Ask Chaos Anything!

[NerdSandwich she/her]

On 4/8/2026 at 11:34 PM, Chaos said:

I've always dreamt up stories. I remember as a kid just having a tennis racket and bouncing a tennis ball up and down and thinking of fantasy / scifi stories

Okay the tradition lives on. I'll just think of a bunch of stories while doing that too. Never wrote many of them down though. 

Prob not as good as yours but that's funny bc I do the exact same thing.

[Through the Living Hope]

On 4/14/2026 at 10:47 PM, Chaos said:

Thanks for the kind words. It will be a very long time, if at all, as trad publishing is very competitive and a huge book like this will not be looked to kindly. It's entirely possible I'll need a shorter book to break in before anyone takes any interest in this one. 

Self publishing, particularly with AI rampaging about, seems just like a too difficult business model for me to make a living at. You really have to publish a book a year, and that's impossible for me. So, I have roll the trad publishing dice.

I did find a few notes I took two years ago about publishing. Would you want me to PM them to you for another perspective or do you think you figured out how you want to go about it?

[Honors Spectral Image She/her]

What’s quantum physics, I’m going into ap phys next year and I very excited

[Chaos he/him]

On 4/15/2026 at 2:02 PM, NerdSandwich said:

Okay the tradition lives on. I'll just think of a bunch of stories while doing that too. Never wrote many of them down though. 

Prob not as good as yours but that's funny bc I do the exact same thing.

That's funny! I love it.

On 4/20/2026 at 12:51 PM, Through the Living Hope said:

I did find a few notes I took two years ago about publishing. Would you want me to PM them to you for another perspective or do you think you figured out how you want to go about it?

Sure.

On 4/22/2026 at 2:30 PM, Honors cognitive shadow said:

What’s quantum physics, I’m going into ap phys next year and I very excited

Well, you're not going to get much into quantum physics in AP physics. Some introductions on some results of it, potentially, but what you're going to do is much more the standard physics 1 stuff, which will be Newtonian mechanics, forces, etc. To truly dig into quantum mechanics, you need four semesters of calculus, and that's just the start.

Quantum mechanics is the study of really small things, like atoms and electrons, and how they behave. Electrons don't behave like a really tiny ball orbiting an atom's nucleus. Instead, they act both as a wave and a particle at the same time (look up the extremely famous double-slit experiment). If that doesn't make sense to you, that is okay! The world is under no obligation to make sense to our own intuitions. We make math to create a model to describe observations, and make predictions with our model. This is why if someone asked, "Explain to me quantum mechanics without math" like... you just really can't. The intuition is in doing the math. 

Regardless of how weird it is, it is incredibly empirical and extremely well substantiated. Quantum electrodynamics, which covers the electromagnetic force, is basically the best measured and tested scientific theory, where we computed a number to like... seven decimal places, and we have experimentally corroborated that. It's insane. 

Anyway, you wouldn't get to that sort of stuff for a long time, even as a physics major in college. It is very interesting, but requires a lot of math.

[NerdSandwich she/her]

Oh yeah I'm in physics (yes *gasp* even at my young age I have to take the nerd classes)

It's literally algebra and an equation sheet

 

[Verdance he/him]

Physics isn’t hard, it just takes forever. If i have to split and recombine force vectors into x and y components one more time there will be blood

[Frustration]

Have you already read Fires of December?

If so I imagine that there isn't a lot you're allowed to talk about, but Brandon recently said that he feels that the book is one of his best. Do you agree?

[Chaos he/him]

On 4/24/2026 at 12:38 PM, NerdSandwich said:

Oh yeah I'm in physics (yes *gasp* even at my young age I have to take the nerd classes)

It's literally algebra and an equation sheet

It gets easier once you have calculus. Way less formulas to remember.

On 4/24/2026 at 2:53 PM, Verdance said:

Physics isn’t hard, it just takes forever. If i have to split and recombine force vectors into x and y components one more time there will be blood

I don't find classical mechanics fun, but it gets more interesting when you can use the Lagragian and such. You wouldn't get that until you're a third year physics major, though.

5 hours ago, Frustration said:

Have you already read Fires of December?

If so I imagine that there isn't a lot you're allowed to talk about, but Brandon recently said that he feels that the book is one of his best. Do you agree?

I really enjoyed it.