1.2 How This Hyperscript Works

 

1.2.1 A Word to the Style of Writing

If you have ever seen a scientific paper, you have already noticed that my style here is quite different from proper scientific diction. I will continue in this way. I will make a point of writing in a very unscientific style, risking the scorn of my peers.
There won't be plenty of footnotes. There won't be disclaimers to every statement either, discussing the exceptions to the rules.
I'm also going to address you directly, and I will ask you to just believe me most of the time rather than hiding myself behind unassailable authorities that I quote a lot.
The basic idea is to present the topic in such a way that everybody with a halfway decent general education can follow my train of thoughts.
Since in my experience even a fully decent general education no longer includes some non-trivial math (defined as anything beyond counting to hundred), there will be no equations in these pages. Equations will appear, however, in the "Science" part of the hyperscript.
I also will be redundant to some extend. I won't throw big ideas at you just so; I will lead up to them gradually, and I will mention key concepts more than once.
Moreover, I promise to do my best to make this easy reading, if not outright entertaining. There will be little anecdotes, some jokes, frequent "by the way's", some irony or tongue-in-cheek, and some really weird hidden modules that you need to make an effort to find.
Now and then we will also take a quick look into some related materials science terrain, in particular silicon micro electronics will come up more than once.
Finally, I will spice the whole thing with a bit of my "philosophy" on occasion. I will also lash out at some philosophers, scientists or museums if I think they earned it (or if it's fun to do).
The first law of thermodynamics states that there is no such thing as a free lunch. You can't get easy reading for free either; there is a price to pay for not being scientific.
Niels Bohr, one of the celebrated fathers of the quantum theory, always maintained that clarity and truth are complementary like the two sides of a coin. Bohr based quantum theory on his "complementary principle", so he should know. In other words, you can't have your cake and eat it.
In this article I go for clarity. That does not mean that I'm going to make things up just to make it easy reading. It does mean that I'm going to simplify things as far as possible, loosing scientific rigor in the process on occasion.
Just to give you an idea what more scientific rigor would look like, some topics are dealt with in parallel in a more scientific way in the "Science" part, including equations and proper terminology. You can switch back and forth simply by activating a link. If you choose not to activate these links, for example because you are afraid that your girl friend might catch you looking at complex equations, which will induce her to dump you because she suspects concealed nerdiness, that's fine with me. The science part is not needed to understand the main part of this hyperscript.
To make for easy reading, there will be almost no footnotes. Instead I give you all kinds of secondary information by links or right in the Hyperscript. Details can be found in this link
The format of this hyperscript will be dealt with in the next paragraph.
     

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© H. Föll (Iron, Steel and Swords script)