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To: Mind-numbed Robot
Yes, but when you introduce momentum, or movement, you can't have just one place. You need a sequence of places and therefore no ONE place. As a result, it seems to me, the concept of momentum and position simultaneously is mutually exclusive.

No, it's not. You wrote, yourself, there there is a sequence of places that the body occupies. It may do so for an infinitesimally short period of time, but, it does occupy a place.

In one dimension, a body's position can be given by:
x(t) = a·t2 + v·t + x(0), where a is acceleration, v is velocity, and x(0) is the body's initial position. That position x(t) can be evaluated for any instant of time, t.

38 posted on 05/30/2003 12:57:43 PM PDT by Chemist_Geek ("Drill, R&D, and conserve" should be our watchwords! Energy independence for America!)
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To: Chemist_Geek
Regardless of the formulas, it seems self-evident that a position in space is fixed, not moving, and that once in motion it cannot be in a fixed place while moving. No matter how infinitesimal the moment of being in a position, for that moment there is no movement, ergo, no momentum. From the article:

And physicists showed that the laws of quantum mechanics prevent us from knowing simultaneously both the position and the momentum of a subatomic particle.

Do you not agree with that? All I am saying is that that is a self-evident truth that one may be able to illustrate with mathematical formulas but that the formulas are not necessary. It is self-evident that you can't be both in motion and at rest at the same time.

39 posted on 05/30/2003 1:19:25 PM PDT by Mind-numbed Robot (Not all things that need to be done need to be done by the government.)
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