Jump to content

Why Isn't Newtonian Physics Wrong??


Akul

Recommended Posts

Well, it's being said that theories and properties being done in Quantum physics proves the hypothesis and lemmas of Astrophysics. So scientifically, micro-molecules and femto-molecules actually resemble Mega-molecules and Zeta molecules. In contrary, quantum physics disapproves the laws of Newtonian physics which are vastly applicable to Macro-molecules (i.e; from milli to kilo). What I would say is that, may be Newtonian physics is wrong and quantum physics is right; may be quantum physics holds good for molecules of all sizes; and the fact that newtonian physics is obeyed by the macro-molecules may be because of practical aberrations. Any comments??

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Everything has an area of applicability. Different models are "better" or "worse" in different contexts.

 

Say you are asked how fast you'd be running - with relation to the ground - if a train was going South at 10 km/h and you are running South along the top of the train at 10 km/h. Probably you'd say 20 km/h.

 

You'd be wrong, but at those low speeds you'd be close enough, and there's no need to bring relativity into it.

 

Newtonian physics is still plenty good in plenty of areas of applicability. Sure it's "wrong". But it's "good enough".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

...and the fact that newtonian physics is obeyed by the macro-molecules may be because of practical aberrations. Any comments??

You might be interested in Ehrenfest's theorem, which loosely says that in quantum mechanics Newton's laws on average hold. You might also be interested in Bohr's correspondence principle which says that when we have a large number of constituents quantum and classical mechanics give the same answer. (Making that more mathematically precise is hard). Also Dirac's minimal canonical quantisation procedure springs to mind here, which is loosely "replace Poisson brackets with commutators".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.