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A thought for the day to get your brains melting.

It started as a discussion about potential energy, and worked it way to if something can actually exist in a potential state, which then evolved into does sound only exist if there is someone there to hear it and the nature of sound, which finally arrived at Schrodinger's Cat.

So, thoughts on the above please.

Oh dear, me and Wazza debated this last summer.

He's all for sound existing and I'm against it.

There is only vibrating atoms without an ear to pick those vibrations up. Sound does not exist in 3-dimensional space and time. Sound only exists in the brain.

Atoms have mass (we know mass exists), atoms move (motion), and bang into eachother (a moving atom produces energy, which is transferred to the atom that gets smashed into). The frequency and speed these atoms bang into eachother is picked up by your ear, and the ear is just a conversion tool that has evolved to help it's host navigate the 3-dimensional space and time that we live in.

It's pure semantics for some as they can argue that those vibrations -that do exist regardless of someone being there- can be called 'sound' before they reach an ear, but this is not correct.

From the Oxford English Dictionary:

sound 1 a sensation caused in the ear by the vibration of the surrounding air or other medium.

Note the word 'caused'. Without an ear there is no sound for your brain to hear. So, if a tree falls in a forest and there's no one there to hear it, it does not make a sound.

Sam Slater wrote:

>So, if a tree falls in a forest and there's
> no one there to hear it, it does not make a sound.


If you regard sound as physical pressure waves moving through the air, then yes it does make a sound. But if you regard sound as only a phenomenon when hitting an eardrum and subsequently producing a signal in the brain, then no.

Exactly, pure semantics. I'm with the latter....and so is the Oxford English Dictionary.

There is nothing semantic at all just a poorley worded question.

Lets take the movie 'Alien'. It's tagline was 'in space no one can hear you scream', which is true. Space is a vacuum and sound cannot be heard in a vacuum. Sound relies on an atmosphere, air, in fact any medium other than a vacuum. Therefore sound must exist as a wave, and as a wave sound is a series of variations in pressure which is produced by small and rapid pressure changes.

Therefore your tree would make a sound as it would produce 'sound waves'..... unless it was in a vacuum.

But what is a sound-wave?

A 'wave' is just used to describe the frequency and speed that the atoms within matter bang into eachother (the domino effect of atoms banging into eachother causes the effect of a 'wave') You're correct that in a vacuum, there is no sound. This is because that in a vacuum there are not enough atoms to make matter.

A 'wave' is just atoms banging into eachother.

Now, we call it a sound-wave, not because it is a wave of sound, but because it is a wave that will cause sound if there is an ear to pick it up.

Pre-ear = vibrations (or sound-waves if you prefer)

post-ear = sound (no waves/vibrations, but a 'signal' or 'sense' within the brain)

In physics there is no sound (only atoms banging into eachother, or waves). It's the ears that convert these vibrations into something the brain can understand. Sound is a consequence of ears picking up vibrations.

When you type on your keyboard, the keys feel solid, but they're not. Remember that 99.9% of an atom is empty space. The keys just feel solid because the atoms that make up your fingers cannot pass through the atoms that make up the plastic keys you're typing on. You're senses tell your brain that the keys are solid, when in fact, they are not.

Physics can get very weird, and our brains only hear, see and feel what's essential for our survival. We do not see, hear and feel the universe as it really is. To do so is like trying to think how a fourth dimension would be.

We cannot describe a fourth dimension because -if it exists- it doesn't affect us in such a considerable way that we needed to evolve to sense it.


"If you huff a kitten and no one notices, have you committed a crime?" Can you answer that one Monsieur?

P.s A fourth dimension can be described, but only mathematically.

I used to have a cat that behaved like Schr?dinger's cat, could never work out if it was alive or dead asleep in the sun on the back of the sofa!

It exists to you, but not your neighbour.

lol.

Always a crime to huff a kitten.