God was high when he created physics.

FOR EXAMPLE:

1. I have two steel ball bearings in my desk that are an inch in diameter. I also have a rather powerful neodymium magnet that can lift about 60 pounds. The balls are stacked in my fist one on top the other, and I hold them two inches above the magnet.

When I let go one the bottom steel bearing, holding only the top one, the bottom one does not get sucked onto the magnet. Rather, THE MAGNETIC FURY IS HOLDING THE TWO BALL BEARINGS TOGETHER. 60 freaking pounds of magnetic fury AND GRAVITY should be pulling the bearing down, but no, the ball bearing is somehow attached to the non-magnet!

This was seriously pissing me off, so I looked up the answer via the Internets. It turns out magnetic fury acts stronger at a point rather than a flat surface, so the magnetic attraction being induced betwixt the bearings at the point of contact was stronger than the magnetic attraction of the flat surface. I get the reason; it just still makes no freaking sense.

2. Take a record (or a CD) spinning on a player. Then take two points on said record; one near the center and another near the edge. They both take the same amount of time to complete a revolution. However, the point near the edge has a bigger distance to go, so it is technically going at a faster speed than the point at the center.

Yeah, I realize the difference between tangental and radial velocities now, but when I first heard that, I was shaking my fist at physical law for quite some time after.

So, what other physical properties / laws do y'all think make no freaking sense?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

How about that everything falls at the same rate thing? It still baffles me how something so heavy and so light can fall at the same speed. Basic, yes, but still baffling no matter which way you look at it.

Most amazing jew boots

I believe what's really at work with the ball bearings is what's called "Lenz's law".

When you have a changing magnetic field it creates a current in the ball. Lenz's law says that the ball wants to remain neutral so it induces a current to oppose the one from the magnet. But just as magnetic fields give rise to currents so do currents to magnetic fields, thus the two balls become attracted. I waved my hand over the explanation a bit, but I believe that's what's at work.

As for gravity making all objects accelerate at the same rate that one's a lot simpler to explain. Gravity is a force which simultaneously acts on all atoms in a substance.

Think of a pickup truck. If your speedometer reads 60 mph with a 100lb payload, the payload travels at 60 mph. Same thing with a 200lb payload etc. If you think of it this way it's a bit easier to grasp.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Physics in general is pretty easy for me to grasp, but one thing I lol'd at were some test questions.

In my first physics class, I got counted off when I made a math error and ended up with an odd answer. The professor was all "you should've looked at your answer and figured that it didn't make sense." Yeah, point made.

Enter second physics class. The problem was something odd and I got something bizarre, like a bird flying at 300 km/sec. I thought "this isn't right~ IMPOSSIBLE SPEED." So I did some stupid steps and thought I got to the answer -- wrong. Prof saw it and was all "why'd you change your steps" and I said "Because the answer was impossible." Prof said "THE MATH WAS RIGHT IMPOSSIBLE DOESN'T MATTER. B MINUS"



I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

How about what's even MORE confusing than the places where physics actually WORKS?

I'm talking things like black holes, the Big Bang (or at least the very first few nanoseconds of it, when Gravity, the Electromagnetic, Weak Nuclear, and Strong Nuclear force are all combined into one universal force), and the areas outside our universe.

Dark energy, dark matter (yes, they are different!), and that's just the waaaay out there stuff. What about the fact that white dwarfs get smaller as you add more mass to them, until they become the equivalent of 1.4 solar masses (at which point they explode)? Or neutron stars working at all?

Our universe is one fucked up place.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Your white dwarf reaches a point called the Chandrasekhar Limit, which as you stated is approximately 1.44 solar masses. Below that mass, a white dwarf should remain stable. If it becomes too massive however, it collapses in on itself due to gravitic forces and becomes either a neutron star or a black hole. In special cases it might explode if it is able to accrete matter from somewhere else and hence maintain a supply of fusionable material. If there were little or no fuel left then there would be little chance of an explosion. I remember writing a paper on this subject many years ago at high school. Lol, nostalgia.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I love the fact that the day I notice this thread is the day I've been dropped from the physics program at my university (because of math courses, making the whole thing even better).

In any case, mine isn't so much a physical phenomenon as a principle. Anyone who's done Lagrangian mechanics is probably familiar with the principle of least action; essentially a particle will always, almost magically, follow a path where the total "action", a quantity which is surprisingly easy to calculate, will be minimized. I suppose that someone who hasn't done college physics won't find that too exciting, but there's a whole range of problems where the results of this can be applied, making them elegant and almost trivial when compared to the equivalent using Newtonian mechanics.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by YeOldeButchere

In any case, mine isn't so much a physical phenomenon as a principle. Anyone who's done Lagrangian mechanics is probably familiar with the principle of least action; essentially a particle will always, almost magically, follow a path where the total "action", a quantity which is surprisingly easy to calculate, will be minimized. I suppose that someone who hasn't done college physics won't find that too exciting, but there's a whole range of problems where the results of this can be applied, making them elegant and almost trivial when compared to the equivalent using Newtonian mechanics.

It's even more amazing when you do thermodynamics/statistical mechanics and discover that not just single particles, but entire with trillions and trillions of particles will do this.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

The part that blows my mind is that light behaves as a wave only if you don't look at it too closely. If you attempt to measure the phenomenon more closely, light literally says "You're crazy, I've been a particle travelling on a fixed path this whole time." Then when you look away, it's back to making diffraction patterns.

It's like, you go down far enough into the fundamental nuts and bolts of the universe, and you eventually reach a point where God just starts fucking around with you. It's a wave! It's a particle! It's BOTH! Ha ha, figure that one out physicists!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

(Matter does that too. Everything's got wave-particle duality!)

There's nowhere I can't reach.

DAMN YOU QUANTUM MECHANICS

A baseball will not pass through a 6-ft concrete wall when it is thrown at it, not with any reasonable probability.

To scale, an electron will pass through the said "6-ft wall" (down to size, of course)

I guess it's just the whole breakdown of classical physics at high speeds thing. Like, "Hey, all that stuff you learned? Fuck it. It's out. Here's the REAL stuff, and it's really hard"

Most amazing jew boots

Oh, come on, that's not even a fair comparison. If you throw a pebble at a chain-link fence it'll probably pass through but a basketball won't either. And the size comparison is far more dramatic between an electron and a baseball. Besides, the most important part is that baseballs are made of particles with nuclei. Nuclei have a lot harder time passing through things than simple electrons.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Yeah, it is a kind of off comparison.

For it to be approximately to scale the baseball would have to pass through a wall about as thick as the distance between Boston and Washington, DC.

Most amazing jew boots

Bumping as it became necessary to. If you have the chance to reproduce this, I highly recommend it:

1. Lay a one pound silver round on a wooden table (or something not metal).

2. Get a 2" x 2" x 1" neodymium magnet and drop it from a height of one inch onto the round.

3. Notice it lands excruciatingly gently upon the round, like the silver is repulsing the magnet.

4. Also notice, when you pick up the magnet, the silver is loosely sticking to the magnet. It both attracts and repulses the magnet.

WHY IS IT DOING THAT?

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Any chance of a YouTube video of either of your examples, Moon? I'm not really acquainted with physics beyond the high school level, but they sound fascinating. You could make a whole series, and become e-famous. "Fun With Magnets, by Moon", or something.

FELIPE NO

I will consider doing such, if only to document this one effect. However, the more pressing issue remains of why it's doing that. It has something to do with the fact that silver is a diamagnetic material, which hence gives it a tendency to repulse a magnetic field. However, that doesn't explain the attractive force.

How ya doing, buddy?