Thread: It is always darkest before dawn - for neutrinos?

The Barman says: "I'm sorry, we don't serve particles here."

A neutrino walks into a bar.

It is here Gugster!! The IT guys are bringing it on Tuesday! At the moment its battery is chocked full of eager-anticipation-trons!!

James.

Let me get it straight - the same people who didn't bring it for what, about 2 months, told you they'll bring it next week? Damn, and I thought you were better than this with probabilities

I read an interesting thought on slashdot.
The observations fall perfectly within the existing theories if those neutrinos have an imaginary mass. In that case, they would be tachyons and everything that was observed would make sense. It would also explain a couple of other things, like why neutrinos are detected some minutes before the EM signature of a supernova.

Interesting stuff.
The universe is billions of years old, and we're only looking at the teeniest part of it, over a negligible timeframe, using only our senses, and our brain to make sense of it. I wonder why some pople think we have it all figured out.

I figure the arrival of Macbook Pros is a Poisson process: memoryless...

James.

This conversation moved waaaaay to fast for me.

Originally Posted by gugi

I'm sorry to break it to you, but it's not the publishers, it's the class instructors who require their students to use specific edition that are shoving all that edumkeshin down students' throats. Compared to tuition and cheap booze the textbook budget quite small.

Of course, I'm still looking for those students that have even a vague idea what the neutrinos are good for, in fact if they can tell me how far the electrons in my laptop battery move before it needs recharging, they get A+.

I might slightly disagree, in my experience many of my instructors were exasperated just as much as the students the publishers put out 2-4 editions every year, even some whose name was on the textbook. Even though I am college edumekatid, I feel like I was robbed, sodomized, all while they complained about needing more money for things not needed....

The electrons in your lap-top battery don't travel very far. They move slower than molasses in January, and that is only because most batteries need AC to be converted to DC! If it were all AC they would basically vibrate back and forth!

Now about those fig Newtons...

Originally Posted by coachschaller

I might slightly disagree, in my experience many of my instructors were exasperated just as much as the students the publishers put out 2-4 editions every year, even some whose name was on the textbook. Even though I am college edumekatid, I feel like I was robbed, sodomized, all while they complained about needing more money for things not needed....

The electrons in your lap-top battery don't travel very far. They move slower than molasses in January, and that is only because most batteries need AC to be converted to DC! If it were all AC they would basically vibrate back and forth!

Now about those fig Newtons...

Electrons in a DC current have a speed that is expressed in mm per minute.

Thanks! It has only been 15 to 20 years for me, I remember something like way less than one Kilometer per hour....

Originally Posted by coachschaller

I might slightly disagree, in my experience many of my instructors were exasperated just as much as the students the publishers put out 2-4 editions every year, even some whose name was on the textbook.

The fact that the publishers provide huge amount of supply shouldn't affect the behavior of a good instructor who knows what they're doing and believes in working for their pay. Of course, if each edition is in print for one year only they may have no choice but recommend the current one, but the differences are usually so small, that it's perfectly fine to use *any* edition.
I learned from 40 to 90 year old textbooks, or just the lecture notes I took, and this didn't prevent my test scores to be in the topmost tier (worldwide).
There is nothing discovered past 1960s that college students learn, at least not in the fundamentals like physics, chemistry, math, etc.

Some of my friends who went to business school in my second world country had to show up for exams with their copy of the textbook for the class, written by the professor, so that he can 'autograph' it for them. As far as I know this doesn't happen in US, or said professor will be in danger to pursue tenure track at the local burger place.

Education in US is expensive, currently tuition is in the 50k range per year in the top tier schools, yet nobody is forcing people to get educated. However it is still the single most important factor in predicting income and here's an example of a study of the benefits http://www.asanet.org/images/journal...ASRFeature.pdf