Muzman on 24/11/2008 at 23:08
That's more like the category it's in, one which covers many things, rather than some identifiable title. As it seems really more of a curiosity rather than a problem it probably never had one.
TBE on 24/11/2008 at 23:47
I was trying to program an equation for this in Pascal, but my l33t programming skills have seemed to wither and dry all these years I haven't been doing it. I had a thing for Excel too, but it would get to be a ginormous spreadsheet if you entered a number bigger than say 100.
Someone needs to make a Basic, Pascal, or other easy-to-understand programming language solution to this.
demagogue on 25/11/2008 at 03:37
Quote Posted by Taffer_Boy_Elvis
Someone needs to make a Basic, Pascal, or other easy-to-understand programming language solution to this.
By "this" I assume you still mean your car problem (not the bouncing ball problem).
Once you have a sum solution, Σ[0->59] 1 / (60-n), you can just do a for loop.
In Pascal iirc it's:
Code:
Sum := 0;
FOR C := 0 TO 59 DO
Sum := Sum + 1/(60-C);
PRINT Sum;
End.
TBE on 25/11/2008 at 04:18
Wouldn't work for any other starting number besides 60. :(
hopper on 25/11/2008 at 10:50
Probably because the number behind the division mark must equal the number of loop iterations.
This version doesn't have that problem:
Code:
Sum := 0;
FOR C := 1 TO 60 DO
Sum := Sum + 1/C;
PRINT Sum;
End.
BTW, Pascal looks ass.
Oblivion437 on 13/12/2008 at 02:32
If it helps, according to Frederick Copleston, Zeno's motion paradox is actually a reductio ad absurdum on certain ideas advocated by the Pythagoreans. Namely that number or quantity is real and external. To illustrate, if you hold five apples in your hands, according to this concept, there is an essential 'fiveness' which is actually a metaphysical property of them. A lot of people took the idea at face value and so Zeno was moved to refute it by taking the premise in hand and showing its necessary impossibility. One of the possible causes of the error was that the pre-Socratics didn't really work out the object-subject distinction or the relationship of ideas to external reality with clarity.
AR Master on 14/12/2008 at 01:08
y'all niggas ain't even tryin to make sense
Museful on 6/11/2012 at 22:29
Quote Posted by Muzman
Calculate how long it takes to stop bouncing and it theoretically does not ever stop, but bounces to infinitely smaller heights forever (I think you have to use calculus to get around this).
Yes, a bouncing ball exhibits zeno behavior and here are the calculations you are looking for:
(
http://www.museful.net/2012/system-modelling/practical-zenos-paradox) http://www.museful.net/2012/system-modelling/practical-zenos-paradox
Quote Posted by Muzman
In the ball problem no one really disputes motion is occuring, arithemetic just can't describe when it stops.
Is that right ...?
Not really. As you can see in the link above, arithmetic
can describe when it stops. In that example, with the ball dropped from an initial height of 1m and bouncing to 90% of previous height each time, it takes 16.7 seconds to come to a
complete stop. Yes, after every bounce there is another bounce, yet after 16.7 seconds there are no more bounces. It seems paradoxical because intuitively we tend to believe that an infinite number of bounces cannot happen in a finite amount of time, but they can. Simple as that :)
Pyrian on 6/11/2012 at 23:00
You registered for this forum just to post that on a four-year-old thread? :confused:
Renzatic on 6/11/2012 at 23:15
Guy really wanted to talk about math shit, I guess.
