Who is your favorite Physicist?

@layman,

Another problem with a "college education" these days is the fact that every dumbass and his brother is deemed to be "entitled" to one. One necessary consequence of this is that they level of "education" being offered must be such that a student with a sub-100 IQ is able to "learn" it.

Not that long ago, only a very select few attended universities, and they, for the most part, were the brightest ones. They were able to almost exclusively interact with, and compete with, other brilliant students, which greatly intensified the value of a college education. And, of course, the professors could teach to their level, not the level of the average clown off the streets.

Anymore, most colleges are little more than glorified high schools.

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@Susmariosep,

Susmariosep wrote:

For I hope to read something here that is not into endless name-dropping and technical terms dropping, but grounded on truths, facts, logic, and the best thoughts of mankind...

Heh, good luck with that, Susy. Not likely with the likes of Fresky and Max "participating" in this thread for the sole purpose of asserting, without any substantiation whatsoever, their own putative brilliance.

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@layman,

That may contain a grain of truth in the US , but is unlikely in the UK in my experience of 'traditional' universities, in which students are encouraged to challenge their teachers even at undergraduate level. I wonder whether US exams could ever take the form: 'Answer as many or as few questions as you wishin as much detail you see fit. (Maths) or 'Discuss the view that every breath we take contains some of the molecules of the last breath of Julius Caeser' (Natural Sciences - never discussed in class). There was even one lecturer who announced his predicted results before the exam and only those who disagreed need actually attend !
Now I am not saying these examples are typical, but they are certainly common enough to knock any generalized 'regugitation concept' on the head.
NB.
In the ' troll league' the one you have just made the mistake of feeding outranks even you ! I wish you luck in shaking him off !

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@Susmariosep,

When it comes to experiments, you will still find a lot of disagreement (and misunderstanding) about what the meaning and ramifications of it are.

Below is a link to a thread revolving mainly about a particular experiment that I, and some others here, participated in recently which you may (or may not) find to be of some interest:

https://able2know.org/topic/391613-1

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@layman,

...but then 'birds of a feather.......' Wink

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@fresco,

I'm not familiar with Susy, but from what I've seen, at least he seems to be sincere, even if his posting style may be a little idiosyncratic.

I guess that alone would make him a "troll" in the eyes of many.

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Speaking of experiments, and the implicit limits they entail (which are never detected by the cargo cult scientists), Einstein comes to mind.

Like Galileo, he found it necessary to place limits on the empirical evidence allowed to be accessible in order to make some of his his "thought experiments" plausible.

His illustration of the "equivalence" of gravity and acceleration comes to mind. He had his subject (who had to be prevented from empirically discerning the actual facts) placed in a windowless box and then hauled upward by a "giant' at a uniformly accelerating rate of speed. Under such circumstances the guy wouldn't be able to specify if he was actually being accelerated by motion or instead in a gravitational field.

Why windowless? The same reason Galileo had to specify a windowless cabin. No one could be uncertain about their circumstances if they could just look out the window.

But, for guys like Max, the inability to detect one's own motion in these "blindfolded" circumstances gets turned into the "absolute" inability to detect one's own motion. Of course this is something Galileo explicitly denied, but good luck trying to get Max to understand that.

Likewise, many "scientists" will erroneously tell you that acceleration cannot be discerned from gravitational effects. Turns out, that's not even true in a windowless box.

The fact that a guy with a blindfold on can't see an oak tree that is in front of him does NOT imply that you can never see an oak tree. That seems obvious, but....

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@layman,

layman wrote:

Of course this is something Galileo explicitly denied, but good luck trying to get Max to understand that.

Max's response? Essentially this:

I don't care if you can read, or if you've read Galileo's "parable of the ship" in his dialogues. You can't understand what you're reading. I can, even if I've never read it, because somebody hired me to teach high school physics, and they didn't hire you.

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@layman,

Don't put words in my mouth.

You questioned Galilean Relativity because the Earth rotates around the Sun. I responded that Galilean Relativity is based on an inertial frame of reference. The Earth orbiting the Sun is a non-inertial frame. Galileo understood this, and it wasn't a contradiction. Just because you don't understand my response, doesn't mean that it isn't correct.

And by the way that anyone learns Physics is to take the time to study Physics. We attend lectures, read papers, work through math problem sets, do labs and write reports... learning Physics takes a lot of work.

You don't just make stuff up in Physics. You have to do the work to learn it. What you have done is just settled on what make sense to you and then attacked anyone (including Einstein) who doesn't agree with your conjecture. You have made no attempt to understand the first step of Galilean Relativity... and yet you are willing to attack Einstein on Special Relativity.

It's rather funny. It's the same as someone banging on keys, with no training, and then criticizing concert pianists.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Don't put words in my mouth.

You questioned Galilean Relativity because the Earth rotates around the Sun.

Don't put words in my mouth, Max. That wasn't my question to you at all, although I did ask you if you saw your own self-contradiction after you cited Galileo's claim about objective reality, all while saying that Galileo made no such claims.

Quote:

I responded that Galilean Relativity is based on an inertial frame of reference. The Earth orbiting the Sun is a non-inertial frame. Galileo understood this, and it wasn't a contradiction. Just because you don't understand my response, doesn't mean that it isn't correct.

I understand your words, but your claim is quite mistaken. You should read some history of science before pretending to know it. Galileo NEVER spoke in terms of "frames of reference." Nor did Newton for that matter. The "frame" concept appeared later. That aside, it doesn't even address the question

Let me ask you this way: Do you believe (notwithstanding your praise of Galileo's resort to "empirical evidence" regarding heliocentricity) that Galileo DIDN'T think the earth orbited the sun, rather than vice versa? Yes or no?

Do you really think that, his explicit denial notwithstanding, he thought that a guy on a ship with billowed sails, moving at a uniform speed, couldn't tell whether it was the ship or the shore that was moving?

Yes or no. Hint: If you say "yes" then it's obvious you've never even read Galileo.

As I've told you, the philosophical positivism regarding "equally correct" frames of reference started with Einstein, NOT Galileo or Newton. They both acknowledged that you could never ascertain "absolute speed," but neither of them even said you couldn't know which of two relatively moving objects had been set in motion. On the contrary, Newton told you just how to detect motion, i.e., apply some force to an object.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

The Earth orbiting the Sun is a non-inertial frame. Galileo understood this, and it wasn't a contradiction.

If, as was believed at the time, the sun revolved around the stationary earth, then the earth would be in an inertial frame. But, again, that's not even a relevant issue. The question is this:

How would Galileo be able to know which is which? How could he possibly guess whether the earth was revolving around the sun, or the sun was revolving around the earth? Einstein later said such a determination was impossible to make. However, Galileo claimed the opposite ("yet it moves").

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@layman,

Quote:

That wasn't my question to you at all, although I did ask you if you saw your own self-contradiction after you cited Galileo's claim about objective reality, all while saying that Galileo made no such claims.

You are just making **** up now. It was funny for a little while, now I am getting bored again. Let's just agree that one of us doesn't have a clue about what he is talking about... if you want to think that is me, than so be it. Maybe you do have the amazing intelligence to see how Einstein is wrong without caring about mathematics or making any effort to get an education.

As Fresco has said, several of us have done are best to drag you to water, you still aren't drinking.

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With respect to his advocacy of the Copernican System, Galileo's whole mission was to show how the earth was in fact moving, even though we couldn't detect it with our senses. The stock arguments against the possibility of the earth's motion were along lines like these:

1. If the earth were moving, we would all feel a wind
2. If the earth were rotating, we would fly off the planet, due to centrifugal forces
3. If the earth were moving, you would move out from under a ball that you threw straight up.

The earth WAS inertial (although the concept was not invented until Galileo came along) back in his day, even for him. It was moving, if at all, at a uniform rate of speed, without any detectable "acceleration."

His "parable of the ship" from which "galilean relativity" arises, was really an attempt to outline the notion of inertia. It was not designed to show that you can never tell which of two uniformly moving objects was "in motion." Nor did he contend that it showed that. For reasons I've already repeatedly stated, his denied any such implication.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Quote:
That wasn't my question to you at all, although I did ask you if you saw your own self-contradiction after you cited Galileo's claim about objective reality, all while saying that Galileo made no such claims.

You are just making **** up now. It was funny for a little while, now I am getting bored again. Let's just agree that one of us doesn't have a clue about what he is talking about... if you want to think that is me, than so be it. Maybe you do have the amazing intelligence to see how Einstein is wrong without caring about mathematics or making any effort to get an education.

As Fresco has said, several of us have done are best to drag you to water, you still aren't drinking.

Go back and read my original question to you, fool, and see who's "making **** up."

I will never drink water from the toilet, sorry, but help yourself.

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@layman,

The fact that you don't understand it, doesn't mean that it is a "contradiction". That is not what the word "contradiction" means.

Again, I have tried to lead you to water, you aren't drinking. There is a difference between an inertial reference frame, and a non-inertial reference frame. Galileo, in his "world systems" very clearly understood the difference... and stated in his dialog that his ideas referred to an inertial reference frame.

If you don't take the time to learn what an inertial reference frame is, and why it is important in this discussion... than you are wasting your time and mine.

Learning means listening to people who have more education than you do, and working to understand what they are saying. This is the reason that College Professors always have more education than student.You have declared yourself an expert, having no real education, and are closing your mind to the right answers because you are so sure of the answers you have made up based on google.

There is something called "expertise". You don't get it by making stuff up. You get it by going to college to get an education, doing the work to learn. You haven't done this. Many of us have.

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@maxdancona,

Spare me the condescending bullshit, eh, Max? Your suggestion that I don't understand what an inertial frame is only evidences your inability to understand virtually everything that's said to you.

I have addressed inertial frames, and some of the inherent problems that SR generates with that concept, on numerous occasions, including recently in this very thread.

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@maxdancona,

An interesting question is how do you learn Physics. In Physics there are right answers, and wrong answers. For core Physics and classical Physics we all in almost perfect agreement on the right answers. We have all done problem sets on Galilean Relativity in a first year college class. There is no dispute on the right answers.

What's cool about learning Physics is that you don't just learn the right answers. You learn the math behind the right answers. Physics is taught in a step by step mathematical approach, the experiments are key (as I have said constantly), but the mathematics is based on the experiments and can predict precise results. When you study Physics you learn math, and you learn mathematical proofs (how to make predictions based on experimentally based theories).

Once you learn the process of Physics, you are then given the ability to do Physical reasoning. And, there are ways to find the right answer. A key ability of someone trained in Physics is to see when they themselves is wrong. If experimental contradicts your idea, your idea is wrong. And likewise, if your mathematical reasoning based on experimental data is wrong, your reasoning is wrong.

If you haven't studied the mathematics, you can't test your own reasoning, and when there is a disagreement, you can't see your mistakes when you are wrong. The ability to check your own mathematical reasoning is very important in Physics. But gaining this ability is take effort... you have to learn the mathematics.

When I have a disagreement about Physics with someone who has a Physics education, we always end up resolving it. This is because when you know mathematics, each person can show their reasoning and if one of them makes a mistake you can go through each step and find it (and yes, there has been at least one time on Able2Know that someone showed me a mathematical mistake in my reasoning, I saw it and I admitted I was wrong... but this only happened because we shared the mathematical understanding).

It seems impossible to show Layman that he is wrong. I can see the mathematical error in his reasoning... he isn't truly understanding the mathematical concept of a frame of reference, and he isn't even trying to understand the meaning of an "inertial frame".

The lesson here is that education is important to the mastery of Physics. Physics isn't just something you make up because it makes sense to you. Real Physics is based on centuries of discovery, and understanding of experiments, and a knowledge of mathematics.

There is nothing wrong with people who don't have this education making guesses about Physics, just like there is nothing wrong with me banging on piano keys. But if a concert pianist wants to help me play better... I am not going to start insulting his ability. The idea that someone with no education can just know Physics, just by making up what seems right to them, better than people who have taken the time to study it is a little frustrating.

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@layman,

This pseudo argument is ridiculous. One of the main reasons Galileo accepted the heliocentric view was that contrary to the biblical account of the creation of 'THE MOON', Galileo had observed that Jupiter also appeared to have 'moons' (via his invention of a form of telescope, which the then pope refused to 'look through to see for himself'). Galileo's problem was that he was disputing biblical authority and hence was seen 'legitimately' seen as a heretic. i.e. the then question of 'what moves' at that time was one in which we now see that metaphysical issues rather than purely physical ones was the key concern. In short, the word 'movement' was inextricable linked to the concept of 'prime mover' and 'His Holy Writ'.

Thus as Wittgenstein (ex engineer btw) implied, the pseudo argument going on here is largely due to the word 'move' going on holiday i.e. being used in as though in a contemporary context. Whether the power struggle going on here over the word also has a religious element presents an interesting point of irony !

Of course had you not been ignorant or scathing of 'the philosophy of language' you would avoid wasting everyones (space)time here.

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@layman,

Yes, Layman. I am condescending.

You don't know what you are talking about because you haven't taken the time to get a Physics education. There is no problem with this... except my education means that I can see how you are wrong.

That is not an insult in itself. There are a lot of things that I haven't studied and know very little about. The difference is that I don't pretend that I have expertise in any area that I have not taken the time to master..

You could be learning real Physics, however it will mean that you have to be willing to drop wrong ideas... even if they seem right to you. When I was getting my education, this was part of the process I went through. You seem unwilling to do this.

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@layman,

Thanks layman for your notice of my post, I will reproduce it below, then in an immediately following post from me also, I will reproduce a comment I contributed to a Google forum of a sort.

Quote:

@layman

From layman:
"It was only because of inertia, Galileo concluded, that when a cannonball was dropped from the mast of a moving ship, it would appear (to those on the ship) to fall "straight" down to the foot of the mast (although it would appear to follow a curved path to a stationary observer on the shore)."
____________________________

Dear Layman, as there have been experiments I am sure conducted on a say steel ball falling in a straight line from the mast top of s sailing boat, it will land at the foot of the mast, but to observers on shore the ball is falling in a curve line.

Dear readers here, I am as I see into myself, good at thinking on truths, facts, logic, and the best thoughts of mankind from since the dawn of man’s conscious intelligence, I must submit that I need help from you guys here, who are into “Who is your favorite Physicist?"

So, if I may, can you guys just talk with attention to experiments if any at all having been performed even several times already, as to substantiate your talking?

Dear readers here, let us sit back and await with bated breath to read of experiments already done by enterprising scientists, into the matters at issue with the debating posters here in this thread on: “Who is your favorite physicist?"

For I hope to read something here that is not into endless name-dropping and technical terms dropping, but grounded on truths, facts, logic, and the best thoughts of mankind from since the dawn of man’s conscious intelligence, AND also now on experiments already successfully conducted by scientists.

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