You Can't Measure Time
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 พ.ค. 2024
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Sources and further reading
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Chapters
0:00 - 1:39 Very normal ball drop
1:39 - 2:49 Rational numbers
2:49 - 3:50 - Irrational numbers
3:50 - 4:50 - The real number line
4:50 - 7:07 - Countable infinity
7:07 - 8:33 - Uncountable infinity
8:33 - 11:09 - Algebraic numbers
11:09 - 13:55 - Transcendental numbers
13:55 - 15:30 - Thanks Brilliant!
15:30 - 17:33 - Indescribable numbers
Creator - Jade Tan-Holmes
Written by Alexander Berkes and Jade Tan-Holmes
Animations by Tom Groenestyn
Music - epidemicsound.com - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
I hope you enjoyed the wild goose chase through Numberland. If you'd like to learn more about infinity, check out Brilliant's intro to infinity course brilliant.org/upandatom/
I did. I hate having to explain to friends that irrational doesn't mean stupid, but "without a ratio"
Yes, it's a very approachable video on a complex mathematical issue. I am passing it around. I really love mathematics, but it's sometimes difficult to explain this concept to people that are not into math but are curious about many things and will love to know.
"A very normal ball drop led me to infinity"
Literally every young man experiences this at a certain age.
@@donepearce "irrational doesn't mean stupid"
That irrational means illogical or unreasonable. It's not about numbers.
how do I get a two-way ticket to the "Numberland" :) ... how many dimensions are there, does anyone know 🤔
This number was described using language even before it was measured. It's the amount of time it took that ball to hit the ground when dropped from that bridge.
We could create a new set of numbers I would call the "useful numbers" which would be a countably finite set of numbers containing every number any human will ever need for any purpose. In that sense just describing or even thinking about a number would add it to that set, but that set would never be infinite.
Well if you have to measure it exactly you end up with uncountably infinite number of words to describe it considering the gravitational pull of all the objects with mass in universe along with quantum interactions and air resistance it experienced , so impossible....😂
In fact, wouldn't it be describable by relating the time (t) to the mass of the ball (m), acceleration due to gravity (g) and height of the bridge (h)?
… with a certain set of conditions that we could describe here in detail if we had an infinite amount of room but one of the conditions will be the time at which it was dropped so we’ll need to get the release time and then hope it’s an unfathomable miracle that the exact time of day she let go of the ball isn’t a transcendental, so here we go again…
nice try 😊
The physicist in me wants to say you only need 44 decimal places. But the mathematician in me really appreciated how you presented this. I really like your content :)
thanks :) there is a physicist and a mathematician in all of us and they struggle for power
Why 44 decimal places?
Now I wonder the likelyhood of it being an undescribable trancendental if restricted to 44 decimals instead of infinite. Is it now 0 instead of 100 percent?
@@backwashjoe7864 Because 5.39124760 * 10^-44 is the Planck time, the smallest meaningful timestep.
@@backwashjoe7864 A unit of Planck time is 5.39×10−44 seconds. It's the smallest unit of time that makes physical sense, at least according to current theories. There could be smaller segments of time, but we currently can't describe them through physics. That wasn't the point of this video though :)
Excellent abstract math, but for physical events like a ball drop, you have to consider the physics, especially "plank time" which is 10^-43 seconds. Plank time is "the length of time at which no smaller meaningful length can be validly measured". Since the drop time is a finite number of states, all of times can be enumerated.
better to study noncommutative time-frequency nonlocality a la Fields Medal math professor Alain Connes
exactly
@@user-zm6dg1er4o study Basil J. Hiley
This is by far the best video I have seen on the relationship between real, rational, irrational, algebraic and transcendental numbers. So well layed out and tidily expalined!
Agree
The only video I've seen. Early on in the video, my thought, if you can define two points, there are always infinite number of points between them no matter how close they are together.
@@ralphparker not in the physical world, where we have a Planck length
I recommend you check out the Numberphile videos on the same subject. They are so much fun:
- *Transcendental Numbers - Numberphile*
- *All the Numbers - Numberphile*
And the explanation is so beautifully done by Jade turning her head around in a breathtaking way!
1:30 Computer engineer here, going crazy, looking at what appears to be a common laptop, which has a cpu that runs on the order of few GHz, which means any digits below 9th are physically impossible and just some randomized garbage
I'm just spit-balling here -- don't know if this is actually workable, but . . . .
I think we are all comfortable with pretending that her set-up (minus the limitations of the laptop) is capable of perfect precision, right?
What if she has a measuring system with multiple known time delay lines. So for one event, we could get hundreds of measurements of the time. Those delays could be calibrated to fall within certain known fractions of a CPU cycle. By comparing the measurements at the different "beats" we could get precision to many more decimal places (I think).
So, I'm certain that is the setup that she used :-)
@@fewwiggle Dude was clicking stop by hand. I don't think the speed of the processor is the biggest source of inaccuracy in that measurement :D.
One of my favourite math channel presenters. Infectious enthusiasm and clearly communicated.
Thanks for watching!
plus that fast turn to a back camera.
Jade is incomparable. 😃😍
Rational is dual to irrational -- numbers.
Rational, analytic (noumenal) is dual to empirical, synthetic (phenomenal) -- Immanuel Kant.
Subgroups are dual to subfields -- the Galois Correspondence.
Homology (convergence, syntropy) is dual to co-homology (divergence, entropy).
The integers are self dual as they are their own conjugates -- the conjugate root theorem.
The tetrahedron is self dual.
The cube is dual to the octahedron.
The dodecahedron is dual to the icosahedron.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Concept are dual to percepts" -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
Mathematicians create new concepts from their perceptions or observations all the time -- conceptualization is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
@@ezrasteinberg2016 Comparable only to herself...which is one of those small sets she was describing, yes? :)
10:26 I love how she turns around and slowly but menacingly getting close to the camera
Right? She invaded my personal space bubble through the internet lol
Tell me about it. I watched that section on loop at 0.25x speed
Yeah. 'bummer' got me evry time
Don’t worry! Heisenberg uncertainty principle says that the time it takes for the ball to drop has a little slop to it, so you can almost certainly find a rational number that could plausibly have described the “exact” time to drop for any physical definition of exact :)
I'd also argue that, given that we only have physics to describe a finite temporal resolution(thanks, Planck), you can one hundo find a rational number to describe the exact time, at least within our known physics.
The funny thing is, if you could measure time exactly, you would know nothing about the energy of the ball.
@ check out Alain Connes 2015 talk to physicists on noncommutativity as the origin of time and entropy. Fascinating stuff! See Professor Basil J. Hiley for followup.
"almost certainly" I would go so far as to say certainly. Simply by bisecting the interval, we can achieve any arbitrarily small precision,!
@@PunnamarajVinayakTejas My review of math professor Joseph Mazur's book "The Motion Paradox" - reissued under a different title. Professor Mazur does an expert job of giving the behind-the-scenes wrangling of conceptual philosophy which gave rise to applied science. What is the difference between time and motion exactly? If that question seems too abstract, this book proves the opposite.
Most college graduates assume that Zeno's paradoxes of motion were solved by calculus with its continuous functions. Mazur puts the calculus at the heart of the book, from Descartes and Cavalieri to Galileo, Newton and last but not least Mazur's favorite: Gabrielle-Emilie de Breteuil.
In fact, upon investigation, one finds many top scientists still studying and learning from the anomalies in infinite measurement. Regarding relativity Mazur states the wonder of absolute motion is that it "conspires with our measuring instruments to prevent any possibility of detection."
As Mazur points out "we don't measure with infinitesmial instruments" and so the perceptual illusion of time continuity remains despite the reliance of science on discrete symbols. With attempts at a unification of quantum mechanics and relativity Zeno's paradoxes reemerge with full-force in the "Calabi-Yau manifold." Mazur writes that the original concept of dimension still holds but now means measuring more by abstract reason than by sight.
Although each scientist featured by Mazur appears to have increasingly solved the paradox of motion in the end I think Zeno will be avenged and science will return to right back where it started. There seems to be a deadlocked struggle between discreteness (particle) and continuity (wave) in science and Mazur argues that indeed Nature "makes jumps" despite seeming continuous. But Mazur admits we are left with "splitting operations that can take place only in the mind."
Flipping around like a super villain confronting James Bond was very entertaining.
The rule of two -- Darth Bane, Sith lord.
Rational is dual to irrational -- numbers.
Rational, analytic (noumenal) is dual to empirical, synthetic (phenomenal) -- Immanuel Kant.
Subgroups are dual to subfields -- the Galois Correspondence.
Homology (convergence, syntropy) is dual to co-homology (divergence, entropy).
The integers are self dual as they are their own conjugates -- the conjugate root theorem.
The tetrahedron is self dual.
The cube is dual to the octahedron.
The dodecahedron is dual to the icosahedron.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Concept are dual to percepts" -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
Mathematicians create new concepts from their perceptions or observations all the time -- conceptualization is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
"No Mr Bond, I expect you to count the transcendental numbers"
That last part where you explained how even language, when pushed to the extreme, is still a countable infinite and so cannot be used to accurately describe real numbers (and beyond) was really great!
Mathematically speaking, you are correct. Physically speaking, I believe that there is a finite smallest length as well as time, so that technically speaking, the amount of time required for the ball to drop is rational.
We don't know if there is a finite smallest length. We just know that there is a smallest (Planck) length that it would even theoretically be possible to measure.
@@John_Fx It would be correct to say that it would be the smallest length *physically possible* which would apply to matter and energy within our universe. Anything smaller than that wouldn't make sense from a Physics perspective, which would include things like dropping a ball. Therefore, the amount of time, as well as the distance that the ball dropped, would be rational.
I really liked how you aligned the things we must know (like the definition of countable infinity and transcendental numbers etc.) in an ordered track.
This is probably the best explanation of infinite sets I think I’ve ever seen. Thank you. I don’t think I grasped it quite as intuitively until now.
Rational is dual to irrational -- numbers.
Rational, analytic (noumenal) is dual to empirical, synthetic (phenomenal) -- Immanuel Kant.
Subgroups are dual to subfields -- the Galois Correspondence.
Homology (convergence, syntropy) is dual to co-homology (divergence, entropy).
The integers are self dual as they are their own conjugates -- the conjugate root theorem.
The tetrahedron is self dual.
The cube is dual to the octahedron.
The dodecahedron is dual to the icosahedron.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Concept are dual to percepts" -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
Mathematicians create new concepts from their perceptions or observations all the time -- conceptualization is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
This was really interesting, but I'm not sure, if I understood correctly. Are the following two statements correct? 1) "The natural numbers are able to assign a unique label to all algebraic numbers." 2) "A single transcendental number contains all natural numbers infinitely many times as intervals of its digits."
Jade, you are such a captivating educator. The point about the number of ways a number could possibly be described being countably infinite was particularly interesting to me. Great video!
Thank you for watching!
Keep it in your pants Moses... she has a boyfriend.
@@thomasp.crenshaw185 he doesnt care
Rational is dual to irrational -- numbers.
Rational, analytic (noumenal) is dual to empirical, synthetic (phenomenal) -- Immanuel Kant.
Subgroups are dual to subfields -- the Galois Correspondence.
Homology (convergence, syntropy) is dual to co-homology (divergence, entropy).
The integers are self dual as they are their own conjugates -- the conjugate root theorem.
The tetrahedron is self dual.
The cube is dual to the octahedron.
The dodecahedron is dual to the icosahedron.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Concept are dual to percepts" -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
Mathematicians create new concepts from their perceptions or observations all the time -- conceptualization is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
@@thomasp.crenshaw185"What is a comment that says more about the speaker than the spoken to?"
These definitions feel like a schoolyard argument.
"Ofc i can count your set! I have infinite numbers to count with!"
"Nu-uh! My set is an uncountable infinity! I win!"
this is the first time i am watching a video from this channel, and it blew me away! i did not expect such a crystal clear, nicely paced, logically flowing and informative video... absolutely gripping stuff, thoroughly enjoyed it.. thank you creator!
Given that Planck units seem to be discreet, it's entirely possible that ever digit after the 44th might indeed be a 0
That was sort of like what I was thinking, Quantum Mechanics tells us that there are fundamental limits to how precise any physical property can be defined, thus there will ALWAYS be a rational value that uniquely specifies a given possible value from all other possible values. Mathematics might have infintes and infintesimals, but the Physical Universe doesn't
@@RichardDamonThat proves you can’t have a perfect circle. Right?
@@RichardDamon " thus there will ALWAYS be a rational value that uniquely specifies a given possible value from all other possible values."
Nope, not even close.
All it means is that there is no 1 true value as it is always a range of possibilities. But for timescales that can still be shorter than a planck-time, it is just fundamentally impossible to measure.
@@ABaumstumpf No, it isn't a "Measurement" phenomenon, it is that time is actually indeterminate at that scale, so time doesn't exist finer than that. You could say that the idea of a "Precise Time" doesn't exist. Just as no integer exists between 1 and 2, no time exists between one time quanta and the next.
@@RichardDamon "it is that time is actually indeterminate at that scale, so time doesn't exist finer than that."
Nice claim, but again - that is not what is says.
Also "No, it isn't a "Measurement" phenomenon"
I never claimed that - so why the strawmen?
"Just as no integer exists between 1 and 2, no time exists between one time quanta and the next."
Which is 100% wrong.
_Max Planck has entered the chat_
😂
Just a pleasure as always to watch all your exuberant content on anything that captures your attention, Jade! Your enthusiasm and passion for learning are just but more than contagious! It's been my immense pleasure and honor to have been your audience for almost more than three years now, and it is with utmost admiration that I admit that I am very proud to sponsor your content to all my friends and family members, and bug them constantly with all my ramblings about science and its wonders in our Nature :)
I hope you keep spreading your contagious energies here forever, and I am thrilled to be a member of our little community here!
Best,
Sai
Feels like finally i understood countably infinite and uncountably infinite sets. Thankyou for making such videos.
This is by far your funniest video so far. I love your brand of humor; this is my flavor of dork.
The ending had me laughing out loud!
😂
Fascinating video! The end bit about counting descriptions got me thinking about cellular automata and language modeling, which I've never cut through before. It's really great to see, think about, experience, how branches of knowledge coalesce. Thanks, Jade!
Synthetic a priori knowledge -- Immanuel Kant.
Knowledge is dual according to Immanuel Kant.
Rational is dual to irrational -- numbers.
Rational, analytic (noumenal) is dual to empirical, synthetic (phenomenal) -- Immanuel Kant.
Subgroups are dual to subfields -- the Galois Correspondence.
Homology (convergence, syntropy) is dual to co-homology (divergence, entropy).
The integers are self dual as they are their own conjugates -- the conjugate root theorem.
The tetrahedron is self dual.
The cube is dual to the octahedron.
The dodecahedron is dual to the icosahedron.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Concept are dual to percepts" -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
Mathematicians create new concepts from their perceptions or observations all the time -- conceptualization is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
Dear Jade, great video. I love how passionate you are about describing mathematical and physical nuances.
As for the time measurement description (or any other measurement), there is a handy tool - measurement uncertainty (and the way to express it and measurement results). It would be great to watch you explaining probability issues connected to them.
Your palpable despondence at the end of the video was brilliant!
There is an argument to be made that the existence of the planck measurements (time, length, etc.) proves that irrational numbers do not exist in the real world. The planck measurements are the smallest meaningful measurements in our current framework of physics, and since everything is made up from integer multiples of these, you can't actually have an irrational distance in the real world.
Edit: This would only be true under the condition that the planck measurements are actual limits of time and space, and not simply limits of the ability to measure them. This is still an unsolved problem however.
I thought Planck units were just what can be, in theory, meaningfully measured. As in, it doesn't mean there's nothing smaller, it's just that we would never be able to measure it.
Do numbers in general exist?
@@tomshieff You're right, it is currently unknown if the planck measurements are actually real or just limits of measurement. They can be calculated using the uncertainty principle and our current understanding of gravity (relativity), so until someone finds an accurate model of quantum gravity, no one knows if the planck measurements are actually real.
The limits that define the Planck units are fundamental, but it's definitely not known that everything is integer multiples of them.
This is similar to the idea behind loop quantum gravity, which experiments have found no evidence of (and good, albeit not 100% definitive, evidence against).
@@jb7650 That highly depends on what you mean by existing. Does the color red exist? Not red objects, but the color itself. Whether or not abstract objects exist is more of a philosophical question than a physics question. By "do not exist in the real world", I meant irrational distances or timespans, i.e. π seconds or √2 meters.
This was an awesome video! Im glad i found your channel. You related all of these concepts together and answered some questions ive had for a while now. Dont stop making videos!
Thank you for watching and supporting :)
I've always been dissatisfied with the explanations of transcendental numbers, but this is the best so far. Thank you Jade. Fun to think about the time it takes for the ball to fall being an actual value but never being able to write it down.
Infinity is a concept that you can make tons of videos about with completely different angles of approach.
Like, a lot of videos. There should be a number to describe that.
But you van make only a finite amount of videos
@@gabriellasso8808yes, but that just means there's a potentially infinite amount of videos you could still make on the subject 😝
@@sVieira151countably infinite number of videos*
There is a set of numbers between the agebratic nubers and the transcendent: the computable nunbers. These are numbers, that can be calculated to a given accuracy by a coumputer (or a touring machine).. In this set there are numbers like e and pi. This set is cpuntable infinit too, because the set of comtuter programms is countable infinit.
I thought uncomputable and indescribable numbers were the same?
The transcendental numbers pi and e can be calculated to any given accuracy by a Turing machine,. so they are computable.
@@GarryDumblowski Computable numbers are described by their Turing machine, so they are describable.
The converse is not true. I will describe a number that is not computable. Start by enumerating all Turing machines T_1, T_2, T_3,. ... Set a_i = 0 if T_i halts and set a_i = 1 if T_i does not halt. Now let alpha = sum_i a_i/2^i. The number alpha is describable, because I just described it, but it is not computable.
I recently rewatched Matt Parker's Numberphile video "all the numbers" where he talked about the computable numbers, and the normal numbers(numbers which contain any arbitrary string of numbers)
@@ronald3836how is that number not computeable? If you chose to enumerate the machines by alternating between on that does halt and one that does not then your answer is a geometric series that converges and can be computed to any arbitrary level of precision.
It's 0.0101010... in binary which is 1/3?
YEY! Finally a video that's not one of those terrible shorts.
We like normal videos. ☺
EDIT: Let me clarify that by "terrible" I mean the format not the content. 🙃
If I wouldn't like Jade's videos I wouldn't watch and subscribe to the chanel. I just don't like the shorts format and I always skip those.
😂
@@upandatomYour shorts are good, too, just less exciting to open the app and find! Definitely *not* terrible.
@@CDCI3Yeah terrible is a strong word. They're nice. This is just better
As a rather unimaginative engineer in everyday life, I sometimes like to suspend my disbelief and get drawn into mathematical flights of fantasy such as:
• A stopwatch that can measure fractions of a second accurate to 38 decimals ... that works on a 2023 laptop. Which is what-9 GHz with overclocking? (In 1e-38 seconds, even light travels only 4e-30 meters.)
• A human whose reactions are that fast.
• Rubber bands that are infinitely long and infinitely stretchy.
i consider myself an imaginative person yet i struggle to imagine a liquid nitrogen cooling system in a stock-looking macbook outside with no visible condensation
Another great video! I am always excited to recommend your videos to my friends. :)
Keep up the amazing work!!
Once your accuracy reaches a number around a Planck time you achieved the max accuracy possible.
Which means it actually is rational. Though I guess then the question becomes, what exactly counts as the start and the end. At the level of Planck times, the concept of "the moment it touches the floor" probably isn't so clear cut.
@1vader I think that the instant that either the acceleration is first zero, or the velocity is first zero after release, would be two good candidates for defining "touching the floor". It depends on whether you want to define "touching the floor" to be defined as when it exerts enough force to have altered the object's velocity, or to define it as when the objectsvdownward velocity is cancelled. But then again, air resistance would affect those two points, so maybe it needs to be specified as occuring in a vacuum? 🤷🏻♂️
@@AMcAFaves That's still thinking on a way too macro level. Not all of the atoms of the ball will come to a stop at the same time. And at the scale of plank times, we could differentiate stuff on an even smaller scale where the particles might not even have something like a defined location. Actually, because of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, I guess it wouldn't even be possible to know.
@@1vader Good point. I suppose the closest we could come would only be some sort of statistical model of the atoms in the object.
@@1vaderBrilliant.... Our perception of touching holding seeing are actually averaged out of infinitessimely smaller events we can't perceive
Great video! It's like we're tiny little babies in the universe, understanding nothing around us.
Penso que não é bem assim, entendemos muitas coisas, porém somos limitados e essa limitação não se dá basicamente em nossa capacidade mental, ela se define mais pelo nosso tamanho em proporção ao universo ao redor, não entendo que haja algo que a mente humana esteja impossibilitada de entender para sempre, mas certamente há muito que não podemos alcançar, medir, ver etc, ou seja, coisas que são necessárias para que possamos chegar no entendimento. Não é uma questão de inteligência, mas de nossas limitações em relação ao contexto onde estamos inseridos. Pior que, uma das coisas que entendemos, é que tinha que ser assim, pelo menos nesse universo nessa vida, não haveria como ser diferente.
we have invented maths, but cant understand everything in maths.
Rational is dual to irrational -- numbers.
Rational, analytic (noumenal) is dual to empirical, synthetic (phenomenal) -- Immanuel Kant.
Subgroups are dual to subfields -- the Galois Correspondence.
Homology (convergence, syntropy) is dual to co-homology (divergence, entropy).
The integers are self dual as they are their own conjugates -- the conjugate root theorem.
The tetrahedron is self dual.
The cube is dual to the octahedron.
The dodecahedron is dual to the icosahedron.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Concept are dual to percepts" -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
Mathematicians create new concepts from their perceptions or observations all the time -- conceptualization is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
A great video! It explained all the concepts well in a way I could understand and stimulated my curiousity and wonder.
Although I was a bit worried at 10:50 that you were going to come even closer and break my screen! 😅
😂
I enjoyed that a lot! A fun and approachable manner of describing what is a fundamental (but surprisingly complex) part of mathematics! Well done!
I never get tired of listening to Jade explain bijections and the cardinality of sets. And I never will.
Injective is dual to surjective synthesizes bijective or isomorphism (duality).
Rational is dual to irrational -- numbers.
Rational, analytic (noumenal) is dual to empirical, synthetic (phenomenal) -- Immanuel Kant.
Subgroups are dual to subfields -- the Galois Correspondence.
Homology (convergence, syntropy) is dual to co-homology (divergence, entropy).
The integers are self dual as they are their own conjugates -- the conjugate root theorem.
The tetrahedron is self dual.
The cube is dual to the octahedron.
The dodecahedron is dual to the icosahedron.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Concept are dual to percepts" -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
Mathematicians create new concepts from their perceptions or observations all the time -- conceptualization is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
Hat's off on the needle in the haystack analogy! I really liked that. Great episode overall!
I love that final shot, with a bit of jazz at the end. Who hasn't closed a laptop with that feeling.
I appreciate the changeing camera angles, you turning swiftly & most importantly, slowly walking towards the the camera instead zooming with it.
Nice to see you again. Your content is so well presented and comprehensible. So happy to be a “patron”.
Glad to see this comment. It reminded me to become a Patreon
are you not really a patron?
What a beautifully deliveredl lesson. I feel there were several times where it could have become very confusing. You kept everything crystal clear. Thank you very much.
😊
Good to watch this much of detail about infinite numbers
Keep going. And
Your vedios are so much fascinating
Thank you so much Jade!
Very captivating! From the title to indescribable numbers. Fantastic! I am a mathematician and I had never thought of indescribable numbers as such, but cool concept.
You described that infinitesimal just fine tho.. it's the gravitational distance in time from the top of that bridge to the earth plus or minus human and computational error!
The problem is you haven't described it precisely enough to make it reproducible.
The ratio of the diameter of a circle to its circumference is reproducible because it's based on theoretically perfect geometric objects.
If you were to reproduce her experiment, the probability of measuring the exact same number is essentially zero because there's no way for you to perfectly replicate the experiment to infinite precision. All of the subtle forces of gravity from the Earth, Sun, Moon, etc... would all be different and would result in a different measurement.
So for you to describe her number, your description would also have to specify the exact initial conditions of her experiment including for example the starting height, time it was dropped, etc.., but those numbers when measured to infinite precision are ALSO likely to be indescribable.
So there actually isn't any way to perfectly describe her experiment to reproduce her exact number.
The way you described it doesn't specify her specific number, it specifies an infinite set of numbers.
Rational is dual to irrational -- numbers.
Rational, analytic (noumenal) is dual to empirical, synthetic (phenomenal) -- Immanuel Kant.
Subgroups are dual to subfields -- the Galois Correspondence.
Homology (convergence, syntropy) is dual to co-homology (divergence, entropy).
The integers are self dual as they are their own conjugates -- the conjugate root theorem.
The tetrahedron is self dual.
The cube is dual to the octahedron.
The dodecahedron is dual to the icosahedron.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Concept are dual to percepts" -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
Mathematicians create new concepts from their perceptions or observations all the time -- conceptualization is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
There’s also a small problem of relativity. The time the ball takes to fall is simply different for different reference frames, and plus the distance the ball is to the person who recorded it did increase, so the spacetime interval also changed. But this was a pretty nice brief intro to real numbers!
You know this might actually simplify the problem. You could define the time to be exactly 2 seconds for some observer, and then leave finding the observer as an exercise for the student.
@@pontifier It doesn't get shorter than in the freely falling frame of the ball itself though, so since that is around 2.4s, your 2s isn't feasible, I fear...
@@landsgevaer dang, you're right... Let's set it to 3
2:55 Reminds me of doing drawing octagons in Paint. Trying to make the sides equally long, having the straight sides 14 pixels long would make the skewed sides about 10 pixels (14 / √2). As I can only draw whole pixels, at that scale it's as precise as it gets. Making a pattern of nested octagons, it doesn't scale well while drawing larger octagons around the first one and trying to keep everything nice and centered. So this vid tells me/confirms that, even if I start with an octagon with straight sides of 14,000,000,000 pixels or even larger, I can only approach the length of the skewed sides and scaling up or down from that will never work out perfectly.
How did you type the square root symbol? Was it on mobile?
There's no reason to prefer cardinality over ordinality for measuring size. Indeed, I would say ordinality is far more accurate. When you do that you see the rationals are roughly omega^2, whereas the integers are roughly omega. As for Cantor's "proof" of the uncountability of the reals, that turns out to be wrong. I published a proof that his "proof" was wrong on TH-cam a while back, but it had an error in it. Shortly thereafter I fixed my proof, but I have not republished yet due to lack of time. It's fairly simple to show that Cantor's idea of "cardinality" is flawed and only ordinallity exists as a measure of size (or order). The basic idea is to establish there must be an ordinal number of digits for real numbers. We can then show that no matter what ordinal number of digits you choose, when you try to make a list it will always be longer than wide. This shows the diagonal does not cross all elements of the list, and subsequently, Cantor's proof falls.
I was all thinking, put in an accelerometer and measure it electronically... but then I got an amazing math lesson instead! Great video! :)
If you choose the right unit of measure, the ball-drop-number can be algebraic or rational or a natural number or even just 1. It might be hard to choose the right unit, though.
Sure, you could declare that the ball takes exactly 1 Bleep to reach the ground. But would that be usefull ?
As soon as you want to translate your Bleep unit into another unit like the second, you'll be back to square one.
Unless you decide your Bleep unit is the new standard, and any time measurement must be expressed in Bleeps. However if your goal is to avoid dealing with strange numbers, then you must create a new unit fit for any new measurement you make, and forget about comparing results between experiments. Maybe that's not such a good idea after all. :p
@@theslay66 - Did you fail to understand my last sentence? I tried to make it succinct so the reader would have a little "aha" moment. Was it effective for you?
@@rubiks6 Your last sentence doesn't solve the problem in any way.
Rational is dual to irrational -- numbers.
Rational, analytic (noumenal) is dual to empirical, synthetic (phenomenal) -- Immanuel Kant.
Subgroups are dual to subfields -- the Galois Correspondence.
Homology (convergence, syntropy) is dual to co-homology (divergence, entropy).
The integers are self dual as they are their own conjugates -- the conjugate root theorem.
The tetrahedron is self dual.
The cube is dual to the octahedron.
The dodecahedron is dual to the icosahedron.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Concept are dual to percepts" -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
Mathematicians create new concepts from their perceptions or observations all the time -- conceptualization is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
@@hyperduality2838 - Okeydoke.
I love the dramatic camera in this one! I've long tried to get the explanation of Transcendental numbers in the Murderous Maths book I read as a kid to stick, and hopefully this does it!
Hello Jade. I watch all of your videos and love your approach to teaching and applying various mathematical principles. I never comment but today at the end of this video I laughed out loud at the ending when you stared at the laptop sadly realizing your number will never be able to be calculated, before slowly closing it. Moments like this are why I love watching your videos. Keep up the fantastic work making us smile and brightening our minds.
thank you so much :)
Yeah, that got me too (to laugh out gently). ;-)
So nice.
Thanks!( to Jade) and to you, putting into words what I thought to say as well.
The way I see it, it's just fine that we don't have perfect ways to describe every number. It shows us that the universe is impossibly complex such that simplistic descriptions will almost never suffice. And a complex world is an interesting one.
And there's a further problem with the "describable" label... What's the smallest number that CANNOT be described using words? 😈
Your way to present everything in very ascending order is really ahhh!
The last few seconds of the video had me rolling on the floor!🤣 Brilliant (pun not intended) video as always.
This video is absolutely brilliant, I will definitely use it to explain the concept of infinity to my students :)
It feels interesting to rediscover this channel after having seen her explain knot theory related to the painting on Tom Scott's channel over 4 years ago.
This was a great video and it seems like there is a whole lot of material/videos I should catch up on here.
A sad ending to such a interesting question, the amount of time that the ball took to fall of the bridge will always be remembered, I suggest we give it a name before we run out of names. Let's call it "Upatomic" number
I think Fred is a better name.
The funniest, the most pleasant, kind and warm person that makes a very arid topic/domain which is math to be likeable by people that usually are away of math (NOT mt case...). Anyway: it is my youtube favorite channel, it does not matter what type, above everything. Pur and simple I adore the way she is and how much she enjoys what she does and of course I like her. When I want to have a nice mood, I watch one of her math videos which always give deep knowledge expressed simply, funny, enjoyable, so that many can get the point...
Cool stuff! I like Matt Parker's assertion that pi to the pi to the pi to the pi might be an integer for all we know about transcendentals.
At the beginning, I thought you were going to talk about using continued fractions to find the fraction of a decimal. Great video though, as always!
Me too!
At one moment I thought the Stern-Brocot Tree would make an appearance… a clean way to show every positive rational number (well, by clean I mean there are no duplicates)… and you can do a binary search on it with your irrational number and each further depth on your search leads you to a better approximation, already in reduced form.
as an educator, I learned that its not the teaching method (which yours is great, BTW), its the emotions and enthusiasm of the educator that really inspires students. And in this department - you are 100%
I understand you were trying to explain this in the most simple, easy to follow way possible, and yet! What a mistery.
I love your videos! Thank you for helping us discover the beautiful world of math!
Rational is dual to irrational -- numbers.
Rational, analytic (noumenal) is dual to empirical, synthetic (phenomenal) -- Immanuel Kant.
Subgroups are dual to subfields -- the Galois Correspondence.
Homology (convergence, syntropy) is dual to co-homology (divergence, entropy).
The integers are self dual as they are their own conjugates -- the conjugate root theorem.
The tetrahedron is self dual.
The cube is dual to the octahedron.
The dodecahedron is dual to the icosahedron.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Concept are dual to percepts" -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
Mathematicians create new concepts from their perceptions or observations all the time -- conceptualization is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
But... we can describe that number, can't we? That number is equal to the number generated on a computer by a man attempting to measure the time it takes for a ball dropped by Jade from a bridge of X height plus the height from the bridge to Jade's hands, with the ball falling at the rate of acceleration 32.17 ft/s^2, and your man with a reaction time of Y to press the start and stop button. I don't know what number that is exactly but isn't whatever that number is equal to the description above?
How precisely can you define that velocity you mentioned however? You will run in the same problem eventually, since you are just shifting on what part of the equation of the event needs to be exactly defined.
You will also run into the whole issue of uncertainty at a certain level of precision where it becomes involved in quantum dynamics and that is just opening another can of worms outside of just the mathematical principles of it.
But wouldn't that be describing an approximation of the number? Like, if you try to reproduce the number based in this description, you would get very similar results, sure, but you can't guarantee the same number to pop up? I'm not a mathematician tho, so idk
I have a similar question. The problem only arises because of the units you select. You could just say, the time it took is 1 Ballbridge, which is the amount of time it takes for this ball to fall from this bridge under these conditions. Then the problematic number becomes how many seconds there are in a Ballbridge, which you can just describe as "the number of seconds in a Ballbridge." What is the number you can't do this for? If you talk about it, you've described it.
Each of the other numbers you mention (height) has the same problem of being hard (impossible) to know exactly. Theoretically. In a physical world made up of quantum elements, "infinitely exact" isn't a meaningful concept.
In theory, technically, the number you get by the result of a given experimental process can be described as "the result of (description of the experimental process)", that that description does not actually tell us anything meaningful - the whole point of describing a number that is the answer to some question is to be able to understand that answer in some greater, more meaningful context.
There is also the problem that a given description may not actually describe a specific number, or may require as part of its description other 'merely describable' numbers - for example, your suggestion involves things like the acceleration due to gravity at Earth's surface (itself only an approximation, and a number which varies from moment to moment, with latitude and longitude, and with height above the surface), and also involves descriptions of individuals who are not constant with time, performing actions with initial conditions that are not specifiable with exactness except to describe them 'as what they are' in the same ultimately unhelpful way.
Which is all to say that, in a very technical sense, the number is technically describable as the result of a very specific description of events which happened, described unambiguously (though only descriptively) in their time and location, the actual value of that number becomes utterly inaccessible - Describable numbers need not be computable.
We then reach an interesting philosophical possibility - we are assuming that all mathematically possible numbers are physically possible. We know that, for example, pi (square units) is the area of a circle that is one unit in radius... but *can we physically make a circle*? Does it physically matter if we cannot exactly express pi if we cannot *make* pi in the physical world? After all, there is some evidence that space is, in a sense, 'pixelated', quantized with some minimum possible meaningful distance, meaning any attempt at any physical circle will only be 'approximately' a circle. Likewise, even with something as simple as sqrt(2), can we say with certainty that a triangle with unit legs can physically exist to the point that its hypotenuse is an irrational value, given that the length of that hypotenuse must be some whole number multiple of that minimum possible length (so must therefore be rational).
Perhaps it is not so surprising that we cannot meaningfully describe most of the numbers that can mathematically exist, since, even as big as the observable universe is, it is finite, and thus can only contain a finite number of combinations of things... If the entire universe, and all 10^80 particles it contained were a mechanism for storing binary data, it could only represent 2^(10^80) different unique states - a very very large number, but still finite.
Hi Jade!
It was really fascinating!infinity always has been a very mysterious thing to deal with and your explanation made it really enjoyable.
very well done. best explanation of the various kinds numbers I've seen so far.
This was brilliant. Accessible yet profound. Like an episode of James Burke's Connections. I'm convinced that Jade is among the world's best STEM communicators.
But . . . did you get your ball back?
Haha no we didn’t 🥲
This is an excellent summary! You’ve helped me gain a new, deeper understanding of transcendental numbers. It’s a great companion piece to Matt Parker’s Numberphile video. Really well done.
Rational is dual to irrational -- numbers.
Rational, analytic (noumenal) is dual to empirical, synthetic (phenomenal) -- Immanuel Kant.
Subgroups are dual to subfields -- the Galois Correspondence.
Homology (convergence, syntropy) is dual to co-homology (divergence, entropy).
The integers are self dual as they are their own conjugates -- the conjugate root theorem.
The tetrahedron is self dual.
The cube is dual to the octahedron.
The dodecahedron is dual to the icosahedron.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Concept are dual to percepts" -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
Mathematicians create new concepts from their perceptions or observations all the time -- conceptualization is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
The bright side of indescribable numbers is that we don't really have to care that they exist. Any number we can possibly encounter in any context is by definition describable, because at bare minimum a number can be described by specifying the context in which it was encountered.
Thank you! This explains so much without grandiousity, all I need to curiosity and patients.
I see a video from jade. Immediately gotta click on it. You're my favorite educational content creator. Please never stop 😘
thank you so much!
@@upandatom Simply wonderful - having you been taking drama courses, too?
We are all Jade. 👏
Thanks Jade! :) Awesome as usual!
11:18 Did you just throw Missy Elliot lyrics at us? LOL! 🤣Work it! I need a glass of water! Boy, oh boy, it's good to know ya! **starts dancing and singing** LOL!
Actually Jade was just looking in a mirror. It's already upside down in Aussie Land.
I had this exact realization during a measure theory course recently. We were discussing something about how you can approximate any measurable function within epsilon with a continuous function and something in my brain clicked and realized that the real numbers are insanely larger than imaginable. I tried to explain this to my friend, who is an engineer, and he didn't understand it at all even after 10 or 15 minutes of trying to explain that the rational numbers are basically as good as we're ever going to get. Glad to have a video I can send to people when I need to explain this idea.
Ironically, My daughter who is getting a math minor with her bio degree and I were just talking about the sizes of infinity the other day related to the infinite hotel experiment. Because I am that nerdy. When I saw your video I had to check it out. I have to say you brilliantly explained this concept so well. I remember in engineering school in Calculus, that we just got 'infinity' but never considered different types of infinity. I never thought about it until years later. Thank you!
Thank you for watching! Maybe you can show it to your daughter :)
@@upandatom I forwarded the link to my daughter. As a math junkie I know she will love it.
Well, for calculus, you don't need the different types of infinity. All you need to know is if a quantity is bounded or grows unbounded. That's true for science, engineering, and many other fields of math as well. Even within math, the different infinities arise only when you get deep into Axiomatic Set Theory. Which-however fascinating it is in its own right-isn't useful in science and engineering.
After all, human knowledge is so vast, it's impossible to learn all of it in one lifetime, let alone a mere 4 years of college. If you want to graduate in a reasonable amount of time-so that you can leave academia, come out into the real world, solve real-world problems, and earn a living-it shouldn't come as a surprise that you were taught very specific subjects that were relevant to your major, while vastly more subjects were left untaught. Luckily, we all have the option to learn more if we are so inclined.
@@nHansWell said. As I approach retirement I still learn new things every single day. Keep my brain active. I'm too nerdy to do otherwise :)
The Infinite Precision Dilemma is the perfect name for this…glad you found a good way to succinctly describe it!
Thanks for helping!
An uncomputable number is Chaitin’s constant, or more precisely, family of constants. It is related to the probability that some Turing machine will halt, something that there exists no Turing machine for determining. Another one is constructed from a base-2 representation of a number between 0 and 1, where each trailing digit gets its value from whether or not a Turing machine associated with it will halt; each digit has its own Turing machine.
I think that describable numbers may be called definable ones, and Chaitin’s constant and related ones are all definable for some definable ordering of Turing machines. There is a countable number of them also.
A lot of TH-camrs have been doing videos on infinity and this one is on my list of favorites!!! Great job!
Thank you! Yes it’s a fascinating concept :)
@@upandatom it really is!
I am quite glad that this lady has gotten to fulfill her lifelong ambition of dropping a soccer ball off a very tall bridge! She did quite a good job of at least trying to explain something that cannot be made sense of, at least at this time. The number of unexplainable in our universe is, quite literally, infinite.
The research I'm doing for my master's thesis in algebraic geometry uses these types of polynomial equations and the golden ratio, so your video is especially interesting to me haha.
Absolutely loved your explanation , Jade❤️👍
Really nice video, and really nice place where you drop the ball: the ex-railway Spoleto-Norcia in Italy! ;-)
i learned more in this video than in my 3 years of high school.
my math teachers never talked about real numbers this deep (maybe because its not required in exams)
Will you be hosting another Q and A anytime soon? I have really enjoyed your approach to science education and would appreciate the opportunity to discuss other experiments that could be too cool when presented in your method.
11:21 missy elliot teaching me about transcendental numbers be like
Who?
Great explanation on infinities and types of real numbers. My only slight nitpick, based on the title I thought this was going to have something to do with the fundamental properties of time… like I was like “yeah, can we measure time? I feel like all we can really do is find very regular sources of a periodic signal and call that time… let’s learn more on this interesting topic”… but the concept of this video really applies to any exact physical measurement, not just time (which as you correctly alluded to, the question of what constitutes a measurement and how to minimize error is itself a endlessly complex subject).
Anyways, still really enjoyed the great explanations, and loved your personality. Thanks for sharing!
The look of defeat with the wind consoling at the end was quite relatable xD Brilliant video!
but the number we are talking about is describable and its description is "The EXACT amount of time taken by that specific ball to touch the ground, when released from that particular bridge."
One down. Uncountably many to go! Better get cracking!
Love your content, Jade!
11:20 Nice reference to Missy Elliott - Work It. Also made me think about xkcd 153
"I implore all the languages of humanity to describe my number!"
You are the most poetic person doing science related videos I've ever heard. ❤
Should have said "Bummer" one more time at the end. But the silent disappointed stare at the laptop before closing it was good as well. Nice video. It had me glued. Very well made , both content and presentation.
That ending sums up perfectly my feelings from the topic :D. Great video, thank you.
I always love your videos. Could you do a follow up demonstrating that algebraic numbers are countably infinite? The explanation you gave seemed a bit short and I couldn't find a pattern for polynomials that would map to countable numbers (admittedly I only spent a few minutes on this :P )
I think you could prove that there are uncountably many polynomials just the same way you can prove there are uncountably many real numbers between and 1.
8:39 Considering the smallest length of time we can measure is the Planck time (~10^-43 seconds), the most decimals a time measurement could have is 43 digits, i.e. it would be a rational number: some variable 't' (the time it took in seconds from the moment you let go to the moment the ball hit the ground) over 10 tredecillions (1 tredecillion = 10^42).
Your build up in every video is so awesome I get fully invested in your videos 😂😂
Assuming zero delay in starting and stopping a timer. You could use a numberless analogue stopwatch to measure the drop of your ball. The arc travelled by the stopwatch pointer is precisely how long it took your ball to drop.
For the measurement to remain precise, it can not be described using numbers because numbers introduce divisions.