The Rhubarb Conjecture
I realize that we've recently had some nasty weather in the central Illinois area, and I completely understand that when the weather gets bad, roads get bad, and accidents happen. Snow drifts, white outs, black ice... they can all cause accidents. What I don't understand is how, when the weather gets bad in this part of the state, classical physics stops applying to drivers and their vehicles.
Take Newton's First Law of Motion. In a nutshell, it says that an object will keep moving at a constant velocity in a straight line until some other force acts upon it. In the case of a moving car, if the car should happen to hit a patch of ice of a bunch of snow while traveling a normal highway speeds on a straight stretch of highway, it should continue to move in a straight line and, if anything, slow down a bit. To better illustrate, here is a diagram of how a vehicle should react when sliding on ice:
This seems simple enough. But what happens when classical physics start to break down? What happens when quantum mechanics become relevant? What happens when black holes, space-time continuums, and nuclear interactions play into the equation? Can we even begin to explain these complex interactions in a mathematical or scientific context? At this time, we can not. What I can offer is to diagram this complex reaction as I witnessed it this morning while driving on a rural highway in central Illinois. Keep in mind, very minimal amounts of wet snow (less than 1") were involved. No known external forces were acting laterally on the vehicle:
It can be seen that the car clearly dis-obeys Newton's first law by proceeding not in a straight path, but rather in an irregular path ultimately placing the vehicle at an arbitrary location, known locally as "in the rhubarb."
I will continue to write more on the Rhubarb Conjecture as time goes on, as I feel that empirical evidence will show that the effect can be witnessed in other environments, such as the running paths of our nieghbors' dogs, or the shopping cart isles at Wal-Mart. Until then the Rhubarb Conjecture will remain just that, and not a law.
Take Newton's First Law of Motion. In a nutshell, it says that an object will keep moving at a constant velocity in a straight line until some other force acts upon it. In the case of a moving car, if the car should happen to hit a patch of ice of a bunch of snow while traveling a normal highway speeds on a straight stretch of highway, it should continue to move in a straight line and, if anything, slow down a bit. To better illustrate, here is a diagram of how a vehicle should react when sliding on ice:
This seems simple enough. But what happens when classical physics start to break down? What happens when quantum mechanics become relevant? What happens when black holes, space-time continuums, and nuclear interactions play into the equation? Can we even begin to explain these complex interactions in a mathematical or scientific context? At this time, we can not. What I can offer is to diagram this complex reaction as I witnessed it this morning while driving on a rural highway in central Illinois. Keep in mind, very minimal amounts of wet snow (less than 1") were involved. No known external forces were acting laterally on the vehicle:
It can be seen that the car clearly dis-obeys Newton's first law by proceeding not in a straight path, but rather in an irregular path ultimately placing the vehicle at an arbitrary location, known locally as "in the rhubarb."I will continue to write more on the Rhubarb Conjecture as time goes on, as I feel that empirical evidence will show that the effect can be witnessed in other environments, such as the running paths of our nieghbors' dogs, or the shopping cart isles at Wal-Mart. Until then the Rhubarb Conjecture will remain just that, and not a law.
posted by Christopher C. Weis at
9:36 PM
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