So last time I came back from a blog break I did it officially by returning with an entry in the Ask Peter series. For those just stopping by or those who are new, Ask Peter is one of the things I run “just for kicks”. It involves people asking me questions (my name is Peter) by filling out this magical form and me receiving these questions and answering them. You can see past “Ask Peters” in the Ask Peter category.

Here is Ask Peter #19…

Returning with the Numbers…

Hello Peter !

My Question is :

When will you continiue your “Large Numbers” Series ?

I think your last part was:

“Part 8: Exponentiation Within Limit Functions”

It was/is REALLY intresting. It would be great if you would contiue (soon)”g”

Thank you !

Michael

Again, for those unaware, making very large numbers has a long history within the most geeky of the internet. However, rarely has “advanced mathematics” known by people in college been brought to the masses of non-college big-number geeks. This is where I enter. Assuming you don’t care about large numbers (you’d be in the vast majority), you can just take the short answer which is “soon, among other posts”.

For those who want a more in depth answer (probably one person), I started with a post on magnitude in Part 1. I moved on to exploring the full extend of the common methods in parts 2, 3, 4, and 5, ending at Extended Conway Chained Arrow notation. Then I started on exploring a new method in limit functions, eventually expanding them and then greatly increasing their power with exponents. All of the articles were written to be understood by any lay person who knows how to multiply.

Anyways, the long answer is the same as the short answer. I plan on continuing this series all the way to the end, eventually ending at a really simple explanation of a collapsing function, which looks really complicated on the Wikipedia article. You’re welcome. The numbers that will be produced at the end will be bigger than any numbers produced by pretty much any other site, except a few.

It’s kind of cool, I guess. But I wanted to thank you, Michael, if that is your real name, for being one of the inspirations for me to return to blogging. Thanks to everyone who comments on my stuff, actually. You people keep me caring about writing stuff.

One of Those People Again…

Peter please answer the following question.

What’s the name of Jessica’s pet bearded dragon?

What colour are Sam’s eyes?

What is Virginia’s cell phone Number?

What is Catherine’s Boyfriends name?

What is Jessica’s Boyfriends name?

What is Taylor’s middle name?

What is Sam’s little brother’s name?

– Samantha Beatty

Well, looks like we’ve got a lot there. Let’s take it bit by bit…

Peter please answer the following question.

That looks like a lot more than just one question.

What’s the name of Jessica’s pet bearded dragon?

I don’t know, but I’m going to guess that it doesn’t have a name, because bearded dragons don’t exist.

What colour are Sam’s eyes?

How the heck am I supposed to know? I’m not some friggin oracle, as awesome as I may appear and as intelligent as I may sound. I’m just a guy with a website. You make me sound like some glorified Ouija board. However, seeing as I have about a 20% chance of guessing right, I’ll go with brown.

What is Virginia’s cell phone Number?

You make me sound like some sort of stalker…

What is Catherine’s Boyfriends name?

What is Jessica’s Boyfriends name?

I have no idea. How would you expect me to know? They’re probably dating jerks anyway.

What is Taylor’s middle name?

My best guess is “Marie”. Taylor is both a girl’s name and a boy’s name, but since you’ve already been talking about girls I’m going to assume Taylor is also a girl. I also know that the most common middle name for girls is Marie. Out of morbid interest, this is sort of relevant.

What is Sam’s little brother’s name?

I give up. What is it?

If you are a concerned reader and want to save me from answering questions like the above, go here and actually ask a substantial question.

Freezing Motor Oil

Can motor oil freeze?

– Lindsey

The short answer is yes.

However, whether motor oil will freeze in a given condition depends on a variety of things — what kind of motor oil you have (type and viscosity), what temperature the surrounding environment is, the pressure of the motor oil, the type of container the motor oil is in, etc. A good rule of thumb is that by -43 degrees celsius all forms of motor oil will have frozen. Though some motor oils in some conditions may freeze when it is as “warm” as -10 degrees celsius.

(For those of you who aren’t celsius people, you can hover over those temperatures for conversions to the glorious fahrenheit.)

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