Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>>> 6.0 10^23 Number of atoms in 12 g of Carbon-12.
>>>
>>> You realize why this number is important, right? :-)
>>
>> What, Avagadro's number? (Or however the hell you spell it...)
> 
> Yes. You know why anyone cares about Avagadro's number? I.e., what the 
> basic thing it's measuring is?

Number of atoms? (Or sometimes ions, or subatomic particles of some 
kind. Make sure you specify; it kinda makes a difference.)

>> Wait - you know what a group is, right?
> 
> Vaguely. I'd have to look up the definition again to be sure I'm not 
> confusing it with a ring or field or something. My higher-level alegbra 
> is way old. :-)

There's a whole zoo of algebraic systems (I think that's the term) - 
monoids, semigroups, groupoids, groups, rings, fields, etc. They're all 
essentially the same "thing", just with differing numbers of properties 
guaranteed.

Personally, I only bother with fields and groups. A group is closed, 
associative, and possesses a unique identity element and an inverse 
element for every member. An Abelien group or commutative group is... 
self-explanatory, actually?

>>> 68-23=45 45-3=42. One power of ten missing.
>>
>> I fail.
> 
> No, it just means that either measurements are very sloppy, that 
> "typical" means something different in those sentences, or there's 10x 
> times as much mass in a galaxy as their is mass in the H atoms of the 
> galaxy. Which isn't completely impossible - see "giant black holes", 
> "dark matter", "relativity", etc.

More likely I copied the number out wrong...

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

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