Re: A single question to end all questions

Posted by Alessandro on June 29, 2003 at 02:20:56:

In Reply to: Re: A single question to end all questions posted by njalbertini on May 13, 2003 at 10:37:06:

I'm a beginner here, and I dont' want to step on people's toes :) first post for me ...

I believe that using apples for the analogy of 1 and -1 might be misleading. More precisely that you are right, there cannot be any negative apples. But there exists other forms of tangable substance that CAN have a value of -1. What I mean is that in mathematics we are used to giving a negative value to a 'negative' substance which may be well imaginary, but in physics, we tend to give the negative value to something that holds the exact but opposite properties of a positive substance.

Like the peaks and lows of a wave. Take two identical waves which both exist and are real, and overlapp one's crest with the other's valley, and the resultant will be 0. This does not necessarily mean that neither wave never existed, but I do agree that the symbolism '-1' is confusing at times. It is far simpler to imagine the valley as a -1 value and the peak as a +1 value so that mathematically they give 0 (that is their sum), but it is hard to imagine that the valley has a -1 energy per se in the literal meaning.

In other words, the symbolism used today applied to the physically real substance was only used to solve problems, but I don't believe they were meant to indicate an actual existance of a 'negative' apple :)

Alessandro.

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