It’s the Inverse Square Law, Stupid!

I had this great epiphany of my own stupidity today. I was contemplating beauty—physics, that is—and how cool it is that the same relationship that governs gravity also governs electrical attraction: the inverse square law. Then I was daydreaming about how amazing it is that something so simple as the inverse square law should describe all gravity (I know, I know, Newtonian mechanics are technically wrong, but they work for most practical purposes)... and then BANG!! a textbook fell on my head, metaphorically of course. But of course it’s an inverse square law, stupid!! It wouldn’t make any sense if it weren’t. And believe me, my ego shrank two sizes that day. Actually, that day was today. It was on the bus, where I have all of my profound thoughts.

Imagine a point in space. Now imagine a square in space of area A, having each vertex situated some distance d from the point. You have a pyramid of sorts. Extend the lines of length d so they have a distance of 2d. Now connect all of those points to form another larger square. This square has an area of 4A. If you extend the lines yet again so they have a length 3d, and you draw the square, you will get a square with an area 9A. Duh! In other words, if you have a force (like gravity or electrical attraction) emanating from some point, the area over which it is applied varies inversely to the square of the distance. Now that’s not too bad. But the fact is, it makes sense that gravity is governed by an inverse square law, because how could it be any other way? It’s so intuitive. It’s rather obvious that gravity has to work that way. It also makes sense that electrical attraction should work that way. What doesn’t make sense are the weird things like the strong force and the weak force, but hey, who needs quantum mechanics anyway? It’s too complicated for me to understand, especially given how stupid I seem to be. Physics is so cool--the subject, I mean, not the class. Ms. Feller needs to back to Brown and do all of her metaphysical junk and power-craving there. She needs to stop polluting her classes' minds with her idiocy: they're too valuable... which is kind of ironic, and should give you a good idea of just how obnoxious she is.