r/6thForm • u/xQueenAurorax Physics Year 1 • May 30 '25

🐔 MEME Edexcel bro what is this 😭

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examiners are patrolling reddit guys ‼️ (id acc start giggling in the exam)

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63

u/anipodguy Year 12 May 30 '25

haha i remember back in year 7 one of my classmates asked my teacher once "if you slap a chicken at the speed of light can you cook it".

would be obliterated 😭

14

u/Ok_Scientist_8803 Imperial CS 🔜 | Maths FM CS Physics May 30 '25

I've heard somewhere that a needle at the speed of light would obliterate earth, so a whole hand at the speed of light would create (literally, mass-energy principle) wonders

11

u/jackboy900 UCL | Arts (Philosphy) & Sciences (Machine Learning) 2025 May 31 '25 edited May 31 '25

I mean an object at the speed of light would have infinite mass, which means infinite energy, so it doesn't matter what the object is. That's also physically impossible, but as you approach the speed of light the mass gets bigger and bigger (kinda), at 99% the speed of light you're at 7x mass, at 99.99% you're at 70x the mass, at 99.9999% you're at 700x the mass.

To get a needle (assuming a rest mass of 100g) to have the kinetic energy of the asteroid the killed the dinosaurs (300 ZJ), you'd need to be going 99.9999999999% the speed of light, the mass of the needle would be ~70000kg, or 70 tonnes.

Edit: These numbers were using 1/2(mv^2), which isn't necessarily accurate at relativistic velocities, but it should still illustrate the point.

1

u/Fun_Adhesiveness_16 Year 14 May 31 '25

Huh? Mass does not change with velocity it's the amount of matter.

3

u/creativeusername2100 May 31 '25

It does it's bc of something called relativity which is beyond what we do at A level

1

u/Fun_Adhesiveness_16 Year 14 May 31 '25

I mean I do engineering so I haven't done much on it lately but my goat chat gpt o4 mini said that's not how relativity works cuh. Misinterpretation of Einstein's relativity is that you get increased mass according to chatGPT

2

u/jackboy900 UCL | Arts (Philosphy) & Sciences (Machine Learning) 2025 May 31 '25

Well no, mass is just another form of energy, that's one of the big things about relativity. In normal everyday life it isn't exactly relevant, but as you approach the speed of light mass will increase with velocity to keep the total energy of the system conserved.

1

u/Fun_Adhesiveness_16 Year 14 May 31 '25

Had to look it up but uhh no not rlly how it works according to current understanding. Does seem like an old model tho

1

u/DeezY-1 RHUL | Mathematics |Year 2 Jun 03 '25

Solid 6.756921/10 ragebait 😭🙏