# Water to Ice

1. Jan 2, 2013

### Naveen345

When water freezes to ice, it becomes so strong that we can move over it.
This freezing takes place of bonding between water molecules, the mass of water being the same.

1. Does it mean that we are virtually walking on forces?

2. Does it mean that forces are more important than mass because the solid structure (or even liquid or gaseous structure) of this universe is basically because of forces?

3. Are these forces energies of one or the other kind (I know energy and mass are interchangeable under special circumstance, but still force is a force and mass just mass under normal conditions)? If force is a form of energy, why don’t we call it energy? (Though for gravity we usually say gravitational force or gravitational energy, both meaning the same)
4. If we treat ice quantum mechanically, what would it deal with to a large extent? Force or mass?

2. Jan 2, 2013

### Staff: Mentor

1. what do you mean with "virtually walking on forces"?
Keep in mind that you walk on solid surfaces all the time, you don't need ice.

2. How do you define importance of force and mass? Is a day more important than 1km?

3. Force is not energy, those are two different concepts. Force multiplied with displacement is energy.
No.

4. Mass and energy would be more interesting than forces in the calculations.

3. Jan 2, 2013

### Staff: Mentor

I have a feeling you may learn a lot from this short video:

4. Jan 2, 2013

### CWatters

Brilliant as ever.

5. Jan 2, 2013

### DiracPool

It's basically impossible to not sit and watch the entirety of a complete thought of Feynman. I wish we could see the expression on the interviewer's face during his soliloquy here.

6. Jan 3, 2013

7. Jan 3, 2013

### Staff: Mentor

I would say yes, it is a language thing. But read further.

Laws governing electricity and magnetism are not complicated - they are simple when you use a correct language (basically math).

8. Jan 3, 2013

### chill_factor

i believe its still complicated. EM is considered a class that is a harrowing experience that will change you forever.

9. Jan 3, 2013

### DiracPool

Nature does love simplicity, it is humans that love chaos, and unfortunately you have found yourself stuck in the dark ages of our knowledge of the fundamental working of the cosmos. Now you might say, we’ve found the Higgs, the standard model’s complete, it’s all over, look at how strange our universe is. But every culture has thought they had it as good as it was going to get, and every single time they had it wrong, or if it worked, it was unnecessarily overcomplicated or insufficient.

Look at the universe of Ptolemy. It took how many centuries to finally get some working model of the cosmos. And it was basically a patch job. But it worked, mostly. To the scientists and lay people of the day, that was as good as it was going to get. That was how the universe worked, for them. Of course, Ptolemy’s model was unnecessarily complicated, as Copernicus soon pointed out.

The same state of overcomplexity exists right now, Higgs discovery or not. Until we’ve found the bridge between GR and QM, you can be sure of that.

10. Jan 3, 2013

### Staff: Mentor

It is not a matter of the rules (laws) being complicated. Solving the equations is, but there is nothing complicated about the laws themselves. Sure, we are not used to think in terms of curl or divergence, but as stated earlier that's just a matter of language (and here by the language I don't mean names, but the ideas behind).

11. Jan 4, 2013

### Naveen345

Everybody knows that multiplication is ‘continued addition’, though multiplication is more complex than addition.

1. But why is multiplication used instead of simpler concept of ‘addition’ in formulas like

F=m.a and not F=m+a

I know what is wrong with F=m+a, I just wanted to ask if nature prefers multiplication over addition in many-many formulas that are derived until now. Nature itself seems to favour the more complex concept i.e multiplication.

2. If we consider the abstract and complex maths of quantum mechanics with all its operators and all that, it seems that nature is a product of ‘something or someone’ that is more obsessed with complexity rather than simplicity.

3. To ask further: What is the ‘normal’ or ‘preferred’ state of this universe? Everybody would say increase in entropy (chaos).

So please answer these questions as I have been fed since school time that nature loves simplicity and symmetry and that the best explanation of nature turns out to be a simpler one rather than a complex one?

12. Jan 4, 2013

### Staff: Mentor

I don't think multiplication is more complex than addition. Multiplication occurs naturally if you want something to be proportional to something else.
In addition, multiplication is addition on a logarithmic scale: $a=bc$ is equivalent to $\log(a)=\log(b)+\log(c)$ (assuming a,b,c>0).

13. Jan 4, 2013

### DiracPool

Yeah, aside from the fact that we learn addition before multiplication in school, I'd say exactly the opposite is the case when you get to higher mathematics. When I see a big, long equation, the fewer plus and minus signs I see the better. Its very easy to move terms around and cancel terms when these terms are multiplied by one another, it can be alot harder if things are added and subtracted. One math scholar said to look at expressions as a circuit, as long as everything is multiplied by each other, you can move terms around easily. Once you get a plus or a minus sign, the circuit is broken and things get a little trickier. What equation looks easier to solve and reduce for a? 5abc=20bc, or 5a+b-c=20bc?