I was talking to someone the other day who explained to me that the laws of physics as we understand them are not necessarily ‘rules’ that things on a really tiny scale obey, and the calculations we use to talk about physics on a scale that’s relevant to humans are more like estimations of what will *most probably* happen as a result. This also means there’s no such thing as a perfect circle or a perfect sphere I think? Could someone ELI5?
In: Physics
Physics is trying to translate what we observe into a mathematical language.
The goal is to keep the math as simple as possible. To do that, we limit the scale. When you throw a baseball in the air, it comes down. Simple math. If you throw a feather in the air, it comes down and there’s air resistance. Slightly more complex math. If you launch a rocket into orbit… even more complex math.
Overall, we’re trying to keep the math as simple as possible while still getting meaningful answers for whatever system we’re observing at that time.
At present, we’re still working out “Grand Unification” that will bring all the different scales together.
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