More Pix For A Laugh

[JasonPratt]

"Imaginary number" == "Yeah, actually, this formula should be invalid, and even impossible, but we need it anyway. So we'll leave a mark to remind us that the square root of negative one makes no possible sense, and should be resolved back out of the equation as soon as possible -- but if not, no big deal, it can just be ignored."

[bayonetbrant]

[Tpek]

"Imaginary number" == "Yeah, actually, this formula should be invalid, and even impossible, but we need it anyway. So we'll leave a mark to remind us that the square root of negative one makes no possible sense, and should be resolved back out of the equation as soon as possible -- but if not, no big deal, it can just be ignored."

Why are they even really called Imaginary Numbers?
Has anyone ever actually managed to imagine the square root of -1? 

[Windigo]

Its funny because it's true. Back when I still had a work-soul, I collected, collated, analyzed and modelled stream flows and snowpack.

One winter the snows never really came. Mountain snowpack was maybe 20% of long term normal.
I knew way before it happened that it was going to be an ugly year for water users (cities/irrigators) who depended on the slow reliable melt of snow pack (from May to August) to keep rivers flowing with abundance.

I booked my summer holidays early that year - avoided the "ohhhh shit" shit storm that always happens when water supplies get tight.

[JasonPratt]

I think people have imagined that they've imagined the square root of negative one.  O0

True fact: in my job, I occasionally have to calculate an estimate of how much cubic-feet-per-minute of environmental temperature airflow is needed to keep a blower inside an enclosure from overheating. For this purpose, I use a formula (and a table of constants, only two of which are needed anywhere in the continental United States, both of which are within .03 of each other) provided in an instruction manual by one of the major manufacturers of blowers in the world -- I was given a copy of the pages PERSONALLY by one of the directors there when my Dad and I visited their manufacturing facilities to advise them on an issue which eventually led them to take the lead in changing how blowers all over the world would be redesigned by all manufacturers from the ground up. (Thus eliminating about one third of our revenue every year, ironically.  ::) )

This formula uses a variable in a way that is one thousand percent nonsense as explained, and I cannot for the life of me imagine (after almost 20 years of occasionally amusing myself by making guesses) how it ought to be used in that formula.

So I ignore it, and treat the variable as a flat temperature instead of a temperature change, for my calculations. This still would produce impossible results to potentially real-world situations, but not quite as immediately impossible as using the delta-T per instructions. Basically I just divide by one hundred, and hope for the best, and I tell customers if I'm explaining it in a hurry that this represents the temperature we don't want the blower to exceed in the enclosure's atmosphere. So far it has worked.

(I do try to explain the true goofiness of the formula if I have time; I want to be honest.  O:-) )

SCIENCE!  O0

[bayonetbrant]

military guys will get it

[bayonetbrant]

[bayonetbrant]

[panzerde]

:clap:

[JasonPratt]

  to the Occam's joke.

[Barthheart]

[Ubercat]

to the Occam's joke.

+100

[Martok]

LOL!  Yeah, you gotta wonder. 

to the Occam's joke.

+100

Agreed.  That was good.  O0 

[Windigo]

military guys will get it

or anyone who has zeroed in/calibrated/bore sighted their hunting rifle

I always went for a 100 yards sighting in. My thinking was anything beyond that is free to go unharassed. Anything inside that range was obviously too stupid to pass on its genes and needed culling

[besilarius]

Always wondered about Chief O'Brien on Deep Space Nine.