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Physics Troll


willorn

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Just about halfway down the page that moe.ron shared on his blog is a cartoon that got me thinking. If a person had a stick one light year long (or more), and this person pushed the stick, would the kinetic energy reach the end of the stick faster than light if photons were released at the exact same moment? I'm thinking that the kinetic energy in the push would be just another energy wave moving through the particles of the stick, so I believe that the light would reach the end of the stick first, even if it would be years later.

Of course I'm hoping that someone else has a thought about the matter.

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probably not possible. if you move the end of the stick, the reaction is not instant. We deal with things on such a small scale - but think about a giant building. if you push one of the support beams at the bottom, you transfer energy which acts like a wave, oscillating down the beam. The energy would probably oscillate down the stick until it finally reached the end

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so then, if you did push the stick, a compression would form and move along down the stick until it finally reached the end and the stick returned to its former length

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