Weird physics question

[Gargamel]

Two ways to look at it:

1) Like sound under water, the energy in the string has a speed through a medium. It is slower than light. Hence we will see the light first.

or

2) The string can be considered a solid object when stretched to its maximum, ie no more stretch is possible. So when one end is pulled, the other end immediately moves too, and is therefore 'faster' than light. But this is not truly going faster than light, as nothing is moving from end to another, it's just an object beginning to move.

[Buddahaid]

Originally Posted by Gargamel

Two ways to look at it:

1) Like sound under water, the energy in the string has a speed through a medium. It is slower than light. Hence we will see the light first.

or

2) The string can be considered a solid object when stretched to its maximum, ie no more stretch is possible. So when one end is pulled, the other end immediately moves too, and is therefore 'faster' than light. But this is not truly going faster than light, as nothing is moving from end to another, it's just an object beginning to move.

Ah, but the cause and effect is then instantanious and faster than light. FTL communication via the cans and string?

[Gargamel]

Originally Posted by Buddahaid

Ah, but the cause and effect is then instantanious and faster than light. FTL communication via the cans and string?

No, because then you are in situation 1, where energy is traveling along the string in a wave.

What is 'possible', though, is to build a 'stick' of great length, but it's internal components must be completely static, and then you could kind of swing it back and forth and do a morse code over great distances. But there are two problems with this:

1) For this to be faster and more practical than light speed transmissions, ie radio waves and the like, the 'stick' would have to be of immense length. Off the top of my head, the minimum would have to be something like the distance from Jupiter to the sun, or Earth if you like, around 5-6 AU (500,000,000 miles or so). This alone makes it impractical to build and maintain, let alone finding the energy to move such a mass, and then stop it after only a few inches of movement.

2) Even the electron bonds of the component molecules are not static, and have some give to them. Thus you would get some accordion type effect within it's structure. Thus, it would not be a solid object, but a string transmitting waves.

This type of transmission could only be of the morse code type, 1's and 0's, complex data streams would be practically impossible.

Nothing is technically moving faster that light, aside from the information contained in a forward/back position.

[Buddahaid]

1 and 0 makes for binary language. It's then a question of frequency for the very long string.

[Gargamel]

Originally Posted by Buddahaid

1 and 0 makes for binary language. It's then a question of frequency for the very long string.

Yup. The object isn't moving very far or very fast, it's just moving it's other end a little bit, but very very far away.

But the practical aspect is, the higher the frequency, the more energy is needed to reverse the object for the next datum to be sent. But then your starting to break other laws of physics by trying to find enough energy to do that. Ie, can't find enough energy.

But, if you could make this object almost massless, then you could have a high enough frequency to transmit a good bit of data.

[Buddahaid]

A pure energy string of limitless length vibrating at less than the speed of light. I'll hold my breath.

[Castout]

There's no weird questions only weird answers