Dark cover for One Reading, Two Unknowns: a green ray A = 0.625 E through the origin of the Expectation–Actual plane, with three marked points (8, 5), (12.8, 8) and (16, 10) that all produce the same surprise reading of minus 0.470.

One Reading, Two Unknowns

Surprise is one number made from two, and the feeling does not come labelled with which term moved: a world that fell short and an expectation that had grown produce readings identical to the third decimal. A single reading is a line of position, not a fix — which is why the numerator gets convicted, why disagreement is the only gauge of a denominator, and why a forecast written before the world arrives is the one artifact that makes the next reading identifiable. … readOne Reading, Two Unknowns

Dark cover with the title Every Formula Is a First Term, the expansion E = mc² + ½mv² + (3/8)mv⁴/c² + … in amber, and a faint pink sigma in the corner.

Every Formula Is a First Term

E = mc² is the first term of a series that never ends, and so are F = ma, Hooke’s law and the ideal gas. Not because the true law is infinitely long: because every smooth structure looks like its tangent from wherever you stand, and an expansion point is a frame. Part Eleven, for philosophers and theologians: Taylor’s theorem, why the series dies where it does, and what no series can see. … readEvery Formula Is a First Term

Dark cover: a green wave oscillates toward an amber-edged barrier, decays as a pink exponential inside it, and emerges as a smaller green wave — beneath the title The Wall Is a Change of Sign

The Wall Is a Change of Sign

Classical mechanics forbids the crossing for an exact reason: inside the barrier there is no real number left to be the momentum. The Schrödinger equation carries on — one coefficient changes sign, oscillation becomes decay, and the faint exponential tail on the far side is why the Sun shines and how the first microscope to image atoms worked. Part Ten, for philosophers and theologians: tunnelling without the folklore. … readThe Wall Is a Change of Sign