My first real visceral realization of the non-commutative nature of driving a car was the first time I tried to parallel park and attempted to pull front end first into the space.
More like this
It's a good day for people posting about science I don't understand...
Hoisted from the comments, Robin asks:
in theory there is no difference between theory and practice
Quaternions
Last week, after I wrote about complex numbers, a bunch of folks wrote and said "Do quaternions next!" My basic reaction was "Huh?" I somehow managed to get by without ever being exposed to quaternions before. They're quite interesting things.
I don't remember watching this video in High School Driver's Ed class....what a shame!
Note also that the last words in the video were, "...with a final position error of two feet." I guess that's close enough if you park in NYC and/or Boston.
The study is from Stanford, so they're using suburb sized parking spaces!
Nice, they managed to do it for real!
One of my memories from my teenage years is a friends 1964 Chevy Nova. If you got the car up to speed it would make a 90 degree turn with just a lockup of the brakes.
This one looks like its defending a food source. (it seems to stick its face into the meat a few times.) ground squirrels (I know this is a tree squirrel) often cannibalize their dead, sometimes with revolting conseqences