OT: Speed of light [was Re: Why not a Python compiler?]

[Gabriel Genellina]

En Mon, 11 Feb 2008 14:05:27 -0200, Grant Edwards <grante at visi.com>  
escribi�:

> On 2008-02-11, Steve Holden <steve at holdenweb.com> wrote:
>
>> Well the history of physics for at least two hundred years has
>> been a migration away from the intuitive.
>
> Starting at least as far back as Newtonian mechanics.  I once
> read a very interesting article about some experiments that
> showed that even simple newtonian physics is counter-intuitive.

The inertia principle is counter-intuitive too, in a real world with  
friction. Things don't just "keep going" when impulse cease to exist;  
everyone knows that a running car eventually stops if the engine stops.  
That it "would" keep moving at the same speed in a straight line is an  
abstraction that people hardly can build from experience.

-- 
Gabriel Genellina