Angry Dragons
Kaya knows what she’s talking about.
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Excellent title text reference, Robin~
…I’m with Kai on this one. How the frick can you do THOSE calculations and not understand math?
Calculators, I’m betting. The physics teacher allows them and the math teacher doesn’t.
That can’t be it. My math classes started allowing calculators in the same grade as physics class became an option. My math teacher made it very clear that having a calculator on hand doesn’t mean things are easy, because knowing how to formulate the calculations properly is complex enough on its own.
Different teachers are different. I only had high school physics in 11th grade and our teacher allowed the use of calculators. Actually, she scoffed at the idea of anyone doing her class without a calculator. She said nobody ever managed to get an A in her class without a calculator until my class, when someone actually did that.
My calculus teacher was the first math teacher who let us use calculators in class, and that was 12th grade. He said that he’d need to borrow the calculator manual over night for us to be able to use it on our tests. I had the most advanced calculator, and it did symbolic differentiation. I let him take it home like he asked, but when he told me with a smile that I could use that calculator on his exams, I chickened out and told him I wouldn’t be using a calculator on the exam after all – not with the amount of joy he showed at the idea of making a test that would surpass my calculator’s ability to do differentiation. I’d been one of three students to not bother with a calculator for the physics tests the prior year and I hadn’t done horribly, how bad could it be?
If I remember correctly, I did better on the calculus tests without a calculator than I had on the physics tests without a calculator. Both times I wondered in the moment what the heck I’d been thinking, however.
(Just in case some people missed it, I’m not claiming that I’m the person who managed to ace physics without a calculator. Just that i did physics without a calculator the same year someone managed that, and I didn’t fail. Also to be clear, I went into that knowing how to do trig functions and logarithms by hand and expected that they would not be required for most of the questions. That expectation was met, otherwise I would have failed as those things are really difficult to do by hand.)
…That calculus teacher seems like he delights in making students squirm and struggle.
I wish I was taught how to do trig by hand. The supposedly college level course I took was basically just chanting “soh-cah-toa” over and over. I still don’t understand trig
@Cliff – was your teacher Sho Minamimoto?
No, don’t remember his name. He was good enough as an algebra teacher (the class was a college level algebra course first semester and college trig the second) but the trig semester was more focisef on prepping us to score well on the SATs. As far as that particular curriculum went it only mattered if you knew what buttons to push to get the answers quickly.
Everyone’s got their blind spots, Kai
(don’t ask me about the semi-colon)
Everyone has the room to improve
(If you think it’s easy, just stroll on).
Confidence flies until it takes flight,
then falters, stalls, crashes and burns.
Doubts take it out when it goes too high
and re-enforcement is how Kaya learns.
You’re through the paper and out of socks
so you may as well help her too;
Giving encouragement to the panicked…
surely that’s what a brother would do?
If only physics was that simple
I mean, at the middle/high school level, it kind of is. (Actually… you’re in a pretty advanced class if you’re asked to deal with air resistance.)
Side note: I wish math and science teachers would work together better to show the very very tight relationship between the two. The relationships between acceleration, velocity, and speed is literally basic calculus, for example.
Kai, have you thought about becoming a physics teacher? ‘I* almost got that XD
Ya gotta admit; the bar for Viking Physics is kinda… low. 😉 I’ll be Kai could ace that class! 🙂
A genius in a given field often isn’t able to explain or understand their own thought process because it comes so naturally to them. I like the idea of Kaya being that kind of genius when it comes to mayhem.
“Is it an African Swallow or a European Swallow? Or a Kaya Swallow?”
Never would’ve expected Kaya to be knowledgeable about physics, though perhaps the reason why she excels is because of her lifetime of applying physics. She understands physics by living it (and defying it). I wonder what sciences Kai excels in, chemistry? Biology? Kaya-ology?
I guess this page confirms that Kaya is classified as something of a ditzy genius. Perhaps Kai could understand physics like Kaya does by living it the way she does?
No one can understand Kaya-ology, it is unknowable.
How ’bout Kaya-otics? Does Kai have a theory to explain that?
Pretty sure people in the physics science community already have a theory about that…
Never heard of Chaos Theory?
Of course; that’s why I said, “Kaya-otics,” and asked if Kai had a “theory.” 🙂
Many people have Kaya-optics theories. Problem is she keeps reinventing new Kaya-otic ways…
I can relate. I actually struggled with math until around the same grade as the twins are. Started learning physics the year before and it was the first science class I didn’t ace because it used math. Then at some point in the algebra class I had, something clicked and I saw how and why the numbers fit together the way they do and now I furiously run any number problem Robin presents us with.
This was like me…I was iffy with math, but I took it because I knew it would apply somewhere. Then I got to physics class while taking AP Calculus, and the lightbulb went on.
“FINALLY! THIS is what they were talking about!”
All of that stuff about parabolas and ellipses? Orbital mechanics. Imaginary numbers? Used in Quaternions (which most game engines use instead of x,y,z angular rotation to prevent mathematical gimbal lock).
Sometimes when you relate it to something concrete, it makes more sense. Although sometimes it may make less sense, as I had to wonder whether the inverse square law (which assumes a point source emitting light in all directions) applies to lasers (in which all the light is moving in the same direction, in phase).
I’ve never been able to summon much interest in pure, abstract math. To me math becomes interesting when I need it to solve some practical problem in physics, chemistry or something.
Light in laser is NOT moving in the same direction. Like, maybe on start, but then diffraction makes it less and less focused. In just few light years, the laser beam you though is focused in single point will be wide as planet.
That’s just an issue of the inherent imperfections of ground optics. They’d need something like a self-cohering free-electron laser (like the kinds they’re working on for X-ray holography).
Gravity. TM & © Isaac Newton 1665.
The copyright expired 50 years after the death of the original author, back in the 18th century, so the work is now in the public domain. 😛 The Royal Society was the publisher of the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, so they would have any trademark claims, but they have not continued publishing the work after the third edition in 1726, therefore the trade mark might not hold up in court if challenged.
Either Kaya is on the spectrum or she has discalculia,
If it is that binary choice (I’m not discounting it, but I’d like to look for other potential answers first), my money’s on autism. In the last panel, she was able to “use the correct formula” to get the answer. Doubt she’d be able to do that with dyscalculia.
Although most expressions of autism would actually cause a person to more readily connect the dots between math and physics, it’s known and demonstrated that some expressions in fact have [b]opposite[/b] results from the usual. (For example, most persons with autism have a dislike of physical contact. But some, including me, actually gain something of a [b]need[/b] for it instead.)
Aw, boo. BBCode fail. I wonder if it’s Markdown, limited HTML, or no formatting allowed?
**Let’s find out.**
Meow?
Well it doesn’t look like *Markdown* worked, so I guess that italic Meow used HTML?
Yep! HTML it is. So basically it’s like most of BBCode but using angle brackets instead of square brackets. Mostly at least for the simplest stuff.
Absolutely correct, Detective Block.
A dragon girl from Our Old Town
explains throwing balls like a clown,
but what math is about
is the thing she leaves out:
You must write the right formula down.
Lol, Kaya can’t explain how it works in her head
Kaya is an enigma wrapped in a surprise wrapped in a very large noise….
And a pyromaniac.
I love her!
Kaya’s mind operates on practical applications.
Panel 6: Maybe the teacher’s impressed by her artistic flair?
“Why should I learn Algebra, I’ve no intention of going there.” – Billy Connolly
This reminds me of a Foxtrot cartoon from a few years ago: https://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot/2009/01/25/ but the sister understands shopping, but not algebra.
“A few”? Try 14.
Well of course Kaya has a deep understanding of ballistics calculations. How else is she going to know the appropriate pounce angle for her tactical hugs? Loved reading the new panel as always Robin! Even if I’m not as consistent with commenting anymore I do still keep up with the comic each week and it always puts a smile on my face. Reading it really does brighten my day. Thank you for continuing to work on it. Keep it up, and as always, stay awesome!
she should have bassed that on throwing the water ballons.