Only a Sith!
Comment on I must con(FeS₂), this sparked a laugh
mrsemi@lemmy.world 3 weeks agono science teacher would ever say that.
Careful with those absolute statements there buddy. I was told the same by a teacher, who challenged the class to come up with natural examples of either straight lines or perfect circles. He talked about how such things cannot exist because at high enough resolution/magnification there will always be interruptions.
Your own example of light traveling in straight lines doesn’t account for the fact that photons are waves and absolutely do not travel in straight lines.
nehal3m@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
PapaStevesy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It travels in a straight line, just not in every dimension. Look at a waveform from above, it’s a straight line.
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
PapaStevesy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Oh sure, bring evidence into it 🙄 lol. Um, how about sound waves?
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Sound waves are compressive waves, they radiate spherically (in principle, turbulence in the medium is going to make them slightly irregular)
some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
imgcat@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
that’s just silly
PapaStevesy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Is it inaccurate?
PapaStevesy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Apparently it is
Klear@piefed.world 3 weeks ago
In that case that Pyrite proves nothing.
Derpenheim@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
But photons are also particles.
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
they do tavel in a perfectly straight line though.
space time is curved, not the light path.
SystemDisc@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
False because they are affected by gravity, even if ever so slightly
Maldreamer@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
But isn’t the gravity bending the space, so the light itself is travelling straight but seems curved to the observer?
SystemDisc@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Hmm, I’m not actually sure. Are we also ignoring refraction and reflection because the path is straight between those? If we’re talking discrete photons, you may be correct about each segment in its path being perfectly straight, but I’m not a theoretical physicist.
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
gravity isn’t a force, it’s the curvature of space-time itself.
light follows a perfectly straight line through vacuum. the space itself isn’t straight.
like drawing a straight line on a flat paper, if you roll the paper, that line is still straight within it’s medium.
SystemDisc@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Makes sense to me. Thanks
kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
What about the fact that light bends around corners? Notably the interference pattern when shining light through a slit?
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Stop being mean to light by making it choose what slits to go through.
it has choice anxiety.
kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Ah, sorry for the confusion, I was referring to the single-slit experiment, I wasn’t giving light a choice.