Talk:2904: Physics vs. Magic

Isn't the first law of thermodynamics a conservation law? 172.69.134.217 21:27, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

In Lagrangian Mechanics,the Lagrangian is a function of time, position and speed. The action of the system is defined as the integral of the Lagrangian between the initial and final time. Movement equations are derived as those that minimize action. In that sense it can be loosely interpreted that by only setting initial condition and outcome you can get the full picture of all intermediate events. 198.41.230.215 22:46, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

This is why statistics is magical Phlaxyr (talk) 23:33, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Both thermodynamics and conservation laws make predictions without telling us anything about what exactly is happening in the intermediate steps. In that sense they're no different from the curse in the comic. An example for thermodynamics could be: your coffee cup will get cold if left on your desk (zeroth law). And an example from conservation laws could be: it doesn't matter what method you're going to use to stop a moving car, in all cases the car has lost the same amount of energy (1/2mv^2). 141.101.99.110 00:33, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I've always been a little bit annoyed by thermodynamics. I mean it has a temperature, it has energy, why can't I have the energy without something colder lying around? "Remove heat energy from this object and charge a battery with it"... It sucks because the inverse is true, I can certainly discharge a battery and make heat energy from chemical... Anyway back on topic, can someone magic me such a device? I promise to share 50% of the big oil hush money. 172.68.210.23 04:04, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

What exactly would be your contribution? Anyone with such device would be already swimming in money from U.S. department of defense. Or, more likely, killed by them. Because it certainly can be used as a bomb. -- Hkmaly (talk) 20:48, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Anonymity. With magic up their sleeve they probably want to solve a few more world problems too, this allows them to get one out of the way without drawing attention to themselves. 172.68.210.73 01:17, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

The talk had a better explanation of why Thermodynamics, Conservation laws and Lagrangians are 'magic' than the actual explanation. I added a few paragraphs briefly explaining to the explanation, I hope that's helpful, but I left the paragraph about scientific laws being empirical themselves in place despite the fact that I'm pretty dubious about whether that's actually part of the joke. 141.101.99.111 16:46, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

To be frank I just think part of the joke is how naive definitions of science can lead to baffling counterexamples 198.41.230.214 08:03, 10 March 2024 (UTC)