Grant Edwards wrote: > On 2008-02-11, Steve Holden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >> Well the history of physics for at least two hundred years has >> been a migration away from the intuitive. >> > > Starting at least as far back as Newtonian mechanics. I once > read a very interesting article about some experiments that > showed that even simple newtonian physics is counter-intuitive. > Two of the experiments I remember vividly. One of them showed > that the human brain expects objects constrained to travel in a > curved path will continue to travel in a curved path when > released. The other showed that the human brain expects that > when an object is dropped it will land on a spot immediately > below the drop point -- regardless of whether or not the ojbect > was in motion horizontally when released. > > After repeated attempts at the tasks set for them in the > experiments, the subjects would learn strategies that would > work in a Newtonian world, but the initial intuitive reactions > were very non-Newtonian (regardless of how educated they were > in physics). > I'm pretty sure we can still hear educated people say that free fall speed depends on the weight of the object without realizing it's a double mistake.
Cheers, RB -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list