### Archive

Archive for the ‘science’ Category

## LaTeX Typesetting

For those who do not know, I decided to make this post.

LaTeX (often written as $\LaTeX$) is a professional-grade mathematical typeset used in most academic papers. It is also used on most websites and forums, including wordpress.com.

To include an equation in LaTeX is easy and simple, all that you need to do is use the tags:
$latex equation$ (without the space between the \$ and latex)

An example of LaTeX in action:

$x={-b\pm\sqrt{b^2-4ac} \over 2a}$  (Quadratic formula)

The code for the above example is “x={-b\pm\sqrt{b^2-4ac} \over 2a}” which you can also check by hovering your mouse over the image and the tool-tip will give you the code used to generate the image.

As you can see, it is a very useful tool to have. It makes explaining things on forums and websites much, much easier.

http://www.andy-roberts.net/writing/latex/mathematics_1
http://www.andy-roberts.net/writing/latex/mathematics_2

And here is a list of the codes that can be used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Displaying_a_formula

Categories: maths, science

## Comet C/2010 X1 Elenin

For those astronomy lovers out there:

Soon you will be able to see a comet with a fantastic 3,000,000 km long tail!
The long-period comet, named Elenin (discovered by Russian amateur astronomer Leonid Elenin), should soon (October 16th being closest to Earth @ ±34,980,000 km or 0.2338 AU) be visible to those of you with telescopes (as even at its brightest, will be barely visible to the human eye). Travelling at a whopping 86,000 km/h and measuring in at ±3-4 km across.

I will unfortunately not have a telescope before this event occurs (I was planning on buying a moderately priced one that I can connect my DSLR camera to, but cash is tight for me right now) but if anyone out there that reads this blog does have a telescope or will be able to snap a few photographs, please send them to me and I will add them to my blog for others to see and marvel at 😉

Some diagrams from other websites:

Categories: science

## iTunes U – Find of the week!

June 21, 2011 1 comment

For some reason, I have only discovered this now (I don’t usually use iTunes for much else other than internet radio usually). Apple has something called “iTunes U” where universities can place free lectures and education materials. Obviously for me, the Mathematics and Science subjects were what I sought after first. They are all free to download it seems and they go lightning fast too! The quality of the videos are ok, but the quality of the material is priceless.

I would highly suggest anyone with even an interest in learning anything take a look at the website and the amazing amount of subjects on offer. Although I think you need to have Apple’s iTunes installed (lucky it is multi-platform)!

Once I have found which ones are best to get (The Open University ones are rather short in comparison to those from say MIT or Stanford) I will post the list here as to save you some time.

http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/