Zach Weinersmith - Science: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness

S cience A bridged Beyond the Point - of - Usefulness This is not a copyright page. This is a Creative Commons Page. Zach Weinersmith, 2017. Some Rights Reserved. Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ Weinersmith, Zach Science: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness Das is nicht einmal falsch. - Wolfgang Pauli i This preface is a preface, which means that no one will read it.

Like a black hole, there is infor- mation trapped here that will never be seen by human eyes. If you believe you are reading a preface right now, you are probably caught in a deeply warped spacetime, such as an event hori- zon or the customs line at an American airport. You may perceive yourself as alive, but to outside observers you are inert and motionless. Since you are apparently here for eternity, with- out any option to turn away, I thought Id tell you

ii about this book. This book contains all of science. All of it.

To be clear, I am using the word science in the narrow sense of fields which employ one of the known scientific methods. To wit: 1) Observation, experiment, analysis, conclusion 2) Observation, experiment, analysis, boring re- sult, different analysis, different analysis, different analysis, interesting result, publication 3) Observation of other peoples work, repackag- ing, publication, tenure 4) Observation, experiment, catastrophic failure, less catastrophic failure, questionable success, publication, discovery that youve been scooped, alcoholism 5) Observation, experiment, analysis, world-shak- iii ing discovery, rejection, desolation, death of el- derly scientists, renewed interest, posthumous recognition I have neglected to include some fields, such as Anthropology and its important subdiscipline, So- ciology, as well as Economics and its important applied field, Evil. This is not because I consider these fields to be lesser, but because after read- ing the literature in quantitative finance, I realized I could do a separate Social Science book and make even more money. If any sociologists find themselves miffed while reading this, remember that your perception of your own anger is socially constructed, so suck it up. I have also neglected to include the mathematical fields. This may seem odd, as these fields often claim priority over the whole of scientific knowl- iv edge.

But, it is now known that mathematics is in fact a narrow sub-domain of ichthyology, be- cause if you take fish and put it next to another fish, you have fish. Add another, thats fish. The rest can be derived from there, and I leave it as an exercise for the reader. As a final caveat, I wish to note that if you hap- pen to be a scientist yourself, you may feel your area of study was miscategorized. For example, I asked Linguistics to sit with the weirdos at the Cognitive Science table, while Paleontology was compelled to live with the smelly kids in Earth Sci- ence. I had hoped for a more pure and Platonic structure, but it turns out that the family tree of science contains more than a few kissing cous- ins.

If your field appears to be in the wrong sec- tion, it is likely because you and your forebears were a bit promiscuous with your associations. v Shame on you. The more interdisciplinary sci- ence becomes, the harder it is for all of us to look down on chemists. Zach Weinersmith Weinersmith Manor May, 2017 Introduction for the Teacher Dont teach from this. Introduction for the Student Dont learn from this. S cience A bridged Beyond the Point - of - Usefulness PHYSICS 1.1 History Aristotle said a bunch of stuff that was wrong.

Galileo and Newton fixed things up. Then Ein- stein broke everything again. Now, weve basical- ly got it all worked out, except for small stuff, big stuff, hot stuff, cold stuff, fast stuff, heavy stuff, dark stuff, turbulence, and the concept of time.

PHYSICS 1.2 Major Insights If you punch the universe, it punches right back. If you know exactly where something is, you can be sure its going between zero and 299,792,458 meters per second. You can get different stuff, but you cant get more stuff, and you cant get rid of stuff.

Every time we check, God appears to be playing dice. PHYSICS It turns out gravity is less like a strong man tugging on a rope than a chubby man sitting on a trampoline. There are exactly three numbers: 0, 1, and . The use of anything else is a form of dan- dyism. If you get a Physics professorship, later in life you can go around saying crazy stuff and people will believe you. PHYSICS 1.3 Subdisciplines Thermodynamics: The study of how everything is getting worse all the time, and how if you speed that up a little you can run an engine.

Cosmology: The study of how a bunch of weird stuff happened in the first femtosecond of reality and then after that it got pretty dull. Relativity: The study of how, if you have a clock and I have a clock, it doesnt mean a damn thing. Condensed Matter Physics: The study of, like, chunks of stuff. PHYSICS Astrophysics: The quantitative determination of the breadth of human insignificance. Particle Physics: The attempt to determine the beautiful truth underlying reality by smashing little bits of it as hard as possible. aw man ... just forget it. just forget it.

PHYSICS 1.4 Recent Developments Long-held predictions about the nature of particles and gravity have been proven star- tlingly correct by experiment, which sucks. The universe is 95% dark stuff that we dont understand. The remainder is this sticky mat- ter that makes up things like you and small- pox. Gravity makes wobbles and we found the wobbles so hooray! PHYSICS Quantum mechanics and gravity still arent on speaking terms. Everything in reality appears to be moving away from you as fast as it can. PHYSICS 1.5 Important Charts

PHYSICS Chemistry 2.1 History Ancient people figured out that you can change one thing into another thing, which helped make weapons and liquor.

Subsequently, alchemists looked for gold by boiling their own pee. This sort of thing culminated in the Periodic Table of Ele- ments.

Chemistry 2.2 Major Insights There exist fundamental elementary sub- stances which you can split in half using spare parts from a smoke detector. If you go somewhere else in the universe, its probably made of the same crap weve got here. If you have a fluid made of infinitely tiny par- ticles that dont interact with each other, you can write really nice equations. Chemistry If you want to win the Nobel Prize for Chem- istry, study medicine.

Editors Note: There are other interesting in- sights, but physics stole them during the late 18th century and wont give them back. Chemistry 2.3 Subdisciplines Biochemistry: The study of the trillions of com- plex nanomachines that work together so that your body can continue to sit on the couch and digest Cheez Doodles. Organic Chemistry: A means by which to make undergraduates cry using only carbon bonds. Inorganic Chemistry: The thing people think you do if you say youre a chemist. Chemistry Nuclear Chemistry: The study of how you can turn a hunk of lead into gold if youre willing to spend the value of all lead and all gold. Physical Chemistry: Chemistry for cowards.