Anything that just completely shook you ....that was so surprising or weird??
2007-09-08 15:33:44 · 7 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Physics
We know that light bends when it enters a different medium with a different speed (refraction). For example, it goes slower through glass than through air.
What astonished me was proving, by mathematics, that the path that the refracted light ray takes is the path that will take the least overall time from source to destination, as if the beam of light knew what it should do.
Maybe this doesn't compare with the big bang or the generation of elements in a star, but I was really impressed.
2007-09-08 15:48:52 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Uncertainty principle: that the universe is not deterministic. This combined with the unprovability theorem of Gödel indicates that there will always be something to learn. This also relates to the mystic concept of tzimtzum, צ×צ××, an attempt to answer the question of how a universe could be created that allows for free will.
2007-09-08 23:15:38 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
The fact that that against such high odds so many people turn out to be in the range of normal (I realize that 'normal' is not too well defined). A chemistry professor started to talk about all the things that have to go right, and this list is endless, he could only start to mention the complexities and the likelihood of so many more things that should go wrong in the process of reproducing, say, a white lab rat. In controlled breeding labs huge numbers of rats are born not quite right... worthless.
Still, significant numbers of people are if not perfect perfectly valid. This is amazing to me.
2007-09-08 22:54:17 · answer #3 · answered by dougger 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
All the elements besides hydrogen in the universe - which is most of your body - didn't form as a result of the big bang directly, but in the cores of early, massive stars. When they 'died' in supernova explosions, they spread these elements throughout the universe. You're made out of stars!
2007-09-08 22:41:37 · answer #4 · answered by eri 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Many thing surprise me like the way the human mind make his way trough the problem it sees. To mention one specific thing it surprise me was that James Clerk Maxwell predict the existence of electromagnetics waves bye pure theoretical physics.
2007-09-08 23:08:18 · answer #5 · answered by chess_e4_pr 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Matter is described by a wave function.
2007-09-08 23:16:45 · answer #6 · answered by Dr. R 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
That the faculty were no smarter than the students!
2007-09-08 23:45:56 · answer #7 · answered by jackstrobe 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋