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13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence

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Re: 13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence

#101

Post by MortenK »

palish wrote: post #67
llambda wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Colin, It seems a great deal of your comments have begun to fall into either the "this has already been posted" or "you're not following the rules" category. Do you see the problem with "contributing" material on top of material you see as less than satisfactory? You're only adding more cruft to the cruft. We get it. You don't like reposts. We get it. You don't like it when people don't follow the rules to a "T". Gue…

1) By not ignoring him, you'd be just as guilty. 2) However, he's not "complaining" about duplicates in those links. He's cross-referencing previous discussions in order to let people learn from them. 3) For what it's worth, he's been here almost two years -- you've been here barely half a year. I read through his history and found this really cool submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2878264 Computer Grap…

2) Though "cross-referencing previous discussions in order to let people learn from them" sounds good, if you read Colins profile, he seems quite angry at all this reposting. There is a little to a lot snark in most of those comments (though some really are just links to similar discussions).

3) That should by all means be completely and utterly irrelevant.

I think the OP recognizes Colins contributions, but is pointing out that there seems to be a lot of complaining / slight passive aggression in those comments. Isn't that a fair observation to make?

I'm not bothered by Colins postings. I sure would be bothered though, if HN turns in to your typical internet forum, where older members starts policing newer members about following the arbitrary forum rules ("use the search function, you dimwit!" style).

Re: 13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence

#102

Post by eru »

ck2 wrote: post #76

If he wanted better mainstream press he should have thrown the word "fractals" in there. I bet most reporters know the word fractals than Fibonacci sequence.

Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code had some Fibonacci hocus pocus in them according to Wikipedia.

Re: 13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence

#103

Post by monochromatic »

tiddchristopher wrote: post #64
icode wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess someone paid the fee for him.

That would be the cynical way to look at it. For a sole inventor, working independently of any company, I think the filing fee is about $150. It's possible he had enough saved to pay for it himself. :) Heck, judging from his report, the kid might have even figured out the whole application by himself. That alone would be just as impressive as any invention.

$110

:)

Re: 13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence

#104

Post by csomar »

llambda wrote: post #61
ColinWright wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In part, this is why it says in the guidelines: In Submissions ... Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Your last link has now been submitted by someone as a separate item and is just so much better. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2902496

Colin, It seems a great deal of your comments have begun to fall into either the "this has already been posted" or "you're not following the rules" category. Do you see the problem with "contributing" material on top of material you see as less than satisfactory? You're only adding more cruft to the cruft. We get it. You don't like reposts. We get it. You don't like it when people don't follow the rules to a "T". Gue…

I think it's good to have someone who remembers. I, for example, forget this. I want to provide the maximum value, but I just forgot about it, and when I submit articles I'm not quite careful. His comment made me remember and the next time, I'll be more careful.

Re: 13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence

#105

Post by sesqu »

romansanchez wrote: post #74
Jach wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned more about Fibonacci and the golden ratio in nature and art through my high school Art History course than I ever did in a math course. Though I had played with fractals a little bit before that course so the fractal geometry of nature and Fibonacci-fractal relationships weren't a complete mystery to me. http://fractalfoundation.org/OFC/OFC-11-1.html

Same here, I learned about the golden ration in my high school Art class. Weird, because it was never mentioned through my college years despite how important and ubiquitous it is.

This probably has a bunch to do with how the Fibonacci sequence is attributed with a lot of mysticism and attributes it doesn't actually have.

The golden ratio does not depend on the Fibonacci sequence, it depends on the recursion equation, and it's only ubiquitous if you add error margins of 10% or so so that it covers ratios like 3/2 and 7/4. Nautilus shells aren't described by the Fibonacci sequence, and the golden box isn't all that pretty.

It's a great and motivational story, but it's not the magic bullet some authors make it out to be.

Re: 13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence

#106

Post by thestranger »

colanderman wrote: post #99

Apparently in the "flat" design, half of the solar panels are on the back roof of the model house, facing his actual house, and thus likely not getting any significant light at all.

Well he did say in the source article that he moved the test location around a few times, but another flaw is that the height of the solar "tree" means that it would put the "flat" design in its shade at times. I wonder if he controlled for that, although the images would suggest he did not.

Re: 13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence

#107

Post by winsbe01 »

i think this is great. not that he was 13 (though it is impressive), but that he thought enough to challange the typical panel array that we've gotten solar power from in the past. it seems that he got some interesting results, too. sure, maybe he didn't take some things into account, or maybe it's not super practical, but breaking out of the mold of large, 2d rectangular panels may be something the solar energy world needs to innovate on ways to harness more energy from the sun efficiently.

Re: 13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence

#108

Post by scott_s »

llambda wrote: post #61
ColinWright wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In part, this is why it says in the guidelines: In Submissions ... Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Your last link has now been submitted by someone as a separate item and is just so much better. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2902496

Colin, It seems a great deal of your comments have begun to fall into either the "this has already been posted" or "you're not following the rules" category. Do you see the problem with "contributing" material on top of material you see as less than satisfactory? You're only adding more cruft to the cruft. We get it. You don't like reposts. We get it. You don't like it when people don't follow the rules to a "T". Gue…

Pointing out where other discussion on the same topic happened, or is currently going on, is a Good Thing. You are confusing helpfully pointing out where more discussion exists as a complaint.

Re: 13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence

#109

Post by scott_s »

llambda wrote: post #91
ColinWright wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, OK. I'll stop. Despite lots of people saying they appreciate it, you've convinced me. I won't cross-reference, I won't point out when people break the guidelines, I'll just silently downvote and flag, leaving people - often newbies - with no idea why their contributions disappear or get negative karma. That might or might not lead to still more bewildered posts saying they don't understand, but that's OK. There'…

Colin, As civil adults and in all seriousness, would you stop? Do you see why I've complained? Cruft is cruft is cruft. Clearly your strategy to mend the dupe problem isn't having a positive effect. Maybe this is because new users aren't aware of the rules (but there will always be new users) maybe it's because people are willfully ignoring the rule (but in this case why should they pay you any attention?) or perhaps…

As a long time HN reader and contributor, please do not ask other community members to stop helping the community. If I go to the discussion page for a submission, but find it mostly empty except Colin's link to a dupe, I can then read the discussion that happened.

Re: 13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence

#110

Post by teamonkey »

colanderman wrote: post #77

I don't get what his results have to do with the Fibonacci sequence. Between his "control" and the design he was testing, he changed: 1. panel heights 2. panel angles 3. whether panels were stacked or not I would guess that any of those three things matter way more than the position of the "leaves" following the Fibonacci sequence. He needed to compare his design to a similar tree-shape whose "leaves" were, say, unif…

pigbucket summed it up elsewhere:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2902523

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