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A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Yeah, "spin" was a stupid thing to call it. We have a nice, hard definition of what "spin" is on a macro scale. Why take a complex property of matter that we don't have a name for, and give it the same name as a fairly common, easy-to-understand phenomenon? Extraordinarily smart people being idiots, honestly.
I recall a Richard Feynman video where the interviewer asks him to explain how magnets work.
His answer amounts to "I can't explain that to you because if I gave you an accurate answer it would be too technical for it to make sense to you, and if I simplified it to the extent that you could understand, it would no longer be a meaningful answer."
His point was that we don't understand the interaction between fundamental forces enough to say, if we were to try and answer the question accurately enough.
So, in one sense ICP was right that we don't know how magnets work. But also they were wrong that scientists be lying. They shouldn't have been pissed.
That interview answer always seemed like a cop-out to me. You could make a comparison to gravity to explain how magnetism "just is".
Title-Text: "Of these four forces, there's one we don't really understand." "Is it the weak force or the strong--" "It's gravity."
I expect Feynman’s answer, if he had a whiteboard and unlimited time, would’ve been to dive into Maxwell’s equations.
With that in mind, his answer makes complete sense. Good luck explaining coupled PDEs to people who aren’t mathy in a few sentences without visual aid. The analogy to the gravitational force isn’t on point; there’s a lot more to be said about how magnets tie to into E&M more broadly, compared to gravity.
Though you’re absolutely right that once you get deep enough into any topic in physics that the answer to “why?” inevitably becomes “it just be like that”.
The analogy to the gravitational force isn’t on point; there’s a lot more to be said about how magnets tie to into E&M more broadly, compared to gravity.
Yeah, a proper answer would need to dive into how it relates to electricity for sure
I think OP's meme illustrates Feynman's point very well; there comes a stage where if the number of incorrect statements in your explanation outnumber the the correct ones, it's no longer a meaningful explanation.
Imagine a woman in hot pants with thighs like a Robert Crumb dream woman.
I don't know if it helps with this problem though.
NoU Imagine a cactus eating a deer.
Whenever any of this comes up I remember that physics professor's speech on first day of quantum mechanics that got viral:
“Nobody understands quantum mechanics. The people who came up with it don't understand it. I will do my best so that by the end of this course you don't understand it either, and so you can got out to the world and spread our ignorance.”
Or something to that effect.
Quantum mechanics is illogical and stuff that happens makes no sense but can be recrcreated through experimentation....as long as you don't look at it.
The end
Quantum mechanics is extremely logical - we understand the math extremely well, and the math describes reality better than any other theory.
It is, however, not intuitive.
I was just being cheeky
It's perfectly logical, what happens makes sense, we just don't know key facts about what is actually happening.
How can you know that
Because it's part of reality, a foundational part of it even, it's logical basically by definition. If it wasn't, it would just mean our concept of logic is flawed.
Beyond that, we have perfectly logical and sensible descriptions for what is happening in quantum physics, the problem is just that we have more than one and don't know which is right.
What definition of "logical" are you using here?
Coherent and coming from sound reasoning
I'm so good at not understanding stuff. My time has come.
Imagine a mathematical concept that approximates a particle across a spherical plane. Now imagine a force emitted from this sphere in a field. Okay, we're ready to talk about why this is wrong, too.
Is more like a feeling
electrons be vibin
Sounds like a class with an attribute called spin.
The universe is a digital simulation confirmed
The memory required to track all these particles was insane, so we just made a wave of where they were most likely to be and picked a random spot when the exact location was needed. 🤷
It does however also have repercussions that are inline with it being a sphere that is spinning.
Right-hand rule bitches!
There was great episode on PBS space time about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWlk1gLkF2Y
In short it doesn't rotate, it just has magnetic field that behaves as if the source was spinning charge
