Negative thinking...

[Megabrain]

I am amused to consider that I find nothing in nature that exists as a negative quantity, for example, a tree cannot have a minus quantity of leaves, if it started with 3000 leaves and now has 2000 it does not have -1000 leaves it has 2000 leaves. leaving aside 'debt' which is a man made concept/quantity, where if anywhere does negative exist in nature, such things as 'negative voltage' is merely a reversal of polarity or direction.

 

Travelling at -3mph is actually travelling at 3 miles per hour in a different direction, negative is an opposite direction and not an opposite to positive in any true sense.

 

In the sum 5-3=2 there is no negative quantity, there is a total of 5 units, and the equation states that if 3 are removed two will remain, thus the - sign is only an indication of direction and not physical existence, the challenge is to find a true negative quantity in nature.

 

Anti-matter not accepted, it is not a negative quantity.

[insane_alien]

you get negative charges. nough said.

[Megabrain]

you get negative charges. nough said.

 

How is that a negative quantity? an electron is an electron is an electron , it is NOT a 'negative proton' is it?

[insane_alien]

no it is not a negative proton, but the value for its charge is -1 fundemental charge(can't remember what it is in coloumbs -1.6x10^-19) or something and you can't say its just charge going in the opposite direction.

Edited April 20, 2009 by insane_alien
typing like a monkey on cafeinne

[Megabrain]

stuff the charge we don't say that carbon has -6 electrons, it has 6electrons and 6 protons both are positive quantities, even their charges do not 'cancel out' however the 'net charge' is zero.

 

Suppose I take 6 electrons from a carbon atom, it now has 0 electrons, i cannot take any more away, thus a negative quantity of electrons does not exist. in nature you CANNOT have less than zero, mathematics is supposed to describe nature mathematics has a negative, nature does not, mathematics is flawed, and therefore ALL mathematics must be suspect.

[insane_alien]

i am NOT talking about the NUMBER of the electrons i AM talking about the CHARGE of the electrons.

 

as the charge is the exact opposite of a protons and if you put them together the charges cancel, one of the charges must be negative. it just so happens this is the electrons charge that is negative.

[Megabrain]

Now, go back and read my original post,

 

I find nothing in nature that exists as a negative quantity

 

If you want to talk about the charge rather than the quantity, start your own thread, this one is about whether or not negative quantities exist and not negative charges.

[insane_alien]

egh... three days straight of mass and energy balances makes insane_alien go crazy.

[Royston]

stuff the charge.

 

Why would that be then, because it's a perfectly good example ? The use of negatives in physics, in the most part, is for describing relative quantities, i.e if we picked an origin to start modelling the motion of a particle, and it passed back through the origin in the opposite direction it came (assuming it was a straight line for simplicity), that will be a negative quantity.

 

Negative and positive charge is just convention, relative to the proton, an electron does have negative charge.

 

However, I did suspect why you started this thread, after reading some of your other posts...

 

mathematics is supposed to describe nature mathematics has a negative, nature does not, mathematics is flawed, and therefore ALL mathematics must be suspect.

Edited April 20, 2009 by Snail

[insane_alien]

actually wait, my point with the electrons still stands.

 

if you have a bunch of electrons you have a negative quantity of charge.

[Megabrain]

How about charge and quantity are two different things, and this thread is about quantity, Who is to say that charge is positive and negative? just because they appear 'net zero' they could equally be any two opposites, left and right (I'm sure I could put a spin on that) up and down, in and out etc..

 

- charge and - quantity are not the same. - See, none of you can sight an example of negative quantity in nature, only in maths.

[insane_alien]

you can have a quantity OF charge is what i'm saying.

[Megabrain]

actually wait, my point with the electrons still stands.

 

if you have a bunch of electrons you have a negative quantity of charge.

 

Actually, taken on their own they have a real charge an actual charge, and there is a positive quantity of electrons. the application of positive to protons and negative to electrons is purely arbitrary as is the term north and south to magnets (which could also be called + and minus).

[insane_alien]

yes it is arbitrary, but one of them must have a negative quantity of charge as they cancel each other out.

 

it doesn't really matter which one it is but we say electrons have a negative quantity of charge and thats the way it is.

 

so, is it possible to have a negative quantity of charge? yes.

[Lan(r)12]

MegaBrain, number in and of themselves are arbitrary.

 

"Numbers are abstractions, not physically real things. Often they are useful in describing physical things, but that doesn't mean that anything mathematically describable is something that physically exists. You can, for example, mathematically describe a hypothetical 500-dimensional object, but none physically exist. And you can count to an arbitrarily large number, to the point where you'll run out of physical things to be counting."

 

Somebody on SFN wrote that but now I can't remember who...I put that in one of my notebooks for future reference but I forgot to write the posters name...anyways...theres your answer. If you are going to go on about the semantics of numbers, your argument is undone the second you appeal to the abstract numbers for a concrete definition.

[BigMoosie]

A negative charge is the opposite of a polar charge in the same way that a north magnetic pole is opposite to a south magnetic pole, we assign positive and negative as a way of show direction, that is all. I don't think it can be claimed that there is truly a negative quality there.

 

Negative numbers are just as fictitous as 'imaginary numbers', they are an extrapolation of the tangible concept that is 'natural numbers' (ever wondered why they are called natural? they're the only ones found in nature). In my view any non-integeral number is a man made concept, even rationals. For instance how can you half of something? Half an apple is really 1 piece of an apple that has been broken into 2, the comparison '1/2' as a number is something humans devised, it is a comparison, not a number in the most natural sense.

 

Of course this whole debate is just philosophy, the fact that water can be divided into atoms rather than being a continuous fluid affects this debate (something which should not affect mathematics in its purest sense).

[gre]

antimatter is the closest thing to 'negative quantities' in nature...

[john5746]

- charge and - quantity are not the same. - See, none of you can sight an example of negative quantity in nature, only in maths.

 

 

Dig a hole and place the dirt beside it. Now, you have a hole, flat land and a small hill. To express quantity of dirt for these three areas, we can say +X for the hill, 0 for flat land and -X for the hole. Its all definitions anyway, numbers do not exist

[Don Blazys]

To: Megabrain,

 

In my opinion, you have made some very astute

(and courageous) observations.

 

Quoting Megabrain:

In nature you CANNOT have less than zero.

Mathematics is supposed to describe nature.

Mathematics has a negative, nature does not.

Mathematics is flawed, and therefore ALL mathematics must be suspect.

 

The great mathematician Kronicker once remarked:

"The integers (meaning positive) were created by God,

all else is the work of man."

 

The ancients simply dismissed "negative numbers" as "folly"

and viewed them as merely a superfluous

"mirror image" of positive numbers.

 

Negative numbers became accepted and adopted

only as a matter of convenience and "convention",

and as such have become "necessary".

 

However, I agree that there is something quite "unnatural" about them.

 

In my opinion, they are simply not interesting,

and I personally find them rather "ugly".

 

There is a reason why concepts such as

"prime numbers", "perfect numbers", "abundant numbers" etc.

don't include negative integers!

 

Don.

[Drphail]

Where does i go to talk about why mafematics is important in eryday life? I need helped to get done my hoemwork. Sorry my inglis is bad, i am from bolivia.

[Logica]

 

In the sum 5-3=2 there is no negative quantity, there is a total of 5 units, and the equation states that if 3 are removed two will remain, thus the - sign is only an indication of direction and not physical existence, the challenge is to find a true negative quantity in nature.

 

 

Interesting Challenge! I will think about this one.

 

In logic (-) is the symbol for NOT

So:

5 and not 3 = 2 makes sense

5 + (-3) = 2

 

 

(-) Serves to Negate something but this does not mean deriving an opposite:

 

e.g. To negate Hot we would not say COLD we would say NOT HOT (implying potential for being something else.)

 

X = HOT

-X = NOT HOT

 

The directional aspect of + and - is demonstrated on the Number line.

 

Conceptually though when you remove 1000 leaves away from a tree of 3000 leaves the 1000 leaves still exist - just that they are not on the tree anymore.