Ask Anything Wednesday - Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science

https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/18hioeo/ask_anything_wednesday_engineering_mathematics/

created by AutoModerator on 13/12/2023 at 15:00 UTC

137 upvotes, 15 top-level comments (showing 15)

Welcome to our weekly feature, Ask Anything Wednesday - this week we are focusing on **Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science**

Do you have a question within these topics you weren't sure was worth submitting? Is something a bit too speculative for a typical /r/AskScience post? No question is too big or small for AAW. In this thread you can ask any science-related question! Things like: "What would happen if...", "How will the future...", "If all the rules for 'X' were different...", "Why does my...".

*Asking Questions:**

Please post your question as a top-level response to this, and our team of panellists will be here to answer and discuss your questions. The other topic areas will appear in future Ask Anything Wednesdays, so if you have other questions not covered by this weeks theme please either hold on to it until those topics come around, or go and post over in our sister subreddit /r/AskScienceDiscussion , where every day is Ask Anything Wednesday! Off-theme questions in this post will be removed to try and keep the thread a manageable size for both our readers and panellists.

*Answering Questions:**

Please only answer a posted question if you are an expert in the field. The full guidelines for posting responses in AskScience can be found here[1]. In short, this is a moderated subreddit, and responses which do not meet our quality guidelines will be removed. Remember, peer reviewed sources are always appreciated, and anecdotes are absolutely not appropriate. In general if your answer begins with 'I think', or 'I've heard', then it's not suitable for /r/AskScience.

1: http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/wiki/index#wiki_answering_askscience

If you would like to become a member of the AskScience panel, please refer to the information provided here[2].

2: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/about/sticky

Past AskAnythingWednesday posts can be found here[3]. Ask away!

3: http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/search?q=flair%3A%27meta%27&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all

Comments

Comment by StevenAlex at 13/12/2023 at 15:22 UTC

10 upvotes, 2 direct replies

What are some of the advantages of changing cars from 12 bolts to 48 volts?

Comment by angelicism at 13/12/2023 at 18:08 UTC

4 upvotes, 2 direct replies

What exactly would proving the Reimann Hypothesis do/change (besides be a major achievement in mathematics)? What real world repercussions would a proof have?

Comment by jacob_ewing at 13/12/2023 at 17:42 UTC*

3 upvotes, 1 direct replies

What's the fastest way to calculate the points on an arbitrarily oriented ellipse?

I worked out a function ages ago that, given the two focal points and an arbitrary point on the perimeter, provides the two y coordinates for each x-coordinate fed into it. It's a beast though:

https://i.imgur.com/7OKwrNF.png[1][2]

1: https://i.imgur.com/7OKwrNF.png

2: https://i.imgur.com/7OKwrNF.png

(a, b) and (c, d) are the focal points, and (x, y) is any point on the perimeter.

Is there a more efficient way to do it? I've heard people suggest using the classic ellipse function and applying matrix transformations, but never found a good way to use that and intuitively plot an ellipse with point and click operations.

Comment by [deleted] at 14/12/2023 at 00:12 UTC

3 upvotes, 0 direct replies

[removed]

Comment by logperf at 13/12/2023 at 16:18 UTC

5 upvotes, 2 direct replies

Why is a lidar much more expensive than a radar?

In ADAS systems one or several radars are used in a single car, while everyone talks about the advantages of lidar though its costs are currently prohibitive even just for a single detector.

Comment by ogag79 at 14/12/2023 at 13:15 UTC

2 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Where do we stand in showing the smoothness of 3D Navier-Stokes Equation?

Will solving it really define turbulence?

Comment by hikeonpast at 13/12/2023 at 15:35 UTC

4 upvotes, 7 direct replies

Why is farming still a fairly low-tech industry?

True, robotics in unstructured environments like outdoors in the dirt is more challenging than assembling cars in a factory, but it seems like the mainstream farming industry stopped at GPS-equipped tractors.

Comment by ICPosse8 at 13/12/2023 at 17:08 UTC

1 upvotes, 1 direct replies

I’ve never understood how we can store and manipulate data from a piece of plastic/metal etc. how th is my flash drive doing this??

Comment by s-mores at 13/12/2023 at 17:38 UTC

1 upvotes, 1 direct replies

How many qubits are we at?

Comment by Flahm at 13/12/2023 at 19:51 UTC

1 upvotes, 2 direct replies

Why are we not seeing more Graphene tech in real world yet? When it first came out people predicted all kinds of amazing applications for it. Feels like that was a lifetime ago and haven't seen much since?

Comment by OpenPlex at 13/12/2023 at 20:02 UTC

1 upvotes, 2 direct replies

(asking at a high school level of general math but am exploring a bit deeper how equations work)

Canceling in equations:

When did canceling identical parts in opposite sides of equations start? What's the history, who first discovered it could be done?

Does It even matter where in the equation they are, or if they're doing totally different things, they'll cancel as long as they're present? (and you divide by their number)

People through history figuring out what some equation is revealing:

Saw a video[1] where they added the equations for gravitational force to f=ma, then they canceled the m on two sides, implying that mass accelerated by gravity doesn't matter, any amount of mass would experience the same amount of force.

1: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cPgXeeBmPNQ&t=420

In another video, a scientist whose equation resulted with a negative sign for the mass had interpreted that to imply the existence of antimatter.

Along those lines, what types of discoveries did people make in engineering, science, etc, from results of equations that unexpectedly implied a surprise or insight?