It can look dumb, but I always had this question as a kid, what physical principles would prevent this?

  • rbesfe@lemmy.ca
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    6 hours ago

    The push would travel at the speed of sound in the stick, much slower than the speed of light

    • Pinklink@lemm.ee
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      5 hours ago

      No it wouldn’t. Sound is air vibration, which has to travel from one place to the next, static atoms don’t have to actually move to a place just transfer kinetic energy to the adjacenct atom, so it would be much closer to the speed of light. Although probably still (relatively (get it??)) slower.

      • 4z01235@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        Sound is air vibration

        Sound is not exclusive to air, it can be generalized to vibrations in any media. Whale song and dolphin echolocation are certainly sounds, and we’re almost always talking about them propagating in water rather than air.

        which has to travel from one place to the next

        No, that isn’t how sound works. In air this would be a description of wind, not sound.

        just transfer kinetic energy to the adjacenct atom

        This is actually a good description of how sound waves propagate.