Considering the number of responses here that can be summed up as “science nerds don’t know how to or like talking to people” it is an uphill battle in the general populace.
As an engineer, I would rather choose random people off the street to fill congress than the current crowd as a whole. I’m less concerned about how they will ever find someone to draft a law in the proper format.
For a sec, I got all excited because I thought I’d discovered that the illustrating graph didn’t correspond to the illustration’s equation… because when f=0, that bottom divisor e^f-1 term becomes zero… but then I realized that the compensating zeros on the top per the f^3 terms made it indeterminate rather than infinite, and I verified with a spreadsheet that – despite that indeterminism – the equation definitely converged/approached zero as f approaches zero, so the graph is defensible.
Also, tRump sucks and I hope he dies of an aneurism today.
Umm, we are talking about smart people, not glorified technicians.
Welcome, everyone! Today, we embark… on a new era of intelligent governance.
Inspired by the most logical race in the galaxy, the Vulcans… breeding will be permitted once every seven years.
[ All Gasp ]
For many of you, this will mean much less breeding. For me, much, much more.
Ya cannot do that, sir! Ya don’t have the power!
Ladies and gentlemen, I must apologize. This man does not speak for the Council of Alphas. We hold you subomeguloids in the highest regard.
“Smart” or “intelligent”? And let’s hope they’re “emotionally balanced” as well, 'k?
I see where you’re coming from I think. I suggest that they are free to do what they think they’re best at, which must be politics, since they ran and won in your scenario.
it’s admirable to guess at what people really want to do, and requires empathy, but what they do is what they want to do. It may not be what you think is best, but scientists will run for office if they believe it’s what they would be best at/ where their own utility would be maximized, and we can all learn if they’re correct when and if a plurality elevates them to office.
I think it’s worth a try.
Why isn’t it three ohms?
Yeah public outreach/engagement in the sciences, or academics as a whole is an on going issue. And there are multiple efforts out there to teach working scientists to talk to non academics more clearly.
But that’s only a partial issue. There are tons of science educators out there who’s actual job it is to talk to non-scientists about science. And many of them are very good at it, while also being working scientists. Like wise a lot of our best science educators (think Bill Nye and the Myth Busters) are engineers.
They should start with school boards – they have potential to do some good there. That’s how the religious right started really getting involved in the 80’s and the Tea Baggers more recently.
Go for it! If we can kickstart a safe opening fund…
humanities professors?
Series resistance is the sum of the resistors. Parallel resistance is the arithmetic mean of the resistors. Unless there’s some trick, it won’t be 3 Ohms, because there are parallel paths.
Resistor squares are bullshit that have no practical use outside of mental exercise.
If I’m doing this correctly, the answer is 1.5 Ohms, because the middle resistor gets no current and we’re left with two 3 Ohm paths in parallel.
You mean like Newt Gingrich?(*)
I suspect that a large fraction of our people in Congress had at least undergraduate degrees in the humanities. It would be interesting to know how many had one or more degrees in the physical sciences. (Nothing against biological sciences, but an undergrad degree there often reflects less an interest in science than an interest in medical school, and there are too many examples of MD politicians who don’t view the world with the eyes of a scientist.)
(*)Of course, I believe you mean like George McGovern…
Resistor squares are a discrete approximation to resistance in a sheet, and are the source of the formulas we use for computing that. They are also mathematically equivalent to problems that arise in quantum mechanics. My wife, a neuroscientist, models resistor grids on manifolds all the time. So I suppose the truth of your assertion depends on the meaning of “no practical use”.
Har, har, har. Fortunately, not all historians are such odious human beings… I mean, just me and Newt, right?
What makes you think that, though? This is the 111th congress (the 115th is the current one, but I can’t find this sort of breakdown for them), but I’d guess that it’s rather representational. Most hold law degrees and business degrees:
Here is an overview of the last congress, including their professional and educational backgrounds:
But MBAs and LLMs are graduate degrees. I don’t know there is a list of undergraduate, though I think a lot of the groomed ones choose political science or some other flavor.
I can’t imagine a lot went STEM into law even though it’s a very good career path.
As @emo_pinata points out, those are graduate degrees. It is actually quite common for physics majors to go into law (and STEM majors have a higher law school admissions rate than the overall average), but I don’t think they predominate, and the attitudes of recent legislatures towards science policy reflects basic misunderstandings that even an undergrad in the physical sciences would instinctively reject by dint of their STEM training.
Okay. Whatever you guys say.
I’m sure there are things in nature that behave similarly to resistor grids, but these things should probably be modeled mathematically rather than with a resistor grid, which itself is an imperfect model.
In electronics applications, it’s best to use a single load element if possible, because the resistance is known more accurately and there’s less parasitic interactions. In physics problem land, where there are no component parasitics and resistance is known exactly as opposed to within a tolerance, these things have their rightful place beside frictionless inclined planes and massless pulleys. Otherwise, they are used as practice exercises for calculating equivalent resistance.
