Senior Project Idea(s)

To be perfectly honest I have no idea what I would really like to do for a senior project in math. I do know however, areas of subjects that interest me that I would like to explore or at least have an understanding of. There are two subjects that are really really interesting to me, they are particle and quantum physics. These two areas would be really neat to learn more about because they are part of cutting-edge research that is happening right now and pertains to our future. Particle physics would be the subject that I would want to delve into the most, for several reasons. The being that I do have a very shallow understanding of what it is and from that understanding find it very interesting. Also since I do have a base understanding of what it is I would like to have a basic understanding of some of the mathematical concepts that are applied with it. The end product if I was to do this would be a booklet, either online or in paper, that would describe the basics both in lay-mens terms but also the mathematical side too.

QQC part Ten

"At the same time that the young Buddha was learning many of the truths that would become Buddhism, the Pythagoreans were studying the universe through numbers. They believed that numbers were fundamental to the universe-that in a a very real sense, everything is built from numbers."

This quote is ... odd. To think that while Buddha who is a religious icon, that many people the world over still follow his teachings, existed when numbers were in prime existence is pretty odd. It is as if the world goes through phases where, what I guess you could call 'enlightenment' encases itself. Another part of this quote that I find interesting is that people thought that everything is built from numbers. It is not the thought itself that is odd but I can not seem to figure out how someone could suddenly think 'hey I bet the universe is built from number'. The question that this quote brings up to myself is not one dealing precisely with the mathmatics, it is that if both of these incredible influential ideas were happening at around the same time, does that mean that they are interrelated?

QQC Part Nine

Quote: "1 nanometer, as well as being the decimal fraction of 1/1,000,000,000.) DNA, the molecule that holds together and makes up all our genes, is 2 nanometers (nm) in diameter (although if it was stretched out in a line, it would be 6 feet (1.8 m) long-it's a long and very coiled-up molecule within each of our cells).

I think that the when you read this quote the first time you almost have to do a a double take. At first a nanometer seems obviously small due to the prefix nano, but when the conversion is made to a fraction, one can truly see how small this measurement is. But the kicker is that in only 2 nanometers of DNA, remembering that this is only in one cell too, there exists 6 feet worth of strands when laid straight out. This is huge considering how many cells exist in the human body. So this brings up my question, if we were to collect every nanometer of DNA from a human body and stretch it into a straight line, would it be enough to stretch around the world? (If you know the answer please feel free to comment)

QQC Part Eight

So I know we are suppose to have a quote but to be completely honest I couldn't choose just one. Before reading I did have a small amount of prior knowledge about where numbers had come from, but I had no idea the history! I didn't know that people actually lived by not knowing how to count, that they just had a pile of rocks and made trades in accordance to the number of rock. Just a trade one for one. Also from a linguistic stand point the fact that we still use the root of the words created to portray written numbers is amazing! It happens to be one of the few things we still continue to see in modern day language. Also I didn't know that depending on if there is a line above Roman numerals or not determines if you multiply.

The idea that the human race only came up with the 'zero' a few hundred years ago is astounding. The concept itself I would think is not that hard, if you have say three things and you say loose those three things you have nothing left. But apparently this was not an easy concept mathematically. The question I have though is not one I think was addressed in the reading, where did the name 'zero' actually come from? They address how zero was proven originally and then what the misconceptions were (aka don't divide by zero!) but they do not address how exactly zero got the name zero.