I recall back in physic’s class (college probably) where the prof was talking about electron levels, and how an electron could NEVER go above a certain threshold. Like a basketball player that could NEVER jump higher than 9’ 10”.
“Now then - how many times will the player have to jump to get over 9’ 10” tall?”
“He can’t!”
“Well, you would be wrong. Because sometimes we DO see electrons in those higher levels. So if they have enough energy they STILL can make it to those levels - even though they aren’t supposed to.”
Well - at least that’s how I remember the discussion. There was lots of stuff like that - which STILL doesn’t make sense to me.
Like “How fast does a train that is two miles long have to be going to be able to fit inside a one-mile-long tunnel?”
“Like How fast does a train that is two miles long have to be going to be able to fit inside a one-mile-long tunnel?”
That’s from the theory of relativity that claims the train would shrink as it approaches the velocity of light.
But the tunnel relative to the train is also moving at close to the velocity of light, so what shrinks, the train or the tunnel? And why?