what’s the physical meaning of mathematical operations?

928 views

Let’s say you have a division. You’ve got 3/2, where 3 might be acres and 2 might be brothers so from there you could deduce that the division just means that the 3 acres of land will be distributed between two brothers. Summation and multiplication are quite straight forward, but what the hell does one do with multiplication and exponentiation? If I got 20 N-m of torque, wtf does the multiplication tells me there? If something follows a square root?

Please feel free to add any other operations to these. Thanks!

In: 0

15 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Multiplication is just synthatic sugar for summation. 5*3 is the same as (5+5+5).

Exponentiation is just synthatic sugar for multiplication. 5^(3) is the same as (5*5*5) which is the same as (5+5+5+5+5) + (5+5+5+5+5) + (5+5+5+5+5) + (5+5+5+5+5) +(5+5+5+5+5)

Rooting is just the opposite of exponentiation. ∛ ( (5+5+5+5+5) + (5+5+5+5+5) + (5+5+5+5+5) + (5+5+5+5+5) +(5+5+5+5+5)) is 5

20Nm of torque means you are applying a force on an object that is equivalent to attaching a 1m long pole to the object and rotating it with a 20N force.

20N is the same as 20kgm/s^(2) and is the amount of force that, when applied to a 20kg rock during 1 second makes the rock go from stationary to moving at a speed of 1 m/s (ignoring friction).

You are viewing 1 out of 15 answers, click here to view all answers.