Greets and a couple of questions

[Slaihne]

Hello folks,

 

As an introduction, i hail from Northern Ireland, and am a software engineer by profession. I think the latter makes me more stubborn than the former.

I ask a lot of stupid questions because i would like to learn, so bear with me if i sound silly at times.

 

I’m more interested in the big picture rather than in depth discussions. I can follow the math in some cases but love the thrill of the chase more than the technicalities of fingerprinting, if you can forgive the mixed metaphors.

So, with that out of the way, maybe you could give an ear (or eye) to a couple of my questions (which you may recommend i post in a different forum, i know, but the lord loves a trier :smilingsun: )...

 

I’ve had this idea knocking around for a long time now, after skimming through a small hardback edition of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity around 20 years or so ago.

Basically, it boils down to my perception that Einstein performed a lot of thought experiments using clocks and trains. Thus he then put forward the idea that as velocity increases so does mass until it becomes impossible to accelerate faster than the speed of light because you would need infinite energy.

My problem with this is that the experiments used the fact that observers viewed these clocks. And as human beings our method of viewing things naturally involves the speed of light.

If we were creatures with a different fastest sense, say, a hypothetical bat, who sees by sound alone. Would C = the speed of sound?

 

The second conundrum i’ve been puzzling with is the situation when you have two objects heading directly away from each other at relativistic speeds, say 0.6 the speed of light.

Newton would have us believe that the relative speed of the two objects is 1.2C, but i can get my head round the fact that time dilation effects could make this appear to not be the case for observers on each of the objects.

The problem i face here is that both objects, let’s call them rockets with the capability to immediately accelerate to 0.6C and then decelerate to a standstill, can be set so that they stop exactly at a known marker. Clocks can be shuffled over to these markers in advance and the time noted when the objects stopped. The results from these clocks can be shuffled back to the central point where both objects originally set out from.

Now, the central observer may only have seen each object heading away from him at 0.6C but after the results came in from the clocks and the math was done it would be an unavoidable conclusion that the objects were travelling at 1.2C relative to each other.

I just can’t get my head round this problem. If the clocks shuffled back and the math was done and it ended up showing that the two objects were not travelling faster than the speed of light relative to each other then what does that mean?

Or is it invalid to consider either of them as valid frame of reference. And why can’t we?

 

I apologise in advance if these seem like silly ideas, just some things that have bothered me for a while.

 

Rgds

 

David

[pamela]

I ask a lot of stupid questions because i would like to learn, so bear with me if i sound silly at times.

the only stupid question that exists, is the one that is never asked;)

hello david,

welcome!!:smilingsun:

[Slaihne]

Thanks for the welcome :smilingsun:

 

rgds

 

David

[freeztar]

Welcome David! :smilingsun:

 

Those are good questions, not stupid at all.

I'm tempted to answer them here, but it would be best to start a new thread.

We have a question and answer forum that would be perfect for this.

[alexander]

Those are all good questions, David, like freezy said, tempted to answer them here, but i will not, Q&A sounds like a better place for it :)

 

Software developer you say :) hmm :) so what do you code in, who do you code for, what kind of projects do you do?

 

welcome to scienceforums, the only place you know where we try to answer every question about any science, questions about questions about science, questions about questions about questions, and so forth :)

[Slaihne]

Thanks again for the welcome,

 

To answer yor questions...

 

I've coded in Z80, 6502, 68000, Pascal and C. A good few years ago i was involved in writing games for the Speccy, and Amstrad. Nowadays I program in C#, Visual Basic and SQL writing business systems. The kind of stuff i do now is mainly accounts orientated.

 

Thanks, also for the advice on posting in the Q&A section. I think i will do that now

 

rgds

 

David

[alexander]

oh come on, you count SQL as a programming language? its like listing HTML or TeX or something...

[Slaihne]

Lol,

 

When you're working with stored procedures, yes.

 

Around 30% of the code within the big project we're working on resides within the database itself. Some of these stored procedures are several hundred lines of code.

 

For instance, something i am currently working on. Taking an order and moving it forward to an invoice. On the way it has to hit stock records, have each detail line costed, has to be posted to the customers account for running statements, has to hit nominal accounts and can possibly be split into multiple invoices or combined with other orders.

 

This is a single stored procedure call. The code on the front end is around 2 lines of VB just to set up the call and make it.

 

I've also heard of guys who have implemented complete MUD's in SQL with the barest minimum of front end code.

 

It's got all the basics, functions, procedures, string handling, conversions, loops.

 

So yes, i'd call it a programming language

 

rgds

 

David

[alexander]

SQL is still a Simple Query Language not a programming one, regardless of stored procedures...

[sanctus]

I don't know SQL, but I wonder now: what makes a set of input/writing rules a programming language in your definition Alexander?

[alexander]

SQL is a database language, while it can do looping, has variables and can do logic, it is only made to interact and work within the database, be it microsoft sql, mysql, postgres, what have you, it only works on database data and is not able to interact with an computer system itself. Programming languages are made to, in one way or another, interact with the computer, not just act on a specific set of data within the database engine. Thus it is not a programming language, it is a databasing language, and since it ONLY interacts with the database engine and is incapable of interacting directly with a computer system, i can and will not call it a programming language, though it may seem as such and have some characteristics of thereof.

[sanctus]

Of course you are coherent with your definition. But I for example (and Slaihne I guess too) do not make a difference if I do something which interacts the computer system itself or something stored in it. But then I have never used a database language as you call them...

But, when I have to describe someone,usually with no scientific background then, what latex is I say it is a way of writing articles/rapports/etc where you actually code the text. And since I use coding as a synonym for programming, to be coherent I should also say that latex is a programming language.

 

You surely won't agree, but what if you write tex in emacs and you modify the lisp code to make the latex mode make new different things? E.g. adding C-x C-l # shortcut for a go to line #?

[alexander]

no, lisp is a programming language, it is full an well capable of interacting with the computer, and is used all the time in AI work. Tex is a typesetting language, much like html, its sole purpose is to manipulate the text and tell the rendering agent how to render it. Like post script does for printers and html and css do for the browsers... so no i would not agree with you, but contrary to how most people disagree, i do respect your view point, as i do slaihne's

[Slaihne]

The only difference between Structured Query Language and something like C is that you have to think in sets and thus don't need to write looping code. There are facilities to loop through a record at a time but usually you can find a way to get the same result without having to.

 

The only place where SQL is a poor relative to other languages is in terms of input and output. It has no real notion of a keyboard, screen, filesystem, or other I/O devices. Any access it gets to these are through libraries. But then again, most other languages have no direct contact with these devices either, again, it's provided by libraries.

 

But, each to their own :)

 

rgds

 

David