>> [A fact which our Java lecturer disputed. He was trying to claim that 
>> the range of a single-precision float is "oh, more than the number of 
>> atoms in the universe", and thus you don't really need double-precision.]
> 
> One of the reasons why I am happy that I did not know of CS when I 
> started at uni. They started a year before and somehow that message did 
> not reach me in time, otherwise I might have studied CS. While studying 
> physics I did a few courses at the CS department and was invariably 
> struck by the quality of the lecturers. Did I tell the story of the 
> teacher that could not write down the equation for a straight line?

Heh. Well, I guess if what you happen to be doing doesn't involve that 
equation, there's no particular reason to know it. But yeah, generally 
neither the students nor the lecturers, frankly, knew what they were on 
about. [With some notable exceptions.]

>> I'm not quite sure how that's relevant here though.
> 
> The number of atoms in a given volume of gas at standard pressure is 
> constant, hence the weight of a volume of N2 is 7 times that of H2 and 
> O2 8 times. So why did you expect a few percent?

Because oxygen is only slightly further down the periodic table than 
hydrogen? I would therefore imagine one atom of oxygen is not "that 
much" heavier.

(I had also assumed that because they're slightly bigger, there'd be 
slightly fewer of them per unit of volume...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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