Just Some Whacky Thinking...

[Guest end3]

Wanted to write this down before it escaped my brain.  Probably would be better that it did. 

 

So, if I approach infinintely small, the rate of change gets faster, i.e. time gets faster?

 

Just contemplating rate of change velocity of change with respect to particle size.

 

Sorry, I told you it was weird.....carry on.

[RogueScholar]

 

Not exactly if I understand your question. We actually use the concept of approaching an infinitely small distance to calculate the rate of change, or velocity depending on the context of the problem. Without getting into the gory details, do you remember college algebra of high school pre-calculus algebra? When you had to work with equations that could be graphed, you likely dealt with equations that when graphed, would produce a straight line. Finding the rate of change of that line or the slope was easily found using the rise divided by run concept, then formally developed using the concept of the slope intercept formula.

 

However, let's say you have some function that when graphed, was not a straight line. Take even a simple function such as y = (X) squared. If you graph it, its slope varies, as it is not a straight line but rather a parabola. In order to find the slope, we have to learn something known as differential calculus where we take the derivative of the function. The derivative allows us to determine the slope of the curve at any given point. In order to formally do this, we use the concept of a limit, more specifically as the limit approaches an infinitesimally small change, what happens? You are able to use this idea to calculate change.

 

A fundamental application of this idea in physics is looking at moving objects. If you take the derivative of position with respect to time you arrive at velocity.  Take the derivative again and you are able to arrive at acceleration. Aside from velocity and acceleration, the concept of a differential equation has broad applications throughout all of science and even economics. An area where I have had to use these types of equations is in predicting the rates of diffusion of medications across membranes in certain areas of the body.

Anyway, I did not really do any formal explanation of concepts, but hopefully you can see how the concept you asked about is actually used every day and has a wide variety of applications.

 

Hope that helped.

[Fweethawt]

Both of you just fucked me up...

[RankStranger]

[RogueScholar]

My bad if anybody is confused, that certainly was not the intent, but rather I wanted to let the OP know that his/her thought is actually a very important part of understanding how certain forms of math work.

[florduh]

Whacky thinking? You've come to the right place.

 

STEVE MARTIN
"Let's Get Small"

 

 

Send "Let's Get Small" Ringtone to your Cell

I'm on drugs. I'm, uh, I mean, you know what it is. What's the deal, man? I like to get small. It's a wild, wild drug. Very dangerous for kids though, because they get really small. I know I shouldn't get small when I'm drivin', but, uh, I was drivin' around the other day, you know [whistles tunefully] and a cop pulls me over. And he goes, 'Hey, are you small?' I said, 'No, I'm tall, I'm tall.' He said, 'Well, I'm gonna have to measure you.' They've got a little test they give you; it's a balloon, and if you can get inside of it, they know... you're small. And they can't put you in a regular cell either, because you walk right out.

 

[RankStranger]

Seriously End - it's hard to know what you're getting at as it isn't stated very clearly. I mean as stated - no, it doesn't work that way. But I'm not too sure that what you're thinking is the same thing as what you posted.

[Guest end3]

There is nothing wrong with creative thinking.  My point was about perspective....and I still am not clear on what I am contemplating.

 

It was during the pre-sleep vortex where this occurred. 

 

Just saying that as my perspective becomes larger, the dynamic of change gets less.  The desk I am sitting at, if I were an elementary particle in that desk, my perspective would be a "madhouse" compared to me seeing the "same desk" that I sit at each day.....something that doesn't change much.

 

Just thinking about this with respect to time......"one day is like a thousand years".

 

Thanks for the help RS.

[gall]

There is nothing wrong with creative thinking.  My point was about perspective....and I still am not clear on what I am contemplating.

 

It was during the pre-sleep vortex where this occurred. 

 

Just saying that as my perspective becomes larger, the dynamic of change gets less.  The desk I am sitting at, if I were an elementary particle in that desk, my perspective would be a "madhouse" compared to me seeing the "same desk" that I sit at each day.....something that doesn't change much.

 

Just thinking about this with respect to time......"one day is like a thousand years".

 

Thanks for the help RS.

 

Perspective at least personal perspective from our mind and eyes on our world is hard to quantify in this way.

 

Also as an elementary particle in that space you would see order not chaos or the very system you were a part of would not exist. Each molecule of that desk is in order as it should be or it would not have cohesion under normal settings.

 

you cannot really compare you an entity made up of trillions of atoms to a single atom. There may be similar attributes but it is the whole that defines you not just one molecule of water or air.

 

Time is relative so the whole 1000:1 1:1000 thing you state is nothing more than an figurative way of referencing relative perspective. Not that any of that is true about that religion. Why would omnicient being even care about time on this scale when compared to eternity. Even thinking in 1000's of year perspective would have almost no meaning when compared to say 2 trillion years.

 

I am curious if you could clarify exactly what you are thinking about here I am not certain what you are stating really I guess.

[Guest end3]

The question is, do we hold time constant or do we hold perspective constant.

 

I guess we hold it relative to light, no?

[mymistake]

The question is, do we hold time constant or do we hold perspective constant.

 

I guess we hold it relative to light, no?

 

Time is relative to speed and mass.

[ExCBooster]

... Actually, I wouldn't worry about it too much, End3.... reality is way, way weirder than anything we could imagine. Especially when it concerns scales of size and time and energy far outside our frame of reference. Tiny things and space and time and probability.

[RankStranger]

The question is, do we hold time constant or do we hold perspective constant.

 

I guess we hold it relative to light, no?

It depends on what model of physics you want to use. If you stick with Newtonian physics - which is adequate for lots of practical applications - then yes time is considered a constant. One of the revolutionary ideas in Einstein's relativity is that he did NOT treat time as a constant... particularly where very large scales of mass and space are involved. I'm less familiar with quantum mechanics- it's never made much sense to me intuitively - but as ex booster hinted at- I dont THINK time is necessarily treated as a constant on very small scales either. I'm not sure how that looks in quantum mechanics - maybe somebody could dumb that down for me?

[RogueScholar]

 

Special relativity actually has profound implications in the context of quantum mechanics. For example, in elements with larger atomic numbers where electrons are modeled to inhabit what are known as 6s orbitals, the speeds at which these electrons move are in the range where relativistic effects have profound consequences such as orbital contraction and increased relativistic mass of the electrons. This mechanism has been though to be the reason that some elements have interesting behaviour, such as Mercury being a liquid at room temperature. This has been further solidified in a recent paper where relativistic corrections were modeled in Mercury atoms using what are known as Monte Carlo simulations.

 

We also see special relativity play a role in the time it takes certain particles to decay in cetain reference frames. A particle may decay into another set of praticles in a known amount of time, but if said particle is moving at relativistic speeds, it may actually experience a slower decay pathway.

[Voice]

Wanted to write this down before it escaped my brain.  Probably would be better that it did. 

 

So, if I approach infinintely small, the rate of change gets faster, i.e. time gets faster?

 

Just contemplating rate of change velocity of change with respect to particle size.

 

Sorry, I told you it was weird.....carry on.

 

Count me in on whacky thinking.  I think about this one all the time and have hypotheses.

My studies in this are casual at best, but long term, and I have some evidence to present to support your notion.  It's comparative evidence, based on relative rates of metabolism and how they affect our internal clocks and perceptions of the rate at which the present moment passes.  Relative, it's relative.

Think of it in terms of high and low frequencies.  Higher frequencies would be those we see in slo-mo images of humming birds and insects flying.  Low frequencies would be those of the seasons and motions of stars.  

Our internal clocks fluctuate and change over the course of a lifetime.  Hypothesis: metabolism affects/determines frequencies at which internal clocks perceive passing of time.  As kids with a higher metabolism, we perceived more content in our surroundings in less time.  The older we get (I'm finding this phenomenon to be expressed universally with elderly people) the less detail we perceive in the moment.  The passing of time seems to accelerate, and we're amazed at how fast.  I did some calcs on that and based on several accounts including my own, the curve is geometric, accelerating exponentially into the 80's and 90's.

When we perceive more in a moment due to metabolism, we perceive time passing more slowly.

 

You can do a home study on this yourself by taking note how much more detail you can get out of a moment when your metabolism is higher (and normal and slower), and whether time seemed to go faster or slower.  How fast do you respond to things in either state, how many things can you respond to compared to a "normal" state?  Did clarity of perception change or stay the same?  Did you feel "in the moment" in all states?

 

I still haven't read anyone's responses to this post, it looks fun...

 

There are other things that affect internal clocks, this was just supposed to be about the large-small/fast-slow phenomenon.

[Voice]

The question is, do we hold time constant or do we hold perspective constant.

 

I guess we hold it relative to light, no?

 

We do.

 

So the question gets sticky when there's disagreement about whether a humming bird thinks its life lasts as long as we think ours does.  Or a dog, or a bug.

[gall]

 

The question is, do we hold time constant or do we hold perspective constant.

 

I guess we hold it relative to light, no?

 

We do.

 

So the question gets sticky when there's disagreement about whether a humming bird thinks its life lasts as long as we think ours does.  Or a dog, or a bug.

 

 

If they ever consider it at all. Are they even aware they are alive? Do we know what humming birds think? Or dogs or bugs? Now humans I can understand having different relative perspectives just as we do between childhood and adulthood.

 

It seems like a long six hours in the sand box when you are 7 years old. the days seemed to go on forever as a child. I know now that the hours of daylight in each day has been from human perspective the same during my entire life, with slight changes as everything in the universe is moving so to speak. As an adult my perseption of the total number of hours of daylight changed as I aged not the actual light hours.

 

Time is a tricky thing and there are places in our world and in our universe where 2+2 never equals 4.

 

I love the fact we still live in a time that has mystery and allows for us to discuss and debate these things.

 

Don't forget about the bill and ted theory of time travel either

[Voice]

The best we can do to perceive what a humming bird thinks is to employ our insular cortex.  That's what it's for.  How much more useful to employ it with humans, interconnected by it. 

 

Aspects of this argument appear to me to bypass the anterior insular cortex.  

[Guest end3]

Sorry for the post and run this morning.  My college daughter called from the hospital this morning with a kidney stone.  The good news is after a 9 hour round trip today, she has food, medicine, housing, and transportation in tact all hand delivered with love.  The bad news is the small stone is only half way to the bladder to date.....and she has a uti with it as well.  We will hope her meds make it less painful at this point. 

 

Thanks for the responses....I will return to the abstract hopefully tomorrow.

[RogueScholar]

Thoughts are with you and your daughter. I've recently had to deal with urological issues and they can be frightening, frustrating and painful.

[RaLeah]

Oh, oh, yes--I'm in!

 

(And before I start, I hope your daughter is feeling better and everything works out. Kidney stones are very painful--people compare it to childbirth, so it's pretty tough--but it's not life-threatening, and once it passes, she'll be okay... probably pretty exhausted, but back to full health completely. I know it's hard to stand by while a loved one suffers though, and my thoughts are with you and your daughter.) 

 

Time is relative. When your heart speeds up, you experience time more slowly, but it's still passing at the same rate. (Have you ever been in a car crash, and it feels like you can remember each moment with special clarity? That's your own heart beating quicker and your adrenaline making your perception of time slower.)

 

But acceleration doesn't mean time is speeding up or slowing down. (You've seen the illustration about a car's headlights, assuming a car that could travel the speed of sound or light--that wouldn't "push" the light from the headlights out to a normal length if you were traveling a normal car speed. Light travels only so fast, and the light source isn't "projecting" the light out like a solid object ahead of it.)

 

But I love time and space relativity: I love knowing when we look up at the stars, we're seeing what they looked like a long time ago, far, far away. We might still be seeing stars that don't exist anymore, because their current light projection hasn't traveled to us yet. We might be looking at some long-dead stars, that have long since gone super-nova, and we won't know that until that moment reaches us. It already happened, but we haven't seen it yet. 

 

That's pretty awesome. 

 

So we're looking back in time when we see the stars. We don't see them as they are right this moment. We see them as they were when they projected that light. And light travels 186k miles per second, and yet our closest stars are light YEARS away from us. That's remarkable. Think of all those other suns out there. Other planets we've discovered (as they were back when they projected anything we can see right now. They might not even exist anymore!) 

 

So... yeah. Time is relative. 

[gall]

Oh, oh, yes--I'm in!

 

(And before I start, I hope your daughter is feeling better and everything works out. Kidney stones are very painful--people compare it to childbirth, so it's pretty tough--but it's not life-threatening, and once it passes, she'll be okay... probably pretty exhausted, but back to full health completely. I know it's hard to stand by while a loved one suffers though, and my thoughts are with you and your daughter.) 

 

Time is relative. When your heart speeds up, you experience time more slowly, but it's still passing at the same rate. (Have you ever been in a car crash, and it feels like you can remember each moment with special clarity? That's your own heart beating quicker and your adrenaline making your perception of time slower.)

 

But acceleration doesn't mean time is speeding up or slowing down. (You've seen the illustration about a car's headlights, assuming a car that could travel the speed of sound or light--that wouldn't "push" the light from the headlights out to a normal length if you were traveling a normal car speed. Light travels only so fast, and the light source isn't "projecting" the light out like a solid object ahead of it.)

 

But I love time and space relativity: I love knowing when we look up at the stars, we're seeing what they looked like a long time ago, far, far away. We might still be seeing stars that don't exist anymore, because their current light projection hasn't traveled to us yet. We might be looking at some long-dead stars, that have long since gone super-nova, and we won't know that until that moment reaches us. It already happened, but we haven't seen it yet. 

 

That's pretty awesome. 

 

So we're looking back in time when we see the stars. We don't see them as they are right this moment. We see them as they were when they projected that light. And light travels 186k miles per second, and yet our closest stars are light YEARS away from us. That's remarkable. Think of all those other suns out there. Other planets we've discovered (as they were back when they projected anything we can see right now. They might not even exist anymore!) 

 

So... yeah. Time is relative. 

 

Planets don't project light.

 

When we see planets we usually use a technique of viewing the transversals of those planets across the face of their own star. Up until it recently became damaged kepler space telescope did this very thing looking for planets in the habitable zones of the star they orbit.

 

Basically it is like watching the shadow that the planet makes on it's sun as it crosses between our view of it and the light. Quite and interesting process and there are other sub processes that go with it to determine things like distance and size of the planet and where exactly it sits in its solar system.

 

Go check out the website and see all the stars it looked at. And it was only looking at a tiny tiny slice of our night time sky from earth.

 

SO MUCH SPACE so many possibilties still not gods

 

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/main/index.html#.Ujr-uD_NmDI

 

And as long as we are on strange ideas here is one I like from the old days and some prof and his students.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder

 

also see

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver

 

Mass driver sort of goes with the O'neill cylinder in an indirect way.

 

I love imagination

[Guest end3]

So one question comes to mind without doing any looking......at what rate do electrons travel and from what RS is saying, they are moving at such a rate that the predictions can get foobarred at some point? 

 

Had a chemistry professor that said any analytical error could be corrected with a thump of cigarette ashes....

 

Another question, how can we decide what effects are acting on our experiments.  I mean how do you rule out "relativistic effects" due to environment.

 

Ok, these are my Jack Hamby's deep thoughts for this evening.   Let's pray they even have merit. 

[RogueScholar]

Electrons can move at different velocities depending on the situation and circumstance. The movement of an electron is often better seen as a standing wave confined to a certain energy level when looking at how electrons occupy what we we call atomic orbitals in atoms. We know relativistic effects are occurring because we can apply relativistic quantum mechanics and test the predictions that are made. The predicted consequences are then either observed or not. With that said, these consequences are frequently observed and can account for rather interesting observations.

[Voice]

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