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How do you explain that they were always from north-to-south? I mean, I tried hard to trick myself even. An actual hallucination couldn't know.
by pknopf 9y ago
How do you explain that they were always from north-to-south? I mean, I tried hard to trick myself even. An actual hallucination couldn't know.
- caf 9y agoI don't think I have to explain (though the first explanation that comes to mind is that you were familiar enough with the location to have a pretty good idea of approximately which direction you were facing). The point is that magnetic field lines are a convenient diagrammatic tool, but don't have a direct correspondence to any physical reality. It's just like the way we sometimes draw electromagnetic radiation as a sine wave, but try as you might you won't ever observe little squiggly sine waves in physical reality.
- snissn 9y ago> The point is that magnetic field lines are a convenient diagrammatic tool, but don't have a direct correspondence to any physical reality. Magnetic field lines correspond as much to physical reality as anything possibly can. https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/80913 https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/80913 Also here's a trippy video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUZsojDdEbE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUZsojDdEbE
- caf 9y agoThere's a vector field, but it's continuous - you can't point to two points in space and say "a field line passes through this one, but not this one".
- snissn 9y agoYou can point to points in space and say that the scalar value of their vector field is the same or different, and say whether or not there is a continuous path of scalar value sameness between them.
- werdnapk 9y agoIron filings do a pretty good job of showing us "lines" in physical reality.
- colemannugent 9y agoThe iron filings actually concentrate the field, which leads to a bit of an avalanche effect as the concentrated field attracts more filings towards it that creates the lines. Those lines are entirely conceptual.
- mkempe 9y agoIf you see these lines in the iron filings, they are perceived, i.e. perceptual-level evidence not conceptual.
- Florin_Andrei 9y agoWell, you could repeat the experience and arrange for a double-blind trial or something. :)
- mikekchar 9y agoKnowing which way is north and south is different from being able to visually see it. It's likely that you knew which way is north and south without realising it. Even if you were very good at tricking yourself, you may have got it right just by chance. I seem to have a very good intuitive sense of direction. When I lived in Ottawa, though, I used to always get lost when I hit the river. It took me years to figure out what the problem was. The river runs roughly east west and so all the signs say "East" or "West", but it's actually in the shape of a V. Most of the time it's running NW/SE or NE/SW. Every time I hit the river, I'd consciously think that I'm going East/West when in reality I was going in a completely different direction. It really threw me off. I think people are more attuned to direction than they think. Direction of the sun, time of day, landmarks, direction of shadows, position of moss on trees, etc, etc. After years and years of seeing it, your brain get's pretty good at orienting you -- even if you don't consciously understand it. These days, I try not to reason about my orientation, but rather guess. I tend to have better results.