Teacher problems

[laYahooz]

(03-21-2013 06:46 AM)TheGoldenGriffin Wrote:  The north pole in Earths magnetic field like the positive terminal in electricity right? If so it makes sense to me cuz the it goes from the north pole to the south pole. I don't know the math so i don't know why it's confusing.

So the particles are taught in chemistry and forces in physics?

I'm in 9th grade now and i have Biology. Apparently, the curriculum doesn't want us to know the up to date taxons and wants us to learn the outdated 5 kingdom system.

Lol I won't go into the math but just imagined big ass protons moving through a conducting wire XD it's not suppose to make sense. I'm not claiming its wrong, it truly is wrong.

Biology is terrible! I feel your pain. And yeah you learn forces in physics.

[TheGoldenGriffin]

Biology is easy and my teacher is nice. Since were learning genetics, i'm not that sure what they're lying about so i'll just accept what they're saying for now. Electricity is electrons moving from atom to atom btw, the protons stay in the nucleus.

[laYahooz]

I hated biology when I took it. Managed to get an A but I can honestly say I don't know anything I really learned

Did you all learn evolution? We spent a whole quarter on it which I found weird since its kind of controversial.

[TheGoldenGriffin]

No but i know how its works. I'm sure they'll just tell us about darwin and the finches and evolutionary trees and bottlenecks and mimicry and possibly how dinosaurs evolved into birds and how the egg came before the chicken. I don't think they'll tell us about tiktaalik but possibly coelacanths.

[RandyDogz]

(03-20-2013 12:56 PM)TheGoldenGriffin Wrote:  Dark matter isn't a state of matter. Scientists don't know much about it which is why its called dark matter, the same reason for dark energy and dark flow. Dark matter doesn't interact electromagnetically but it can gravitationally and thats how it was discovered.

All this 'dark' stuff is a real pet peeve of mine. It's just made up crap because observation doesn't line up with expected results. It means the formulas are wrong. Saying there is 'dark' stuff is just a shortcut, lazy solution to make formulas work.

Don't believe in 'dark' stuff, question the validity of the laws we are told to assume are correct. The universe is more complicated than our current models can handle. Einstein's theories are good, but not complete, just like Newton's.

[TheGoldenGriffin]

They call the stuff dark because they don't know much about the stuff. By dark matter, they are referring to the stuff thats so gravitationally attractive. They know its there, they just can't explain it yet. So for now, they call it dark matter. They are not making up stuff to make themselves correct. But they can't ignore the fact that something they can't explain is there. You're right that our theories are incomplete. Thats why dark matter and dark energy and dark flow will have to remain dark for now.

[RandyDogz]

I hear ya, sorry if I sounded harsh, as I say it's a pet peeve so I get a little worked up.

I see it like this, look at 1 + x = 5. The easy answer for x is 4. But it could be more complex, say (10 - 6). Now math is a pure science, (10 - 6) is the same as 4. Gravity is still not pure, so by accepting x = 4 we could be over simplifying and not recognizing there could be more variables involved. Plus, assuming in my simple math equation 1 is gravity and x is dark matter, we need to question the 1 in the equation - the assumption gravity = 1. Maybe we have it wrong and gravity is actually 5, and there is no x, or dark matter. I believe the latter, what we currently believe gravity to be is wrong.

I just think the debate should be more open about both possibilities rather than talking as though we know dark matter exists. I know I'm splitting hairs, and agree with you that it's a necessary concept at this point. But I think our efforts are better spent deconstructing our assumptions about gravity, rather than assuming its right and trying to figure out dark matter. While the end result is the same, it's an important distinction to understand.

In a different light, I'm an accountant. I've had situations where I've spun my wheels looking for 4, but as soon as I understood that it could be (10 - 6), or that 1 could be wrong, the problem was much easier to solve.

[Gf!sh]

(03-21-2013 09:36 AM)TheGoldenGriffin Wrote:  No but i know how its works. I'm sure they'll just tell us about darwin and the finches and evolutionary trees and bottlenecks and mimicry and possibly how dinosaurs evolved into birds and how the egg came before the chicken. I don't think they'll tell us about tiktaalik but possibly coelacanths.

That's exactly how my 6th grade biology looked like.

[TheGoldenGriffin]

Your equation seems right. But there but all the evidence suggests that there is an x. I'll explain how the scientists concluded that dark matter exists. You know what a galaxy is right? It is a body of billions of stars, remnants if stars, and dust and gas, and at the center of most is a supermassive black hole or SMBH. Also, objects that orbit close to the center moves faster an object near the edge. Just like how Mercury travels around the sun and Neptune travels slower than Mercury around the sun because Neptune orbits billions of miles farther away from the sun than Mercury. Stars that orbit near the center of the galaxy should move faster than than stars orbiting at the edge of the galaxy right? Well, scientist have charted the orbital speeds of different stars and all the stars move at more or less the same rate. That means that the stars near the center of the galaxy move almost at the same rate as the stars near the edge of the galaxy. But there is no more to the galaxy after the edge, so the stars on the edge are moving way to fast right? Unless, that isn't the real edge of the galaxy. There is still more stuff orbiting the galaxy from much farther away. And since all the stars are orbiting the center of the galaxy at about the same rate, that means all the stars are actually orbiting at the center of the galaxy compared to the whole galaxy. But we can't detect anything after the apparent edge of the galaxy so there can't be anything there right? Okay fine, lets assume that the whole galaxy is where the stars are. The scientists can calculate the mass of the whole galaxy with different methods. They can use the orbital speed chart to calculate how much stuff is orbiting the galaxy because they know how the speed changes from the center to the edge. The more mass the galaxy has, the more stars and stuff there are, the brighter the galaxy is. The scientist can also use the brightness it determine the mass. Stars shine and the brighter the galaxy is, the more stars there are, and the more massive a galaxy is. Here's the problem. The mass determined by the brightness method is only 20%-10% of the mass determined by the orbital method. The brighness method only uses the matter that emits or reflects light, like the stars. That means 80%-90% of the mass that makes up the galaxy is not interacting with light at all, so the apprent edge of the galaxy isn't really the real edge of the whole galaxy and that there is more to the galaxy than the stars and remnant of stars and dust and gas and the stars really are all orbiting near the center. And because it doesn't interact with any kind of electromagnetic radiation it makes it hard to study. But not impossible. The discovered stuff is called dark matter. Pretty much all off the stuff we know about dark matter so far is because of light ironically. Gravitational lensing is evidence that dark matter exists. If there is a lot if dark matter in an area in space, the gravity from it can bend light like a lens. It's like looking through a fish bowl. You can see through it, but the light going through it is bending the path of light, distorting the background. Even though the glass and water is clear, you can tell its there because it is changing the path of light coming from the backround and distorting it. The masses of dark matter in space distorts the light coming from distant galaxies and using this, the scientists actually made a map of where dark matter is in space. But it still doesn't explain a lot which is why dark matter is still poorly understood. But dark matter is most likely made of WIMPs but it still isn't proven.

[RandyDogz]

That's a well constructed explanation, and I'll concede you're more knowledgable about the underlying science than I am. I get the gravitational lensing idea, but I just have snippets of knowledge, haven't really dived into it yet.

I'm still not convinced that the answer is more matter, and not some other as of yet undiscovered force. I believe the rate if expansion of the universe is accelerating, rather than decelerating as previously assumed, as another example there's more going on than we can explain with current theories? I like the bubble galaxy idea, that could explain why things don't work as expected out there?