Saturday, July 9, 2016

general relativity - Misused physics analogies



Have you noticed that many questions and misconceptions in physics arise due to misuse of analogies, which were invented to "explain in simple words" some physical phenomena?


For example there is a "stretching rubber band" analogy for Hubble expansion of the Universe, which make people ask about the "tension" of this rubber band or speculating about "cutting a hole" in it.


I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of such misuses. Do you have any remarkable examples of these (together with a proper treatment n of course)?




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