not quite sure where to post this so i will try here and im sure it will get moved if necessary.

as i understand it (i have no science education) atoms are constantly moving.
i understand that everything is made of atoms
therefore a table, although looking solid, is, at the atomic level, moving around with some boundary

i thought that our brain would compensate for this movement by 'making' it appear a solid, but then a photograph of a table would look blurry if that was the case.

so how can a table thats made of randomly moving atoms look completely still?
is it because the boundary of movement is so small thats it cant register in our eyes or a normal camera?

are things 'actually' moving at all or is my assuption wrong from the beginning?

thanks for ur help

You aren't actually seeing the atoms of the object, you're seeing an image produced by your brain from photons which have bounced of the object and hit your retina.

so what im seeing is photons of light bouncing off moving atoms and hitting my eyes and then being interpreted as a solid object despite it not being so?

blindfaith wrote:so what im seeing is photons of light bouncing off moving atoms and hitting my eyes and then being interpreted as a solid object despite it not being so?

Its a bit more complicated than that but basically yes. In effect what you see around you is a model constructed by your brain but it doesn't always get it right which is why people often see things that aren't really there. For example our mind recognises faces on the basis of where certain key feature of a face are which is why people see faces in random places.

so the whole world is an illusion?

blindfaith wrote:so the whole world is an illusion?

What we see is based on something that is real but we should be hesistant in applying a literal interpretation to what we see. There was an article in American Scientists on this as observations of the sun have been mislead by how our brain interprets what we see and its only thanks to visual technology that we've been able to realise that we were misleading ourselves.

The scientific method is a means of ensuring that we don't deceive ourselves.

misleading ourselves in what way?

blindfaith wrote:misleading ourselves in what way?

In the article it related to how we perceive the suns corona. Basically are brains didn't evolve to understand something like the suns corona and so its unable to produce a real representation of what it looks like. Remember we evolved to be hunter/gathers and to deal with relatively small scale stuff. Fortunately science and technology have allowed us to overcome the limitations of our sight.

Optical illusions demonstrate issues with our sight

Basically are brains didn't evolve to understand something like the suns corona and so its unable to produce a real representation of what it looks like. Remember we evolved to be hunter/gathers and to deal with relatively small scale stuff.

so if someone had an accident, for example, maybe head trauma, and lost the ability 'to interpret' the world around them and just saw the world as it is without any filtering/interpretation, despite them seeing in the same light bandwidth that a non damaged human would see, what would they see?
would it be pretty much the same except everything would be slightly blurry?
or something completely beyong our comprehension?

Electrons are constantly moving, not atoms. Think stationary whirlwind. Or get a disk (plate) and spin it on its plane in a 360 really fast. That was too hard to understand. Tape a string across a buttons diameter then spin the string very fast. That is vaguely a representation of what you are seeing.

Electrons move so fast that they are spoken of having a probability of being in a given point around an atom. Gets more complex when you bring in bonds and shared electrons.

Whilst the disk is not moving, its edges are. I f it is spun fast enough this give the impression that it is a sphere.

And from what you said, I am wondering if you are mixing up atoms and molecules. Molecules in a fluid are always moving.

No, the speed of light is too fast for that to occur. You need eyes that take pictures faster than light is being reflected to see the 'blurry-ness'. Each picture is a reflection of a particular point in time, so even if one lost the ability to interpret, the eye would still only see a picture formed by the light hitting the eye at that point in time.

sennekuyl said

No, the speed of light is too fast for that to occur. You need eyes that take pictures faster than light to see the 'blurry-ness'.

so does that mean that all objects made of electrons are moving around at the speed of light, however slightly that movement is?

blindfaith wrote:

Basically are brains didn't evolve to understand something like the suns corona and so its unable to produce a real representation of what it looks like. Remember we evolved to be hunter/gathers and to deal with relatively small scale stuff.

so if someone had an accident, for example, maybe head trauma, and lost the ability 'to interpret' the world around them and just saw the world as it is without any filtering/interpretation, despite them seeing in the same light bandwidth that a non damaged human would see, what would they see?
would it be pretty much the same except everything would be slightly blurry?
or something completely beyong our comprehension?

If their brain was damaged they would either have some visual disturbance as the information isn't being interpreted properly, would see nonsense as its not been interpreted at all or would see nothing because it no longer functions. Its the equivilent of messing around with the insides of your TV (Not to be recomended) which will either distort the image or render the TV inoperable.

I can see what you're trying to get at but it doesn't work that way. Withouta means of interpreting the data you wouldn't see anything. YOu certainly wouldn't somehow gain the ability to view the world as it truely is because you haven't got the means to do that without something there to intepret the data.

Also the range of light a human can see is dependent on the pigments in our retina although I understand that damage to the brain can affect whether or not you see the world in colour or not.

Ubjon wrote
I can see what you're trying to get at but it doesn't work that way. Withouta means of interpreting the data you wouldn't see anything. YOu certainly wouldn't somehow gain the ability to view the world as it truely is because you haven't got the means to do that without something there to intepret the data.

i understand now, thank you

blindfaith wrote:

sennekuyl said

No, the speed of light is too fast for that to occur. You need eyes that take pictures faster than light to see the 'blurry-ness'.

so does that mean that all objects made of electrons are moving around at the speed of light, however slightly that movement is?

The electrons are moving at the speed of light, not the greater construct we see.

blindfaith wrote:

Ubjon wrote
I can see what you're trying to get at but it doesn't work that way. Withouta means of interpreting the data you wouldn't see anything. YOu certainly wouldn't somehow gain the ability to view the world as it truely is because you haven't got the means to do that without something there to intepret the data.

i understand now, thank you

No problem

sennekuyl wrote
The electrons are moving at the speed of light, not the greater construct we see

and the greater construct isnt moving cos the atoms arent moving, just the electrons inside the atoms, right?

Eh, the atoms can move, but yeah. Perhaps you should concentrate on what Ubjon said as I think he said it far better than I. I did however use demonstrations. ;p

It is more that all this activity is occurring behind the surface of our whirlwind.

sennekuyl wrote:Eh, the atoms can move, but yeah. Perhaps you should concentrate on what Ubjon said as I think he said it far better than I. I did however use demonstrations. ;p

It is more that all this activity is occurring behind the surface of our whirlwind.

Unless he wants to go into the physics of it light 'bouncing' of the object is the simplest way to explain it.

Oh dear, is that an omen to the effect that I have completely misspoken?


/me to /me: you must learn to not speak and confirm the idiocy.

If the OP was talking about Brownian motion, then yes indeed, atoms are in constant motion. In a solid, those atoms (or molecules, if not a solid element) are held together rather tightly, so they aren't going to be moving much. Obviously not enough to blur the boundary edges of that solid, otherwise those edges would indeed be blurry. Because moving, they are.

The only time atoms are at zero motion is at zero degrees Kelvin. And, you can't go that low. Pesky laws of thermodynamics get in the way.