20 ms·
How come when the negative-mass ball encounters the force of the red ball pushing against it, it moves towards the red ball, but when the negative-mass ball enc
by dorkwood 3y ago
How come when the negative-mass ball encounters the force of the red ball pushing against it, it moves towards the red ball, but when the negative-mass ball encounters the force of a wall pushing against it, it moves away from the wall? Shouldn’t it also move towards the wall, like it did with the ball?
- sandworm101 3y agoIf we are talking about negative mass, it may be that mass and inertia become more clearly different things. Something with "negative" mass might be "pushed" by gravity but still retain normal inertia when touching other types of matter. So the two balls would still bounce off each other as normal, but the gravity interaction between the two would become weird and result in a net gravitational force moving both in one direction.
- AbrahamParangi 3y agoBecause this simulation is nonsense. I don’t mean that pejoratively, just that you can’t get consistent answers from an inconsistent or in this case, under-defined, premise.
- functoid 3y agoMost of this can be understood with two observations: negative mass has negative kinetic energy and its momentum points opposite the direction of velocity. So if a system composed of negative mass ‘loses’ energy or momentum to the environment it actually gains (negative or absolute) momentum. It’s all very unintuitive of course because it is technically nonsense.
- amelius 3y agoPerhaps because the wall is made from negative mass (?)