Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Interesting... I think I get what I was trying to articulate now... ;o]

You've lost me.
ER — (archived)

I can't follow your logic, because you are somehow under the impression that language can communicate reality. But it can't, reality can only be understood by experience, not by logic. And it cannot be communicated by language, but only by mathematics.

Just for starters, "intensity" is just a word. It is DEFINED as the flux of power through a unit surface area at some distance from an isotropic emitter. Intensity has nothing to do with being intense, it's just the number of Watts of energy going through a square of a certain size at a certain distance. All that "equation" really tells you is that the farther you are from a light the dimmer it appears. There is no great mystery there.

You can't play a musical instrument or learn a language without practice, science is no different. Until you learn the language, you're just talking gibberish, it may make sense grammatically but it carries no information content.

Start with the basics: Mass (kilograms), distance (meters), time (seconds). Later we'll add electric charge (Coulombs), which Sir Isaac didn't know about. That is all you need to describe the Newtonian universe.

velocity is distance divided by time.
accelleration is velocity divided by time
momentum is mass times velocity
Force is mass times accelleration
Energy is force times distance.

These are all definitions, just words, so why are they important? What makes them useful? Because mass, distance and time CAN BE MEASURED, with scales, rulers and clocks! The others can be calculated from the measurements. We can replace the gibberish of language with a physical act which can be unambiguously replicated by anyone else.

Through experiment (NOT thought or logic or reason) we have determined that in all closed physical systems in equilibrium, energy is conserved and the momentum is zero. This is an astonishing result that could never have been anticipated by thinking about it. It had to be discovered in the laboratory or under an apple tree.

If you really want to follow up on this, find a good first year college physics text (one that uses a non-calculus approach), read it and work the problems. Once you really understand what F = ma really means, you'll be amazed at just how simple and elegant the world is.

There is no easy way, Grasshopper.

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