was taught again. Now we're getting it AGAIN
*grumbles*
alright... next...
I skipped Chemistry, it's all review. Then I went and wrote the next quarter of Dawn, posted it on-line and then went to French & Mechanics. In Mechanics...
VECTOR ADDITION!
oy.
Alright I won't bitch abotu vector addition but i've now learned it five times and apparently we do it three more times in cegep.
I am so leaving or I'll kill someone lol.
Alright so an excellent musing tonight in the process in my brain - will post that in my private journal afterwards.
So after mechanics, it's time for the "lets be made to feel guilty by Kat"-fest and then I was off to PTY which was excellent. We had a reporter from the Ottawa Sun in and she interviewed a lot of us.
Then I remembered that Jaz wanted to start a rainbow group of some form at Heritage this semester but never got around to it, so we talked about me starting that with her being the liason between PTS and the group at Heritage, with her taking over the group after I leave.
So that's on our list of things to do tomorrow - talk to the SA about getting that started. Probably going to do it either at 5 when I finish or earlier as I believe at least one of my labs is a work period.
Alright - off to bed soon, but I've got some stuff to work on tomorrow. I promise I'll finish Dawn CII sometime (maybe in the morning as I'm going to spend from 8 - 10 in the lab working on my lab so if I finish early I'll work on Dawn and if not i'll go later in the day when i get the chance. and if i don't finish it, i'll work on it when i get home.
So *hugs, kisses, love and snugs to Andy* and laterz all!
// posted by Dep @ 10:05:00 p.m.
