4 ms·

They're literally just plugging in negative numbers for freshman physics equations. I wouldn't think too deeply about it..

• daxfohl 3y ago
  It's wrong anyway. The friction force would be the opposite direction, but then the acceleration due to a force on the negative mass would flip direction again. So it would slow down like a positive mass.
  • gus_massa 3y ago
    Inside a crystal, electrons act weirdly like an electron that travels with a "perturbation" around it, so the mass for calculations is not the mass of an electron traveling in vacuum. It's call "effective mass" m* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_mass_(solid-state_physics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_mass_(solid-state_ph... The weird part is that it can be negative, so we already know quasi-particles with negative mass. This quasi particle with negative mass and negative charge is a fermion so it's mathematically equivalent to a quasi particle with positive mass and positive charge. We call them "holes" and people that work with semiconductors think about "holes" instead of weird particles with negative mass. Anyway, inside semiconductors they slow down and follow the conservation of energy law, they don't get faster and faster like in the simulation. The weird behavior of the simulation is not realistic.
    • daxfohl 3y ago
      Or just realize that the formula for stopping distance due to friction is independent of mass.