ooohhhhh fwendddsss

Sorry there was no post last week guys, I was away over the weekend and didn't have time to to write one. However on the bright side it did give me a bit of inspiration for this week. As those who understood the reference in the title may have guessed, this weeks post is all about besties, baes and bffs.

So lets start at the beginning, when we're little we often feel no desire for friends, our parents are enough and sure its nice to have company but really our toys and family were enough to keep us company. Fast forward to later life and friends have become a pivotal part of our lives and social balance, without friends people can spiral into depression, loneliness and mental illness. Friends have the ability to give meaning to lives that people would otherwise deem to be menial, meaningless or even downright dreary.

But what is it about friendship that we find so comforting and key in our lives? Surely in this modern society it is more efficient and productive to be alone? Well no, having friends and acquaintances is a vital part in the development in a healthy human mind, as they allow us to let our guard down and not constantly be on edge, worried or intimidated. This most likely links back to our very roots, in the wild many animals live in groups, packs or prides to keep themselves safe. What we can take around this is that friendships, ironically, are based largely around giving and taking between the two people.

And as sociable people will know, the more time we spend with people, the better friends we become, as both parties give to and take from the relationship, and due to the strong mental bonds we form with these people, they will become our friends, and effectively the more this happens, the better friends they become.

Once again I would like to thank those who read this, I think of each of you as a friend and I hope that you enjoyed this weeks writing. I apologise for the lack of actual science and studies but the fact of the matter is that we don't need science for this, and some questions can be solved with nothing more than a good think about a topic. Thanks for reading :)

Dividing by 0

So this week I won't be talking about anything, in fact I will be talking about absolutely nothing. Naught. Zilch. Zero to be precise.

So zero means nothing. It is the number we use for when we do not have something, invented by the Sumerians along with pretty much all of the numbers, first used by a guy called Brahmagupta who used dots to symbolise the number, eventually becoming the number that we all know and love (or hate depending on the context) today.

But what zero is really is an absence, like a vacuum in science or a blank page in english, zero is what we have when we have nothing else, some even argue that it isn't even a number, but the real question is what is so difficult about dividing by zero?

we can add zero and add zero too other stuff because 1 + 0 = 1 and 0 + 1 = 1, and we can subtract where we enter the world of the negative numbers 0 - 1 = -1 and so on and so forth. We can even multiply by this phantom of the numerical world, which will always result in 0 because you really just have x amounts of nothing. We can even divide 0 by numbers for the same reason. But why is the division by this evil oval so special?

Imagine the chocolate bar analogy we were all taught back in our numeracy lessons, if our chocolate bar has six pieces and we divide them between three people then each will have two. But when you are dividing it between 0 people how much do they get each? None. Because there are no people.

Then why is it not just 0 I hear you ask? Well here is the problem: at its heart division is just glorified subtraction, how much do we have to subtract x from y to make 0, for example 8/2 = 4.
8 - 2 - 2 - 2 - 2 = 0 we have 4 twos therefore there are 4 twos in 8.
However if we divide 8 by 0 we get:
8 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 = 8

which will stretch on for forever, which is far more than I can type on this blog. No matter how many zeros you subtract you will never get less than 8, therefore proving that division by zero doesn't result in 0 or even infinity, it can literally just not be done.

Thank you for reading guys, I appreciate everyone who takes the time to read this and hopefully you find even maths as interesting as I do! Because at the end of the day everything around us can be simplified to maths. In the same way that Shakespeare wrote his sonnets, pure maths is the poetry of logical ideas and rational minds. Be sure to come back next week and thanks for reading :)

Come Fly With Me

Odds are we all spent large amounts of our childhood making paper airplanes, and as with everything, some were better than others, soaring through the classroom, swerving into people, the majestic origami artworks of young bored kids. But although we know that they fly, and that it’s fun to make them fly, has anyone ever stopped to consider how?

When a plane, paper or otherwise is in flight there are four main forces that are key in keeping it up in the air:

Thrust: this is the driving force behind the motion of a plane, the force we apply when we launch our beautiful creations at the nearest head/doorway. This pushes forward from the back of the plane and without it the planes simply wouldn't move.

Drag: This is the force that acts backwards on the plane as its mighty nose barges through the multitude of air particles in the way. Due to their very small surface area this tends not to be so much of a problem for paper planes as….

Gravity: let’s face it we all know what gravity is and that it pulls the plane down so here is a cool picture made to depict a complex theory about what gravity is to compensate.

Lift: Now this is a more complex thing, the wings on any professionally made plane are created to maximise lift by curving them and angling slightly upwards as shown, but any sort of wing can achieve it as it is the basic principal that as an object flies through the air, if it is aerodynamic and provides enough thrust then the air underneath the wings should be angled downwards and as an equal and opposite reaction the plane is forced upwards, hence the flaps on real planes, paper planes however do not have a constant thrust so this force only lasts a small amount of time before gravity does its thing.

Well that’s it for this week and I can say I was once again shocked by the complex forces that we have learnt to master even with inventions made of paper. Human ingenuity really is an incredible thing, I really appreciate everyone who reads this, it's great to know that other people are curious like me, see ya. :)