Difference between revisions of "Talk:2658: Coffee Cup Holes"

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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For something to be a hole, you need to consider what is capable of passing through the hole.  For instance, a mesh screen might have no holes that my fingers can pass through, but it is full of holes for water or air to pass through.  And while atoms might be mostly space, other atoms can't usually just pass through that space, although high-energy particles may.  Also, the space can be considered filled with forces, which may act as barriers to certain things. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.171|172.70.130.171]] 00:36, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
 
For something to be a hole, you need to consider what is capable of passing through the hole.  For instance, a mesh screen might have no holes that my fingers can pass through, but it is full of holes for water or air to pass through.  And while atoms might be mostly space, other atoms can't usually just pass through that space, although high-energy particles may.  Also, the space can be considered filled with forces, which may act as barriers to certain things. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.171|172.70.130.171]] 00:36, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
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:Sure, for one definition of “hole.” That’s the whole point of the comic: there are multiple definitions, and no single definition is correct. [[User:Szeth Pancakes|Szeth Pancakes]] ([[User talk:Szeth Pancakes|talk]]) 01:01, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Revision as of 01:01, 13 August 2022

I was confused for a moment. That's a coffee mug. And the correct answer is either one (the handle) or none (because below the macroscopic level (and above the theoretical sub-Planck scale of string-theory loops) it's increasingly not even mostly holes but very, very barely anything 'solid' jostling about in empty space giving no real impediment to any theoretical quantum-scale cheesewire without even being cut through). A coffee cup has no holes (regardless) if you don't count any form of sippy-lid it might have. 172.70.85.13 22:25, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Actually, the mug has two at the macro level (the hole that makes up the handle and the hole on the top). There could conceivably be more shallow holes inside the mug where the handle connects to the cup. At a plank-length level, the atoms could be viewed as holes in the vacuum bending space time around it.
You're not a topologist, certainly. And a hydrogen-nucleus is approximately 10^20 times the planck-length. The whole atom on the order of 10,000 times larger, and the constiuent quarks 'only' 1,000th, or so, smaller, with the differences being the space betweenn that anything that cares isn't going to consider much of an obstruction. 172.70.162.155 23:43, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
There is no "hole" at the top - at best it count as an indention in the surface 172.70.211.134 (talk) 23:38, 12 August 2022 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
Hole has multiple meanings. A hole in the ground doesn't have to go all the way through the Earth. The point of panel three is that we don't know what definition the question is using, which makes it impossible to answer correctly.Zzyzx (talk) 00:47, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

[1] 172.70.179.4 23:54, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

For something to be a hole, you need to consider what is capable of passing through the hole. For instance, a mesh screen might have no holes that my fingers can pass through, but it is full of holes for water or air to pass through. And while atoms might be mostly space, other atoms can't usually just pass through that space, although high-energy particles may. Also, the space can be considered filled with forces, which may act as barriers to certain things. 172.70.130.171 00:36, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Sure, for one definition of “hole.” That’s the whole point of the comic: there are multiple definitions, and no single definition is correct. Szeth Pancakes (talk) 01:01, 13 August 2022 (UTC)