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Pteromys
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Name: Pteromys
Gender: Male
Interests: Watermelons, Music (Composition! Yay!), Mathematics, Miscellaneous Computing (Some Programming), Drawing (Cats! Yay!), Fluffies (Wishing Fluffies!), Shiny Things, Humanoid Mushrooms, Conformity
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
10/22/2005
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| I first drank a cup of coffee five years ago, and I haven't had one since.
The story... | | |
| Today, I tried to compare the process of getting into a good afterlife with the process of getting into a good college.
Potentially offensive material | | |
| I wonder if this is going to become an annual thing for me. I was a coaches' minion for Eastern Massachusetts again. Apparently I'm not a real coach, since I wasn't cool enough to hang out with the real coaches while everybody else went to Hershey Park to get soaked by the rain.
I was overall happier with the schedule compared to last year; the bus from Canton left on time, Thursday lunch was at 12:45 PM instead of 2:30 PM, the graders managed to get into the Bryce Jordan Center well before 9 AM, and Power Round grading finished around 2 PM instead of 3:30 PM. Our 11 PM arrival at Penn State, however, was considerably later than planned.
On Friday I helped run our Team Practice, and then I went downtown to check my e-mail. I came back to campus for ice cream at the Berkey Creamery and then for the lecture. On Saturday I participated in Power Round grading, and then I had some time to watch the conclusion of the contest, from the relays until we left halfway through the awards ceremony.
Other highlights:
- Lots of downtown places have free wireless: McD'oh, Dunkin D'oh, Starbucks, and a Webster's Bookstore. Even the Bryce Jordan Center (where grading happens) has public wireless (essid "GoPennState"). This is great for those of us who start feeling e-mail withdrawal symptoms within half a day.
- The song contest was run by someone far more competent and prepared than I was last year. And the Ohio guy from last year won this time!
- The proportion of MIT people among the graders seems to be increasing.
- I recognized only a handful of Mathcampers among the contest participants. I feel so old now...
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| I've been wanting to put this up for a while, since apparently the conclusions of my last post weren't justified; I missed an important case! The bacteria *can* survive if, instead of filling space, they restrict themselves to a spherical shell!
The bacteria are able to sustain their growth while staying under the speed of light and using reasonable amounts of energy. They can even experience an unlimited amount of proper time. The downside to this is that any two bacteria in different locations will eventually lose contact with each other. This may remind you of galaxies drifting out of sight under the influence of dark energy, and that turns out to be a very similar situation.
More details below the fold. PDF forthcoming, since math in HTML is awkward.
Lots of symbol-shuffling ensues... | | |
| Consider an n+1-dimensional flat spacetime full of n-dimensional bacteria that are:
- 1. Exponentially growing
- The rate at which a clump of bacteria increases its volume is proportional to its volume. That is, for a clump of volume V:
dV/dτ = rV
Where r is some constant and τ is time as measured by the clump of bacteria.
- 2. Incompressible
- All the bacteria are moving with some position-dependent speed β(x) to make room for their neighbors to grow. So, if a stationary observer measures a clump of bacteria to have diameter Δx at time t:
β(x + Δx) - β(x) = dΔx/dt
You really should try working this out for yourself... | | |
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