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"Atoms synthesized in the interiors of stars are commonly returned to the interstellar gas… The atoms returned are, naturally, those most readily made in the thermonuclear reactions in stellar interiors:…. All the elements of the Earth except hydrogen and some helium have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which are today inconspicuous white dwarfs on the other side of the Milky Way Galaxy. The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff."

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  1. clearscience: We talked about imagining the relation between two numbers by sliding arrows up and down two lines. The example we chose was “the second number must be twice the first.” This visual sliding of arrows is math. Now consider this: take those two lines and set them next to each other (at a 90-degree angle, or “orthogonally”) as shown above. The sliding arrows work the same way. Look familiar? This is the Cartesian Plane, or more simply an x-y plane. It’s how you graph numbers and equations. See how the sliding arrows trace a dotted line? This is the equation y=2x. Or, said in plain English: The second number is twice the first. Choose x, double it, and you get y. These plots you learn to make in algebra class are just ways to display relations that can also be said in plain words. Different people think different ways. Do you think of numbers visually, or as quantities?

    clearscience:

    We talked about imagining the relation between two numbers by sliding arrows up and down two lines. The example we chose was “the second number must be twice the first.”

    This visual sliding of arrows is math. Now consider this: take those two lines and set them next to each other (at a 90-degree angle, or “orthogonally”) as shown above. The sliding arrows work the same way. Look familiar? This is the Cartesian Plane, or more simply an x-y plane. It’s how you graph numbers and equations.

    See how the sliding arrows trace a dotted line? This is the equation y=2x. Or, said in plain English: The second number is twice the first. Choose x, double it, and you get y.

    These plots you learn to make in algebra class are just ways to display relations that can also be said in plain words. Different people think different ways. Do you think of numbers visually, or as quantities?

    2. 5 Notes
    1. madeofstarstuff reblogged this from clearscience
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    Reblogged: clearscience