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Why don't you move abroad?

(orkohunter.net)
189 points orkohunter | 4 comments | 20 Nov 24 08:23 UTC | HN request time: 0.909s | source
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lancebeet ◴[20 Nov 24 09:25 UTC] No.42192154[source]▶
>Though secretly, it was to give hope to the students who were defeated by the education system and told “You can’t study Computer Science, because you didn’t know Carbon has a radioactive isotope.”

Forgive me if I'm being elitist here, but this seems like a strange example of outrageous admission requirements. I would have thought knowing about radiocarbon dating (which I'm assuming this is a reference to) is common knowledge (I believe it's in the standard curriculum for grades 7-9 in my country), so it doesn't seem like a completely unreasonable test question. If this is an example that the author uses from his or her own experience, it seems stranger still.

>Every evening, my brother and I would sit in front of an oil lamp and study, mostly maths and science.

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1. thatloststudent ◴[20 Nov 24 09:37 UTC] No.42192217[source]▶
I interpreted it as knowing the basics of nuclear physics in order to do a CS Bachelor's degree, which is what the entrance exam for these colleges ask.
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2. eesmith ◴[20 Nov 24 10:20 UTC] No.42192480[source]▶
Like lancebeet, I learned there are radioactive isotopes of carbon as part of learning about carbon dating while in high school.

I think there's a big step from that knowledge to say that means I know the basics of nuclear physics. If anything, it's a better test for the basics of archaeological dating.

Or, as I learned recently, the 12C/13C/14C ratios are used to help determine the source for the increase in atmospheric CO2, since fossil fuels have essentially no 14C. (TIL it's the "Suess effect", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suess_effect ). So it can also be a test for how well one understands the evidence behind the causes for global warming (while also making carbon dating trickier - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1504467112 ).

I also know that nuclear power plants split the uranium atom to generate power, as do atomic bombs. I also know that radioactive materials are used in smoke detectors and as power sources for some space probes, that bananas are radioactive, and that radon is a radioactive gas that can build up in houses and cause cancer.

That still doesn't mean I know the basics of nuclear physics, which starts with how the nucleus contains protons and neutrons, and is incredibly tiny compared to the nominal size of the atom.

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3. thatloststudent ◴[20 Nov 24 12:50 UTC] No.42193480[source]▶
I'm Indian. We also learned that Carbon dating was a thing somewhere between Middle School and High School. I also believe that the reference to isotopes was hyperbolic and that he actually wanted to talk about the fact that we teach the basics of Nuclear fission, fusion and radioactive decay in high school. [1]

In hindsight, it's funny that we use radioactive decay as one of the filters for an entrance exam for University. [2]

1 - https://ncert.nic.in/textbook/pdf/leph205.pdf

2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Entrance_Examination

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4. eesmith ◴[20 Nov 24 13:15 UTC] No.42193672{3}[source]▶
Maybe if he studied nuclear physics he would know that topic wasn't nuclear physics. ;)