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Re: When Physical Intuition Fails



Regarding John Mallinckrodt's response;

This is another of my favorites as well because the problem is not
really "to find the angle down the dome where the particle first
leaves the dome's surface in terms of the parameters of the problem",
rather it is "to to find the angle down the dome where the particle
first leaves the dome's surface," PERIOD.

Of course. But this is what one is supposed to discover in the process
of solving it, i.e. that the dependence is the trivial non-dependence.

One can show by
dimensional analysis alone that the answer can't depend on g, m, or R
as long as the object IS a particle.

This is a nice touch that can work to inform one's physical intuition
about the situation.

David Bowman

This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU or the AAPT.