Talk:Normal mode

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pick your favorite:

Image:Two masses examples.png

(never made a mechanical diagram before.) - Omegatron 14:17, Jul 21, 2004 (UTC)

All are nicely down. I vote for the third. MathKnight 16:25, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Isn't it a way you can crop the 3rd one? MathKnight 18:07, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I consider myself reasonably informed, but I'm completely daunted by the maths on this page. Isn't there another way to explain what this means? Electricdruid 00:36, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

I improved it a bit, I hope. Pfalstad 05:02, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

If "reasonably informed" includes a solid understanding of ordinary differential equations and just a little bit of linear algebra, you should be able to get though this. But if you took your math classes and forgot it all, you are no longer reasonable informed. --neffk 19:39, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Neffk: Electricdruid is probably representative of the typical visitor to Wikipedia; a middle-of-the-bell-curve sort of guy. Someone can easily have an I.Q. of 100+ and be “reasonably informed” and not be mathematically inclined. Your dismissive response was the sort of terse cheap shot that people with a sense of anonymity occasionally resort to. I suspect your comment momentarily made you feel elite and special. However, if a Wikipedia article—or any article in any encyclopedia—is talking over the heads of the audience, it can probably benefit from the addition of some explanatory text in the math section. The whole point of technical writing is to convey complex issues in clear, concise terms. It's only too easy to simply regurgitate formulas out of text books. One can often tell whether a contributor to a math-related section in a Wikipedia article was trying to effectively convey the formula by whether or not they bothered to list what each of the formula's terms means (as well as the required units of measure to make the formula work). When authors omit these (which unfortunately occurs way too often in Wikipedia), they either don't understand the formula well enough themselves to do so, or they are lazy, or they are using Wikipedia as a vehicle to inflate their egos because they feel they are part of an elite club that understands what each of the *secret* terms in the formula means. Upon seeing the comment from Neffk, Pfalstad waded in and made some improvements. What was your contribution? A cheap shot. Nice going. Greg L 15:02, 4 October 2006 (UTC)