3 ms·
That phrase can be parsed in two ways
by mhluongo 9y ago
That phrase can be parsed in two ways
- hexane360 9y agoTo the downvoters: This is technically correct. #1: (charged particles traveling faster than the speed of light) in water #2: charged particles traveling faster than (the speed of light in water)
- itcrowd 9y agoTechnically, it is technically incorrect. There is no "speed of light", there is only "speed of light in [medium]".* Therefore, interpretation #1 doesn't make sense. Maybe colloquially people refer to the speed of light in vacuum as "the speed of light", but again, that is technically incorrect. *And more technically there's group and phase velocity which may or may not be equal.
- btilly 9y agoThis is BS. Go to 10 physicists and say, "Is c the speed of light?" Odds are that most will say, "Yes." And while some may suggest more exact terminology, not one will fail to understand what you meant. Furthermore at the subatomic level, light always goes at c. Even if you're in water. It has no other actual speed. Thanks to interactions between light and a medium it looks like photons go slower through the medium. But that's no different than the fact that current traveling through metal acts approximately like it is being carried by electrons of some other mass and velocity. (Or even, in some cases, like the absence of an election. This fact is critical to the operation of a transistor.) But "acts approximately like" and "is" are two different things.
- mhluongo 9y agoIt is technically correct in that there are two parsings (syntax). One of them clearly isn't true (semantics)
- 21 9y agoBut only one of them makes typical sense. Anyone trying to convey the other parsing is expected to clearly disambiguate it.
- mhluongo 9y agoAgreed, I was just trying to point out what the sentence meant while being friendly :)