{"id":117365,"date":"2015-08-21T02:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-08-20T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fyysika.ee\/?guid=a5d404170fa811ad988b474782fe48b0"},"modified":"2015-08-21T02:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-08-20T23:00:00","slug":"solving-a-problem-by-using-what-you-know-a-physicist-looks-at-a-problem-in-ecology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fyysika.ee\/?p=117365","title":{"rendered":"Solving a problem by using what you know: a physicist looks at a problem in ecology"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two philosophical ideas motivate this paper. The first is an answer to the question of what is an<br \/>\nappropriate activity for a physicist. My answer is that an appropriate activity is anything where<br \/>\nthe tools of a physicist enable him or her to make a contribution to the solution of a significant<br \/>\nproblem. This may be obvious in areas that overlap physics (e.g. chemistry, engineering, geology)<br \/>\nbut also true in any endeavour where mathematical modelling may contribute insight to the solution<br \/>\nof problems (e.g. timing of traffic lights, efficient ways to seat passengers on airplanes, whether<br \/>\nit is better to walk or run in a rain shower). The second idea concerns an approach to problem<br \/>\nsolving. Before some people try to solve a problem, they think they first must learn everything that<br \/>\nis known about the subject. However, sometimes an effective approach is to declare, \u2018I\u2019m going to<br \/>\nsolve this problem with what I know now!\u2019 I see a relationship between this approach and the idea of<br \/>\nback-of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two philosophical ideas motivate this paper. The first is an answer to the question of what is an<br \/>\nappropriate activity for a physicist. My answer is that an appropriate activity is anything where<br \/>\nthe tools of a physicist enable him or her to make a c&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[178],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-117365","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-rss-fuusikaharidus","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fyysika.ee\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fyysika.ee\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fyysika.ee\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fyysika.ee\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fyysika.ee\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=117365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fyysika.ee\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fyysika.ee\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=117365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fyysika.ee\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=117365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fyysika.ee\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=117365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}