@Semiclassical we've really only been talking about very mathematical examples so I'll do stuff like the free particle and SHM in the Lagrangian formalism
that's one place where I do like having conservation laws tbh: You have $E^2-B^2$ and $\mathbf{E}\cdot\mathbf{B}$ as invariants under Lorentz transformations iirc
which in particular means that if there's a reference frame where there's only electric fields, then there's no reference frame where there's only magnetic fields
I guess that's true here. I have in mind the next few steps
then form $\frac{1+\sqrt{2}}{2^1}$ and find the smallest $n$ such that $3^{1/n}$ is smaller than this
And repeat ad infinitum
The number you get each time will always be bounded below by 1, but is also getting smaller
I'd conjecture that it converges to 1
If so, that'd give such a decomposition. However, I think you could just as well have skipped a prime--say, gone from 3 directly to 5---and this would still work
In which case the decomposition is certainly not unique
There would, however, be a unique decomposition for which the powers are all nonzero unit fractions
It is given that if $a_n=\frac{n^n}{n!}$ then $\lim_\limits{n\to \infty} \frac{a_{n+1}}{a_n}=e$, how to find $\lim_\limits{n\to\infty} \frac{n}{(n!)^{1/n}}$ from that?
So anyone familiar with the use of quaternions and rotation matrices in CG? I want to improve a wiki page about it but I'm lacking in knowledge. It now reads "Compared to rotation matrices they are more compact, more numerically stable, and may be more efficient." The last bit is seriously jarring. Are they or are they not? Or does it depend and if yes, on what? Or is it unknown or disputed?
@Alessandro Only if the endspace of the manifold is a sphere, I think. But I at least need the generalized topological Poincare conjecture to prove this.
Let's try to write down an argument
Firstly, if $M$ is a noncompact manifold, I claim that a neighborhood $U_\infty$ of infinity inside the one-point compactification $M^\infty$ is homeomorphic to the cone on $E$, the space of ends of $M$
@Alessandro Actually you don't need to meddle with the endspace. If $U_\infty$ is a neighborhood of infinity in $M^\infty$, it has to be homeomorphic to a ball $B$. Therefore $U_\infty - \{\infty\}$, which is complement of a compact subset $K \subset M$, has to be homeomorphic to the deleted ball $B-\{0\}$.
Taking closure says there must be a subset $U \subset M$ with compact closure such that $M - U$ is homeomorphic to a deleted ball.
That's, like, a good restriction
I am sure it also means that the space of ends is a sphere.
Yeah it does.
OK, I'm happy. We didn't need any cone or Poincare conjecture business after all
@Alessandro The reason I was thinking Poincare was the following question: If $M$ is a closed manifold, when is the cone $CM := M \times [0, 1]/M \times \{1\}$ a manifold (with boundary)?
The answer is only when $M$ is homeomorphic to $S^n$. The easiest proof I know is by taking a neighborhood of the cone point, which is homeomorphic to $CM$. It must also be homeomorphic to the $n$-ball $B^n$ because it's a manifold by hypothesis
Delete the cone point to get a homeomorphism $M \times \Bbb R \cong B^n - p \cong S^n \times \Bbb R$
That's a lot. Most I have seen is about 450 in a book by Humphreys. But I think he actually references all of those in the book (which is only just over 200 pages)