The h Bar - 2017-08-17 (page 4 of 5)

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5:00 PM

@JohnRennie I feel you're trapping yourself in a corner you can't escape from with that statement. How is the energy stored in an electromagnetic field "kinetic energy"?

When you look on really fundamental scale, e.g. quantum field theory, potential energy kind of disappears.

@JohnRennie Um, what?

guys how do you write the tensor product in mathjax?

@ACuriousMind Which is the best answer(according to you) to the question you gave me the link to?

I can't find it in the help-thing

5:01 PM

@Abcd Lubos' answer

@CooperCape \otimes

thanks :D

@CooperCape Also, Detexify is an amazing tool to find the commands for specific symbols

Oh nice :D

@JohnRennie My school teacher also didn't explain energy to me because "he had no time".

Anonymous

I think @Abcd will get even more confused by the terms like Hamiltonian, Noether's, ...in Motl's answer

5:04 PM

"heat is always the energy during transmission" therefore it's meaningless to say a body "has heat" @Abcd does that confuse you?

@Blue Yes, he doesn't know them I think

@skullpatrol No.

Anonymous

Body has energy (not necessarily heat energy). Energy can be gained or lost in form of "heat" energy.

Prathyush Poduval

@ACuriousMind Helped me a countless number of times!

Energy could be thought of as a mathematical entity

which always seems to be conserved

What does confuse you? @Abcd

5:07 PM

@Abcd there is no general meaning of energy. If you look at a specific physical system then you can pick it part to understand what energy means in that system, but then it will mean something different in a different system.

@Blue Well, but it is the answer to what energy "is" - a conserved quantity, a number. I don't think Lubos' answer becomes non-sensical if you don't know exactly what Noether's theorem is.

Anonymous

@ACuriousMind Yes. It is the correct answer. But Abcd won't understand it now.

Prathyush Poduval

@Abcd do you know that $\int F.dr = \frac{1}{2}mv^2$?

I think I have an "old age mentality" because it's hard for me to believe in concepts like "complex numbers", "energy" just like the people of the past disapproved them and thought of everything as "material".

Anonymous

@Abcd You are not alone

5:11 PM

@Blue How am I not alone?

@Abcd actually rather the reverse. Intuitive basically means what you're used to and new ideas always seem uninutuitive.

Prathyush Poduval

@Abcd What do you mean by you can't beleive in it?

But experience of working with new ideas makes them seem intuitive.

negative numbers are the same @Abcd

@PrathyushPoduval complex nos, I can understand he may have the problem in physical meaning.

5:12 PM

So we all start out as children finding it hard to accept abstract quantities, but we learn to accept them through experience.

Prathyush Poduval

@WrichikBasu I find the vectorial representation quite useful

@PrathyushPoduval I can't "accept them". I can't agree that they exist.

Hi, everybody.

Hi

@Abcd they work well and successfully in everything from Quantum to cosmos. Then why can't you accept them?

Anonymous

5:13 PM

@Abcd Everything in physics feels unintuitive before it feels intuitive. For example I had a hard time thinking of light as a "wave".

@Abcd When did anyone say that complex numbers "existed"? They are used to express things which aren't expressible from simple Maths..

Read up plane waves in quantum. Their equation has complex nos. Not only that, countless other places have complex nos.

Anonymous

We built our intuition by observing the material world. So abstract things might seem counter-intuitive at first

@Abcd No one expects you to agree they "exist" (what does that even mean?). What you should agree to is that they are useful for doing physics and mathematics.

Anonymous

Don't worry. It will get better with time

5:15 PM

@Sid they don't exist, but prove others' existence.

Prathyush Poduval

Interesting Question:

3

Q: Particle number vs time in collisional N-body problem

I have created a crude N-body simulator which allows N bodies of equal masses to interact gravitationally in 2 dimensions. Each body is modeled as a circle with a radius as a function of its mass, in such a way that all bodies have the same density. When two bodies collide, i.e their radii ove...

classical-mechanics statistical-mechanics scattering many-body scattering-cross-section

Guys come on. Everything in physics is made up.

4

@WrichikBasu, @Sid what? Complex numbers do exist. I have seen some videos on them.

We make up words like "force", "electric field", "mass", and all kinds of other stuff as a convenient way to keep track of how we observe the world works.

4

Anonymous

That ^

Anonymous

5:16 PM

<3

Math is really not very different. Math does have an interesting aspect in that it's not in any way really tied to the natural world. It requires only self-consistency, but it's completely made up by humans.

On the other hand, physics is special in that the stuff we make up has to actually reflect Nature, otherwise we throw it out and cook up something better.

But again, it's all stuff we tell ourselves for convenience.

Anonymous

Model-dependent realism

Model-dependent realism is a view of scientific inquiry that focuses on the role of scientific models of phenomena. It claims reality should be interpreted based upon these models, and where several models overlap in describing a particular subject, multiple, equally valid, realities exist. It claims that it is meaningless to talk about the "true reality" of a model as we can never be absolutely certain of anything. The only meaningful thing is the usefulness of the model. The term "model-dependent realism" was coined by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in their 2010 book, The Grand Design...

Anonymous

Good read :)

We can see this even in our own existing theories: you can model the behavior of a quantum system either with path integration or Schrodinger's equation. They both work, but they look completely different and elicit completely different stories in our minds.

Prathyush Poduval

I don't like philosophy

5:18 PM

@Abcd I'm confused. First you said that you can't agree that they exist, and now you say that they exist. Which is it?

We're trying to define "energy" @DanielSank for abcd

Anonymous

@PrathyushPoduval Then you don't like science

We talk about "interpretations" in physics because we recognize that the same Natural phenomenon supports more than one human-made metaphor.

@PrathyushPoduval Like physics, philosophy doesn't have to care about you liking it in order to apply to your life ;P

@Blue I disagree with that.

Prathyush Poduval

5:19 PM

@Blue Philosophy is not science

^ agreed

@ACuriousMind Complex numbers- initially it was hard to believe that they exist but later I agreed; but energy - even after 2 years I can't believe that it exists.

Anonymous

@DanielSank Depends on how you define "philosophy"

Prathyush Poduval

It's more about "meaning of life, science" and related nonsense

It's interesting and wonderful that very different metaphors of Nature can be mathematically equivalent!

5:19 PM

@Abcd What, exactly, do you mean when you say something "exists"?

Anonymous

Philosophy: the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline.

@ACuriousMind Energy is simple in the end: it is a quantity we assign to various situations in Nature when we notice that one situation can be converted into another.

For example, we notice that if we lift up a ball and drop it, the ball will wind up back at the ground, but moving quickly.

Therefore we say "aha, being high up can be traded for being lower but moving fast".

I mean, complex numbers certainly don't exist in the same sense that the keyboard I'm typing on exists - I can touch and feel the latter, but not the former

We find that there is quantitative trade-off between highness and fastness and we made up "energy" to account for it.

@ACuriousMind A thing exists if it has it's presence somewhere like complex numbers have their presence in the argand plane, but energy - where is it?

5:21 PM

But then later we noticed something amazing: if you burn some wood in a steam-engine train, you can get the train moving fast! This is weird: both highness and wood can trade for speed.

So we say wood has "chemical energy".

Anonymous

@Abcd wut

@DanielSank I already said: "Energy "is" nothing - it's just a number, a bookkeeping device we attach to physical objects and processes."

Then we notice electrical phenomena can also be traded for speed, so we invent electrical energy. Then later we noticed, amazingly, that what we called "chemical energy" is actually just electrical energy!

@ACuriousMind a currency

And so, given all this wonderful consistency, we have a notion of energy that is quite useful when thinking about what phenomena can be traded for which other phenomena.

5:23 PM

@Abcd I do not understand what that means. What is the "3d argand plane"?

@ACuriousMind Yes, I'm simply giving a more narrative version.

@Abcd Sooo...because I can draw complex numbers on a sheet of paper, they exist?

I was basically referring to this : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_plane

That does not seem to be a very useful notion of "existence", I'm afraid.

@ACuriousMind yes.

5:25 PM

Um..no.

@Abcd energy has its "presence" in the capacity to do a measurable amount of work. and that is the number of joules.

@skullpatrol How is heat energy work?

Heat is the motion of atoms.

@Abcd So, I can also draw graphs in which one axis is energy. Why does that not imply it "exists"?

I'm really confused by what you mean by "existence" here

Anonymous

@skullpatrol Why are you repeating the same thing again and again? Now, define "work" without bringing in "energy" in the definition.

5:28 PM

Why define one without the other?

Anonymous

@skullpatrol Otherwise your definition is circular as Abcd had pointed out.

Forget work.

You have to start some where.

Energy is just a way to quantify physical situations that can be transition from one to antother.

Yeah, so just talk about configurations of the physical world. Only ones with equal energy ever go from one to the other.

Forget work.

If I forget work, I don't get a measure.

5:30 PM

You can measure speed, height, etc.

You cannot measure work.

@DanielSank Can we measure energy?

No.

What is energy quantatively?

Energy is a terrible thing to try to measure.

You can sort of measure it, but the measurements are always pretty indirect.

@Abcd I do not understand the question.

@Abcd Not in the sense that there is a device that directly measures energy. As we're said, it's a bookkeeping number that we attach to things, and that number can be computed from other quantities you can measure, but you can't really measure it directly.

5:32 PM

@DanielSank What is energy in terms of mathematics? (Maths is always easier to absorb (for me))

@Abcd Uh... there isn't one mathematical formulation of energy (unless you want to talk about relativity, which I don't).

@Abcd The conserved quantity associated to the time translation symmetry of the action through Noether's theorem. Was that easier to absorb than any of the explanations given so far? :P

@ACuriousMind No.

@DanielSank What is heat energy in mathematical terms?

Thought so - and in the end what I just said boils down to "number without intrinsic meaning that's useful because it's conserved", anyway.

Anonymous

@Abcd For now perhaps the most intuitive way of thinking of it is as "currency" notes in a black box as Loong had pointed out.

5:34 PM

It was easier to understand kinetic energy beacause it's simple, direct and straightforward $**0.5mv^2**$

@Abcd Maybe you could explain to us how you "understand" kinetic energy so we know what sort of understanding you are after here

@ACuriousMind Mathematical understanding.

Anonymous

Heh. $0.5mv^2$ means nothing

Imo, what you wrote down there is not an understanding. It's just the formula for kinetic energy.

@Abcd I have to think about this for a minute.

5:37 PM

If you just want the formula for heat energy, for an ideal gas it is $cNT$, where $c$ is the heat capacity, $N$ the molar mass and $T$ the temperature.

Heat energy is, essentially, energy that is not associated with a degree of freedom of your system to which you can couple another single degree of freedom.

@DanielSank I am not sure Abcd understands degree of freedom yet

oh

Statistical physics really only makes sense once you can understand constraints and degrees of freedom. Otherwise, you can get a rough feeling, but will always be missing something.

12

Q: What is all energy made of?

I know it sounds like a weird question to ask but I find it unusual nobody has actually told me. I know what it does but not what it is... I have some kind of idea that it's actually matter and matter is energy and everything in the universe is just kind of intermingled if that makes sense..? I d...

See docscience's answer.

He says that "we don't know what energy is"

Are you changing your question? @Abcd

5:42 PM

I loath answers like that.

48 mins ago, by Abcd

@JohnRennie Help me understand the energy we deal with during high school years.

@skullpatrol No

"We don't know what energy is" is a foolish, destructive statement that has no place in science, iMHO.

Anonymous

I'm not sure I agree with Feynman here. "We really don't know what energy is". It's like saying we don't know what numbers are.

2

It's just as bad as "nobody understands quantum mechanics".

5:42 PM

@Blue Ohhh

Anonymous

It's a made up quantity in the first place

YES

@Abcd Well, he is correct, but by the standard of "not knowing what X is" used there, we know pretty much of nothing what it"is"

docscience was onto something when he pointed out that energy is not a thing like mass or color, but I completely disagree that we don't know what it is.

We know what it is: it's a convenient concept that helps us think about how Nature works.

Just like numbers (you da man, @Blue).

@ACuriousMind Yeah that's why I don't like those statements.

Energy is an abstraction.

Like it or not, get used to it.

5:46 PM

This is why I really don't like words.

@DanielSank Ugh. Yes, that one is terrible

@skullpatrol I will try :(

@CooperCape And yet, having no words doesn't seem to be any better :P

I just remembered something about energy. It's from one of Feynman's books.

"Of which one cannot speak, one must remain silent" - Wittgenstein

5:48 PM

True... My understanding of most things comes mathematically first however...

Teachers say stuff this:

> What makes car engines work? Energy! Energy comes from the sun, makes plants grow, and then we burn the plants to make our cars move. It's all possible because of energy!

^ That is a fantastically horrible thing to say to a student.

Feynman was reading textbooks to help the school system choose which one to use in its curriculum, and when he saw passages like that one, he would lose his temper. Apparently his wife came to call him a "volcano" when he was proofreading books because we would erupt over stuff like this.

In Feynman's opinion, the book should have explained how the sun's radiation makes plants grow... like... on a step by step level.

Where else do you start?

@Blue There are people who claim we don't know what numbers are, and some are even against claiming "the natural numbers" exist (look up finitism and ultra-finitism).

Then you explain how burning a plant causes pressure increase, and how that pushes on the engine piston, etc.

I think it's a useful way to think about converting different forms of energy however.

5:51 PM

Just saying "energy" makes the student, like @abc, think that energy is a thing.

Without getting into technical details

To understand physics you need really proficient and good teachers, I never had the experience of learning physics from a good teacher (except @JohnRennie who explains things really welllll!)

@CooperCape Yes but at the cost of fucking up the student's mind.

In my (strong) opinion, you should never ever use a buzzword before you have thoroughly made sure the student understands the principles at work.

If you give the buzzword first, then the student thinks the buzzword is the material thing, which is completely wrong.

Isn't it the same way how students are taught Bohr's model of the atom before thinking about orbitals and probability. A useful step but kinda wrong...

When I asked my dad how a vacuum cleaner works, he started by telling me about how everything is made of atoms, all zooming around. He then asked me "what happens if I scoop some of those air atoms away from one spot?". It took me a few minutes to figure out, for myself, that the other air atoms would fill the space. Voila! I understood how a vacuum cleaner works and without using the word "suction".

Anonymous

5:53 PM

@Abcd I too never had a good physics teacher in my life (except the people on the internet). Good books and internet are the best things to teach yourself physics.

This was much better, because now I really understood what was happening, and I didn't form that common misconception that suction is some kind of magic force.

@Abcd Absolutely true.

@CooperCape Oh god don't get me started on the Bohr model. The amount of confusion the belief that that is how atoms work has generated has led me to think that we shouldn't teach the Bohr model as anything other than a historic curiosity.

@Abcd Sorry to say this, but stop complaining. Not everything in life is rosy. You should be thankful that you got JR who is so good.

Some/many/all models are wrong but useful. The Bohr model is mostly wrong :P

@CooperCape The Bohr model would be ok IMHO if I had learned about spectral lines at the same time, but I didn't.

I just learned this damned model for no reason.

@ACuriousMind It gets spectra right.

If you were to show students some lines from a prism and then talk about the Bohr model, it wouldn't be so bad.

5:56 PM

I think my chemistry teacher did a good job on continuing on from the Bohr model to orbitals, however I was weirdly taught spectra at the same time as orbitals

@DanielSank Yes. If it was introduced as "this is not how it is, but a useful way to think about spectral lines is the Bohr model", it might be okay. It mostly seems to be taught as "this is how an atom looks like", though

oh

yeah that's crap

That's more or less what happened to me too (in 3rd grade!).

For UK students we get used to it because from GCSE to A levels the first lesson is always "This is what you thought. Hah it's wrong"

tbh every year...

In general I think physics models should be preceded by the phenomenon their trying to explain, so that students understand exactly why that model is there.

If you start with the model, it's hard to avoid thinking that this is some magic information coming down from the heavens.

I think in most things it's always the what then the why.

6:00 PM

Alright, let's deal with heat for a few minutes.

Why do we say that it's only the energy in flow/transmission?

Bottom line @Abcd keep looking at more and more examples of energy, one day it will "click"

@ACuriousMind So could I have called his attitude ridiculous?

@skullpatrol I hope so...

@skullpatrol I don't think that is the bottom line of anything anyone was saying here.

Heat flows from hot to cold, right? @Abcd

6:03 PM

$\bat$

@skullpatrol Yes...I am just thinking of heat as a number moving from a place with more numbers to place with less numbers

\bat

hmm

@CooperCape ?

it makes a bat in LATEX apparently

Okay

6:04 PM

@JohnRennie you here?

@JohnRennie ghetto solution gyazo.com/89f833937da07c720c27e0c1fc559f54

They're wedged in there pretty good

@Abcd you still there?

@skullpatrol Yes

So the numbers are measuring a situation, right?

@skullpatrol yes

6:23 PM

What textbook are you using? @Abcd

Concepts of Physics Volume 1 and 2

Principles of Physics by Resnick_Halliday

Mechanics Part 1 and 2

That's a mistake, dear. Always stick to a single book. Complete it. Then, look at others if you have the time

@skullpatrol see^(the book list)

@Sid But then if one book doesn't explain concepts well, I have to read the other.

To all online users: Please let me know if you have some book suggestions for me. The best book would be the one which gives a clear intuitive picture.

Nah, you are reading the correct books

@Sid Okay.

6:29 PM

"correct" as in enough for high schools

@Sid what about this: amazon.in/Elementary-Physics-Text-Book-Schools-Classic/dp/…

@Abcd you have the best books. Reading theories are OK. But don't try to do sums from all books together. Finish one, then go to another. But don't continue on one chapter for long.

Anonymous

@Abcd Are you using the website I told you about?

@Blue No, I didn't like it much.

How about looking for a middle school textbook instead @Abcd since you've been trying for two years at this level?

Anonymous

6:33 PM

@Abcd I see

@skullpatrol No, I will be lagging behind then. I have tooo much course to complete too.

amazon.com/Feynman-Lectures-Physics-boxed-set/dp/0465023827/…

Is this a book or are they video lectures^

Anonymous

NCERT is the best book to start though.

Anonymous

@Abcd Yes

Anonymous

Books

@Blue Should I buy them? Will they help me get an intuitive understanding?

Anonymous

6:35 PM

@Abcd It's available online

Anonymous

If you like it you can buy

Anonymous

feynmanlectures.caltech.edu

Anonymous

I personally like the "for dummies" series. They are excellent for beginners. But maybe you won't get enough time to cover them

@Abcd I have the pdf of all the 3 volumes.

Okay

6:37 PM

The mechanical universe video series gives a great intuitive understanding of energy @Abcd

@skullpatrol Please give me the link

Anonymous

@Abcd youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8_xPU5epJddRABXqJ5h5G0dk-XGtA5cZ

thanks

The Mechanical Universe

The Mechanical Universe... And Beyond is a 52-part telecourse, filmed at the California Institute of Technology, that introduces university level physics, covering topics from Copernicus to quantum mechanics. The series was produced by Caltech and INTELECOM, a nonprofit consortium of California community colleges now known as Intelecom Learning, with financial support from Annenberg/CPB. == Overview == Produced starting in 1985, the videos make heavy use of historical dramatizations and visual aids to explain physics concepts. The latter were state of the art at the time, incorporating almost 8...

[Random]

Energy is a conserved quantity under time translation
Momentum is a conserved quantity under space translation
Angular momentum is a conserved quantity under space rotations and boosts
Then what is the symmetry associated to the fact that total probability is conserved?

Anonymous

6:50 PM

user image

Anonymous

:) This book has some great comic strips

> But when antimatter and doesn't matter meet, it does matter

What is Energy? [HD]

This video compares energy to boxes

Anonymous

@Abcd Analogies may help you to understand properties of energy. But analogies are never perfect

Anonymous

If that helps you then go ahead

7:01 PM

@Blue This (box = energy) is the worst analogy imo

Anonymous

A better analogy might be thinking of energy as currency.

Anonymous

But even that is not perfect

I've got a good definition of energy, but if I start now, then I can say that no one will understand anything.

Anonymous

I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain.

No proof on paper defining energy in Physics terms, but if you understand that, which I'm trying to understand, you'll know everything in this universe. I can assure you that.

Anonymous

7:13 PM

@WrichikBasu No, leave it. If I understand everything in the universe, I won't have much to do for time pass. :-)

@Abcd since no good definition in books or videos regarding energy can satisfy you, I'll suggest you do something: though I know that this will be considered off topic in a physics site, I suggest you read the Gita. I'm reading it at this moment, and I can assure you once you have brought in the entire energy of the universe into yourself, and unleashed the knowledge of your soul, you'll be left with no questions,as you'll know everything.

Anonymous

...

And in order to do that, you'll have to leave all the miseries of the earth and dive into the deaths of knowledge, which extends books.

The book that I mentioned above has the answer to all questions in the earth. It'll guide you to find all those answers.

At one point of time, you'll see that everything is an illusion, and what remains is that energy that you were talking of. The extra terrestrial energy.

Subjective realities requires careful and an open mind to understood its relevance, which is why most esoteric readings cannot simply be approached via the analytic mind

Anyways, good night all of you! I'll do a bit of meditation now, and then sleep. I'll address all replies tomorrow morning. :-)

7:19 PM

The notion of energy in most esoteric teachings is like a force that causes changes and can influence things, it is not as precise as the physics notion of energy

IMO, One should have a thorough understanding on what energy in physics is before trying to comprehend esoteric energy, because it is something a lot broader and vague

Anonymous

7:32 PM

Probably we ended up confusing @Abcd even more than he was before asking the question. =P

2

That is why, keep away from esoteric energy for now, and focus on the physics first

In fact, it might help to talk about entropy, since it and energy are intimately related, and entropy has a more obvious statistical mechanics and combinatorical meaning

AccidentalFourierTransform

@EmilioPisanty you alright, right?

these news are terrible

it physically hurts to hear them

it makes me so sad

@AccidentalFourierTransform what happened?

AccidentalFourierTransform

Barcelona: 13 killed as van rams crowds in Las Ramblas

more info here: reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/6uanuh/…

Oh, my God. Another of those attacks. Sigh

AccidentalFourierTransform

7:44 PM

I was there two fucking weeks ago

Emilio is in that place?

AccidentalFourierTransform

yes

I mean, not exactly there (I hope), but in Barcelona

@AccidentalFourierTransform It's like fate. For instance, my sister was in Hotel Taj 2 days before 26/11 happened

@Blue Circularity of definition is not a problem because we can bootstrap it with $\mathrm{d}W = \vec{F} \cdot \mathrm{d}\vec{s}$.

The structure is valuable because it is internally consistent and it works.

It works.

It works.

It works.

Not that I should be venting at you in particular because this is a very common tripping point for people, physics is highly self-referential and that is not a problem.

7:59 PM

@Blue maybe you should read Arnold

@AccidentalFourierTransform I can't believe it. It's like the world is coming apart.

8:23 PM

Hi, everybody.

@heather Let's put this in perspective, shall we?

Worldwide terrorism is a thing

Ghengis Kahn's hoards killed around 40 million people.

oh, come on.

The bubonic plague killed something like a third of the entire world population.

but yeah i wouldn't say that it's saying of a doom

8:25 PM

No, I'm dead serious.

that doesn't mean this incident is any less terrible.

I am absolutely serious.

This notion that the world is coming apart is, in my opinion, very overblown and really ignores history and the realities of the modern world.

@Heather It just means that the incident doesn't mean the world is coming apart.

Yes, this incident is terrible, but the world isn't coming part because fifteen people were killed in two incidents across the world.

The probability of dying to murder is at a historical low.

It's a common thing to blow horns of impending apocalypse that will wipe out human civilization whenever a somewhat moral and over-emotional person sees something bad with the world. That's, uh, not gonna happen. Indeed, for what you know, wherever the human civilization has gotten to might just be the beginning of the human history.

(Marx said this, not me, but in the context of economic history of the world)

8:28 PM

My aunt recently said that she thought the world was getting more cruel and wars more terrible.

She lived through the Vietnam war and the Korean war.

People just want to think their reality is the worst.

that wasn't my thinking when I said that - it was more about the terrible-ness of these incidents and other related ones.

but fair enough, the world isn't coming apart.

Very well.

"That is terrible" and "The world is ending" are not the same thing.

also true.

It's just so ridiculous when people say the world is getting worse. The Mongol hoards raped and pilliaged an entire continent because... uh...

Oh right, because they could.

This is worth glancing over, to get a basic idea of how much "more horrible" the word is or is not getting:

List of wars by death toll

This list of wars by death toll includes death toll estimates of all deaths that are either directly or indirectly caused by war. These numbers usually include both the deaths of military personnel which are the direct results of battle or other military wartime actions, as well as the wartime/war-related deaths of civilians, which are the results of war-induced epidemics, diseases, famines, atrocities, genocide, etc. == List of wars by death toll with over 1,000,000 deaths == == List of wars by death toll with fewer than 1,000,000 deaths == Note that the below list is incomplete. 880,000–1,000...

AccidentalFourierTransform

The world is better than ever. That doesn't mean you guys have to lecture her over her choice of words to express empathy...

8:32 PM

Perhaps I don't have to, but neither do people need to be in the habit of baseless exaggeration.

Take your pick which one you think is more tolerable.

I'm also not "lecturing". I'm trying to have a discussion.

AccidentalFourierTransform

@DanielSank and you had to point it out.

I was just going to comment on how interesting it is that most of the bad conflicts in history have been in China, yet I never learned about any of them in school.

^okay, that i'd be interested in discussing.

we cover almost no asian history in school, and it's annoying.

yah

@AccidentalFourierTransform Um, sure, just like we all feel compelled to pipe in when someone says $F=ma^2$.

I don't get your point.

very eurocentric, that's what U.S. education is... in importance 1. is U.S., 2. is overgeneralized Europe, 3. if there's any room is some handwavy stuff about ancient china (that was around a week of 6th grade).

8:36 PM

Right like at least the Taiping Rebellion should be covered!

and we rehash a lot of the same stuff every year

it's terribly inefficient.

and also, things never seem to work out as teachers plan. it went from "about a month on the civil war" to "a week on the civil war" (we spent more than a week on the intolerable acts alone).

yeesh

and forget about discussing current events, or more modern history, or diplomatic relations, or anything nearing immediate relevance.

I think part of the reason for that is that the school doesn't want to deal with differing political opinions of the parents.

I think it would be difficult to discuss current events without some parents losing their minds.

@heather you will learn a lot about China in AP World History

8:43 PM

@DanielSank true.

@0celóñe7 I'm actually not sure if my school offers that. Let me look it up...

8:57 PM

I actually don't know a lot about pre-Red China

early and middle Red China was pretty bad

but China has had a history of violence tracing back to a long long time ago so

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