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This is the hardest concept to understand in physics (sub.wetshaving.social)
submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 73 points 3 weeks ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago

There's no analogy for any of this that doesn't have some flaw.

[-] [email protected] 34 points 3 weeks ago

All analogies have flaws. If they didn't, they wouldn't be an analogy, they would be describing the very thing itself.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago

One of my favourite things is the one-paragraph short story "On Exactitude in Science":

On Exactitude in Science Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley.

" …In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography."

Source: https://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/08/bblonder/phys120/docs/borges.pdf

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Imagine trying to maintain a map of any size complexity physically! Yet another underrated way digitize technology has been a paradigm change

[-] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago

Something something map territory

[-] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

That's like your opinion, nerd

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

...spin ties the room together, man...

[-] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago

You lost me at 'spherical plane'

[-] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

A hollow sphere.

You could picture this as a spherical cow of uniform density if you prefer.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

A circle?

[-] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

A big, red bouncy ball.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Cow.

Definitely a cow.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

No, cows are spherical.

this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2025
721 points (99.2% liked)

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