Life, The Universe and Everything

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1. I designed a freelance steam loco based on the designs of Fletcher Jennings- I did do some vague sketches, but I mostly made the dimensions up as I went along. 2. Then the interesting part started- I used plasticard to build the model around a Hornby Smokey Joe chassis- it’s cheap, usually around £15-£20; I was given mine. Although it is cheap, it still runs well enough and can fairly simply be hardwired to DCC should you so wish, and it has roughly the right dimensions for an NG loco in 1:43 or 1:35, as demonstrated by Christopher Payne so well on his Portpyn layout to name one example. So this is where I was at after a couple of hours work: I used an old Hornby 14xx boiler and smoke box for practicality, with balsa buffers and the original chimney with a bit of tube to extend it up. Couplings are made using the old Airfix kit couplings at 90 degrees to how they were designed, and cylinders from more tube. 3. More details! Coal rails, filler cap (from an N...

We can illustrate chaos theory in various ways- one way being the idea of two pendulums being connected end to end as this gif from Wikipedia illustrates. If the starting position of the pendulums was slightly different, then we would get an entirely different result. So chaos theory basically is the idea that tiny changes to a system can result in huge changes over time, most popularly illustrated by the idea that a butterfly's wings can cause enough current to completely change the weather on the other side of the world. It is actually pretty accurate- this is why even the most precise computers can't predict the weather for more than a few days as tiny changes can completely change the outcome. However, interestingly, chaos theory isn't necessarily part of quantum mechanics as you might expect- the two can be confused. Chaos theory is a classical theory because it is actually hypothetically possible to predict the outcomes of a system if you could measure precis...

In short- no. Quantum Mechanics and one specific aspect called the Uncertainty Principle show that it is impossible. What is the Uncertainty Principle? The Uncertainty Principle was formulated by a German scientist, Werner Heisenberg. To quote the late Stephen Hawking from his book A Brief History of Time, "in order to predict the future position and velocity of a particle, one has to be able to measure its present position and velocity accurately." ie, we have to know exactly  where something is and how fast it is moving, and in which direction, to know what it will do next. So why can't we do this? Well the important thing to remember here is that we are talking about tiny  particles- so small, in fact, that a light wave is enough to change their velocity, or future path. And what is it that we need to determine the position of the particle? Well light of course. The measurement can then be only as accurate as the distance between the crests of the light wave, how...