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Maybe some people just aren't smart enough to understand quantum tunnelling and band gaps, and there's no real better analogy. And even if you do kind of get th
by wisty 2y ago
Maybe some people just aren't smart enough to understand quantum tunnelling and band gaps, and there's no real better analogy. And even if you do kind of get these, the bad analogies let you remember the standard behaviour so you can reason about what the micro details are.
- weinzierl 2y agoThe problem is in my opinion not the hydraulic analogy itself, but the fact that it is usually presented as a model. It has its place, but it should come with a big disclaimer at the front that it is not a model where we assume it is incomplete and which does not explain everything but an analogy that is fundamentally wrong in everything and only meant to help us understand the one particular aspect of the real thing.
- casey2 2y agoBut it IS a model. It says that the model you use for water is the same as the one for electricity. I actually like it because it has no pretense that you are actually doing/learning science. Compare that to the simplified models in high school physics where you have the government literally lying to children about how physical phenomena work (e.g. Newton's cradle) and nobody cares despite the teacher's insistence that you "need to know" this misinfo. If you want to complain about that model for water being wrong though I'm all ears. But the model for water also being the model for electricity is just obviously wrong, cause they aren't the same thing, if both were correct then there would only be a single word.
- fragmede 2y ago"all models are wrong, some are useful." -George Box