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Newtonian physics is good enough for almost everything that humans do. It's not good for predicting the shit we see in telescopes, and apparently it's not good
by mikkupikku 9mo ago
Newtonian physics is good enough for almost everything that humans do. It's not good for predicting the shit we see in telescopes, and apparently it's not good for GPS, although honestly I think without general relativity, GPS would still get made but there'd be a fudge factor that people just shrug about.
For just about anything else, Newton has us covered.
- cozzyd 9mo agoquantum mechanics (also very much not Newtonian) is much more important to our day-to-day lives.
- refulgentis 9mo agoIs it?
- nerdsniper 9mo agoFlash memory (quantum tunneling), lasers (stimulated emission), transistors (band theory), MRI machines (nuclear spin), GPS (atomic transition), LED's (band gap), digital cameras (photoelectric effect), ...the list does, in fact, go on, and on, and on.
- narcraft 9mo agoDid you intentionally list things that are clearly not essential to day-to-day life?
- refulgentis 9mo agoI'd argue flash memory and transistors certainly are.
- momoschili 9mo agothis kind of distinction is quite stupid in general as plenty of things that we rely on for day-to-day activities such as our houses, desks, chairs, beds, shoes, clothes, etc are all based on Newtonian/classical mechanics. Basically everything that we use which existed pre-transistor strictly speaking only required classical physics.
- cozzyd 9mo agoI mean sure, but the transistor is pretty important to the way I live my life now!
- momoschili 9mo agoI'd argue so is the bed you sleep in every night, and the roof over your head. Best not to take those for granted, as I don't think the transistor would last so long if it wasn't sheltered from the environment. The argument is that these kind of distinctions between how "classical" and "quantum" physics affects our lives is just a pointless endeavor that even academics don't waste their time with.
- idiotsecant 9mo agoOh sure, nothing major. Just transistors, lasers, MRI, GPS,nuke power, photovoltaics, LEDs, x-rays, and pretty much anything requiring maxwells equations. Nothing major.
- z3phyr 9mo agoMicrochips? A lot of quantum physics is applied here from the top of my mind.
- mikkupikku 9mo agoQuantum mechanics is relevant to humanity because we build things which are very small. General relativity is not, because we're more or less incapable of actually doing things on a scale where it matters.
- chuckadams 9mo agoGeneral relativity is pretty relevant to GPS satellites.