New Computer Fund

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Ones and ohs




The image above is a Penrose Tiling pattern borrowed from Wikipedia.  Pretty neat.  Selvam uses the Penrose pattern based on the Golden Ratio in nearly all her work.  One of the problems with the types of chaotic systems she deals with is that every frigging thing is chaotic.  Even computer calculations are chaotic to a degree because of rounding errors that build with each new calculation using a value with a rounding error.  The computers are useful even though inaccurate because we know about rounding errors and correct in short problems.  One third is 0.333333333... forever, 1/3 is simple, it is 1/3, one third, one part in three.  WE simplify, computers don't.

The golden ratio (1+5^0.5)/2 = 1.6180339887 blah blah blah is never repeating.   So if you are into the Golden Ratio, computers and complex problems, you are screwed.  Ah, but... what if you use the Golden Ratio Base?  The then computer ones and zeros would be (1+5^0.5)/2 or zero, with the placement of the zero indicating a power of the Golden Ratio.

When WE created base 2 for computers and the logic associated with base two compatible with a base 10 world, WE created problems.  The damn French done it!  Metric sucks because the world is not base 10!  Hell, base 12 or base 60 would make more sense than base 10.  But since WE have an average of 10 fingers and ten toes, WE think in base 10.

It is too late to fix that, evolution may eventually give us an extra dew claw per appendage,but for now we are stuck with ten.  It may not be too late for computers though.

This may be my craziest post ever, but from a few trial calculations, climate really does like Phinary.

My quote of the day:  When you use base 2 to produce a base 10 answer for a base phi problem you end up right where we are :)





4 comments:

  1. No comments? None? Not any?

    maybe you'll entertain a complicated question of mine regarding the applicability if any of other energy metrics to the warming discussions.

    or maybe in person this winter in Marathon.

    j ferguson m/v arcadian

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  2. j there is one comment :)

    Sure, I think better fishing, but shoot.

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  3. I'm a bit perplexed about the choice of temperature as a metric. My reasoning is that there's a lot of energy (change in energy content) in our various systems which may not be expressed by temperature. For example does the magnitude of energy involved in convection show up in temperature? energy due to state change of moisture? Getting all this mass moving must surely involve energy conversion.

    Or are these other changes in inertia washed out to temperature?

    It's ok to tell me this is a stupid question. But it has been bothering me for the several years I've been pondering whether all this anthropogenic climate affecting hasn't been oversimplified maybe because to describe it more profoundly would confuse everyone.

    thanks for giving it a shot.

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  4. Yep that is exactly the problem I had so I have been using just Watts/meter squared in a static model to simplify some things. It is like continuing the radiant physics through all densities which is what the Energy Budget cartoons try to do as an illustration, except I am not trying to determine what flux is due to what, radiant, latent, conduction etc. until the end. It is like a cheat version of Relativistic Heat Conduction. Then by selecting a moist boundary layer, or other convenient layer, I think I can separate the latent/sensible radiant etc. using the standard psychrometrics and radiant heat transfer.


    I have never seen it done this way, so I may be totally screwing up, but so far it is proving useful. I mean like how likely is it that 4C (334Wm-2), the average temperature of the oceans, would be equal to the estimated atmospheric return energy? Using that as a reference and the freezing range of water 0 (316Wm-2) and -1.9 (309Wm-2) I can model the system pretty well. Still needs plenty of work, but by using those references, you can estimate what the average surface energy range would have to be.

    So it is a weird situation, you can simplify some of the basic relationships to get a reasonable estimate of the ranges of "sensitivities" but to get the individual flux values requires much more complexity. I think that when the two meet, you are pretty close to a solution for that time frame.

    http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-tale-of-two-greenhouses.html This is based on the simple model.

    http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2012/12/okay-so-what-is-average-global-surface.html In this I estimate what the surface temperature should be. The R-values, or change in temperature to change in energy flux ratio match pretty well, all based on flux and the static model.

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