It can look dumb, but I always had this question as a kid, what physical principles would prevent this?
this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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Alright now eli5? Everything is jelly?
Sorta. I found this video a while back that helped me understand it. Pay attention to the clock hands part and how the movement is affected by how fast information is traveling in them. Itβs basically the same idea as the stick but a different direction.
https://youtu.be/Vitf8YaVXhc
Everything bends when you move it, usually to such a small degree that you can't perceive it. It's impossible to have a truly "rigid" material that would be required for the original post because of this. The atoms in a solid object don't all move simultaneously, otherwise swinging a bat would be causing FTL propagation itself. The movement needs to propagate through the atoms, the more rigid the object the faster this happens, but it is never instantaneous. You can picture the atoms like a lattice of pool balls connected to each other with springs. The more rigid the material, the stiffer the springs, but there will always be at least a little flex, even if you need to zoom in and slow-mo to see it.
Everything soft and slow like your brain yes.