ThePanda

A gazillion (ok more like 400) years ago some genius named Kepler defied state and church (which in ze days of yore were pretty much one in ze same) to not only make observations on ze orbit of Mars, but to also use a heliocentric (rather than ze Geocentric universe theory which had been popularized by ze not so gr8 Mr. Ptolemy) universe to come up with three laws of planetary motion, which Mr. Newton (ze hangman) used to deduce ze laws of gravity…. Now about three decades ago the funny Mr. Feynman came up with a lecture deriving ze laws of gravity geometrically from ze last two laws of Kepler (equal areas in equal time, & time proportional to the 3/2th power of semimajor axis) and then used zis to derive ze law of elliptical orbits…. Now being ze panda zat I am me spent a teensy-weensy chunk of my last yr at skool studying and deriving zis, making a few changes and stuff to things I didn’t like abt Feynman’s proof though mostly agreeing with him…. Yesterday me came across all of me sheets of proof and well me realized zat deriving the inverse square nature of gravity from Kepler’s third law mostly relied on circular orbits, and well zat was no good ‘coz it doesn’t explain or use the semi-major axis, so me spent another teeeeensy weeeeensy part of today (an hour or so) coming up with a way to do this in an ellipse, geometrically that is without relying on nething other than kepler’s 3/2 observation and grade 10 geometry, and well I did manage to get it, pretty easily actually, ‘coz most of ze hr was spent investigating properties of an ellipse which I had long forgotten (actually never really studied) abt, and well me proof is entirely geometric, not much algebra, no trigo, no physics, and no other shity stuff that they get u to do in skool….. Sadly though putting it online requires zat I draw ellipses and the like, something which I don’t really wanna do (I wud have said don’t wanna do ‘coz of an apparent lack of mathematica, but well considering I can transfer graphs from my TI-89 that isn’t actually ze case, I am just plain old lazy), so if u meet up with me within the day (when I’d be bragging all abt zis) or ask real nice later, then me shalth give u ze proof so zat u can go and trouble teachers with it, as an added bonus I’ll also prove ze ellipse law for u if u ask me real nice (and promise to gemme some foooooooooood)..............

My friend has gone off on a paracetamol (acetaminophen) researching spree however unfortunately as is the case with certain improperly conducted research on topics as sensitive as drugs and drug overdoses there r a few things he has missed out on…. For one paracetamol chemically overdoses at something like 15g or 30 500mg tablets, and the clinically recommended dosage is more akin to 1g (2 tablets) within ne given 4-6 hr period for adults….. Hospitals treat cases as overdoses at something like 12 g (24 tablets) or 150 mg/Kg which ever is smaller…. As me friend has mentioned paracetamol does have an antidote which prevents further damage however paracetamol overdose does cause liver damage which is not completely reversible, and treatment of paracetamol requires managed hospital care… Now from personal experience u don’t want to have liver damage, me dad works on hepatitis (mostly the e virus) and well I know kids who r pretty good friends of mine who’ve got severely damaged livers (though not due to paracetamol or nething else zey consumed) and well it ain’t very pleasant…. Getting a liver transplant in a lot of countries is not an easy prospect and well hence me don’t recommend u gorge on paracetamol to test all of me friends hypothesis…..........

I may go to the book fair sometime today, I may purchase a giga-vault (or atleast a micro-vault) sometime zis month, India and pakistan may actually be friends later zis yr, and dodos may learn to fly, lots of mays in a rather mayee sentence, so lets c how ze probabilities for each of zese events works out…....

Ze Panda
off to play with probabilities after his run in with geometry…....

This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2004 at 1:38 pm and is filed under article. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.