- #1
Skoth
- 7
- 0
I am a curious (or perhaps bored!) fellow, and as such I noticed something peculiar recently. I was sitting in a car in a garage. The car was stationary and off, and it was facing the east. The sun was beginning to set in the west and a light shone through the back window shield. In the rays of light, I could see particles of dust slowly moving around. The thing that struck me is that, although they also had a degree of random (Brownian?) motion to them, they all appeared to be moving to the west, in the direction of the sun. The impression I'm under is that these particles should all be moving randomly, period, and should have no general direction.
I've only taken two awesome semesters of calculus-based physics. In spite of my knowledge could not come up with an explanation for what I saw. I spoke with a friend about it and she suggested that the Earth's magnetic field may have had something to do with it. And while I like to keep an open mind, I feel that that cannot be the case since I live in California, and the magnetic field would cause these particles to move either north or south (and if these particles were moving according to that notion, wouldn't that make them monopoles!?).
Is there a physical phenomena to explain my observation?
I've only taken two awesome semesters of calculus-based physics. In spite of my knowledge could not come up with an explanation for what I saw. I spoke with a friend about it and she suggested that the Earth's magnetic field may have had something to do with it. And while I like to keep an open mind, I feel that that cannot be the case since I live in California, and the magnetic field would cause these particles to move either north or south (and if these particles were moving according to that notion, wouldn't that make them monopoles!?).
Is there a physical phenomena to explain my observation?