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Re: Airplane Technology: Science Reveries Have More Wiggle Room

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Posted by Michael W. Pearson on December 16, 2004 04:56:37 UTC


Laymans Terms =/= Science
What does that mean?

Just because something seems to make sense, that doesn't make it scientific. If it did, those big heavy airplanes should fall down straightaway.

Hi Jon

There's no difference between you and me about rigor.
Airplanes are applied science, sorta beside the point. There was no danger of Tarajee's point going past the wind tunnel stage without rigorous criticism.

A lay person may conceive of concepts outside math. Physics may draw upon models like
Tarajee was describing. Verifying htem is another matter. I hesitate to correct someone's reverie without some gentleness...maybe I have done my time as an iconoclast. An hypothesis may contain errors, but if one has done one's best, the possibility of error is no reason to stop submitting it for our review. Finding those errors, as you probably did, is right. Yet citing our book-learning to contradict someone is not really the ssame as trying to comprehend what they are trying to say, and _then letting them have it! b:)
One further note: the following correction is necessary to the post at http://www.astronomy.net/forums/general/messages/4558.shtml:
"A layman might say the "force becomes weak" to convey that the equation of that travelling object's mass and direction, which (remove "which") as you subtract the accumulating increments of gravity and air resistance over time, gives
a smaller and smaller number describing the amount of energy remaining from the original number."
The moderator removed my correction, apparently because it was duplicative. It was titled approximately,"Classic physics education need not be trapped by jargon"
Shalomaloha,
Mike

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