Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

Re:Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017) by logfromblammo on Friday January 19, 2018 @11:26AM (#16187412)

If you smash a salt crystal with a hammer, all the resulting pieces end up with equal charges of anions and cations, so were any ionic bonds really broken?

That covalent bonds are broken seems obvious if you ditch the paper and cut through a sheet of long-chain polyethylene. The scissors don't just stop if they're about to break a polymer chain.

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Re:Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017) by dekhn on Friday January 19, 2018 @01:11PM (#16188351)

I think even the salt crystal will have some ionic bonds broken- smashing it with a hammer should generate a bunch of kinetic energy which converts to heat, some of the heat will exceed the ionic bond strength, and break bonds.... right?

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Re:Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017) by rocqua on Friday January 19, 2018 @05:32PM (#16190509)

How tiny of a charge is so small as to be unnoticable?

Certainly, if an object millimeters across has a charge of 1 electron that isn't noticeable.

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