Bucky Group 22 - Vectors

As some Vacuum State readers have been asking where exactly the Bucky Group meet every Sunday, I have decided to upload the location above. Isn't this a beautiful sight and idyllic way to spend Sunday morning? This pix will replace the one I usually use for the Bucky Group posts. It is the iconic zig zaggy bridge of MacRitchie below.

This Sunday, I managed to jog after a long while. My knees have mysteriously recovered, after my being horizontal due to my recent flu and fever. So even falling sick had its plus point. :)
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We continued with Bucky's book, "Utopia or Oblivion"'s Chapter 3, "Prevailing Conditions in the Arts". In the opening pages, Bucky reassert that while much of the knowledge we were taught as separate subjects in school are not separated from one another in nature. Nature did not have separate departments for Chemistry, Biology and Physics, requiring different heads of departments. In Bucky's view, nature has only one department. As the exploration capabilities during Bucky's youth were very meagre compared to today, what the biologist were able to see with his very low-powered microscope looked very different from what the chemists seemed to be dealing with. The chemists and physicists couldn't see what they were working with anyway. So, they felt they needed different departments.

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Bucky in the subsequent paragraphs endeavoured to explain his findings in for a coordinate system for nature and felt that if there is one, it would be characterised by arithmatic and geometry. Particularly he mentioned that Chemistry has shown us that nature was associating and disassociating in terms of whole rational numbers, such as H2O.

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Scientists in those days were comfortable modeling in 3 dimensions, as it can be graphically represented by a cube. When it comes to the fourth power, then they realised they cannot illustrate their model graphically. Some scientists erroneously considered 'time' as the fourth dimension and that it is invisible and not possible to show its geometry.

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Bucky then found himself working and impressed with Vectors. Although Galileo used them tentatively and erroneously in developing his parallelogram of forces. Click here (a previous Bucky Group post where we discussed the use of the parallelogram in navigation.)

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Bucky wonders if nature might have a set of omnidirectionally operative vectors that represented all of our experiences.

[Book reading stopped here, but stay tuned next week and find out what Bucky's geometries are.]

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Discussions

I notice that Bucky likes geometry and uses them to model his findings so that we can understand the generalised behaviours in nature. I find it so cool!

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Question: "Why do we need to understand about vectors? How would it help me to locate my three lost cats?"

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Replies: If you had recorded your cats' regular movement vectors, you would have been able to find them. (BTW, two of the cats are suspected to have been killed by a group of monkeys. The third one just went missing.)

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Joo Hock mentioned that if we can handle vectors well, which comprises direction and frequency, then it may lead us to teleportation.

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Chia Siew: Then will the head end up on the arse at the destination end?

Monica: Well, to some people that may be where their head is mentally most of the time anyway, so it is ok. *chuckles*

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Postmortem in the coffeeshop:

During breakfast after the session, Joo Hock related to Eric (my American friend) about Bucky's aborted plan to kill himself one day by the great lakes. Eric's hometown is near the great lakes in the US. (Continuing the story) Then a voice came and told Bucky that his life is not for him to take, and on realising that, decided to dedicate his life to humanity. He had used his life as an experiment to serve humanity.

Then it occured in my head. "Is anyone one of us courageous enough to do the same as Bucky?" I have done a micro-experiment when I was sick last few weeks. It was fun! Will I be daring enough to do more?

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Last but not least, we got our usual dose of free orchids from Sue. It's from their farm. We visit the farm in Kota Tinggi from time to time. Thanks Sue.