It can look dumb, but I always had this question as a kid, what physical principles would prevent this?
this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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You're not creating more stick, but you're making the stick longer. The pressure wave in the stick will travel at the speed of sound in the stick which will be faster than sound in air, but orders of magnitude slower than light.
Everything has some elasticity. Rigidity is an illusion . Things that feel rigid to us are rigid in human terms only.
I get it. Elasticity isn't something you think about in the every day so it all seems rigid.
Exactly. At the atomic level solid matter acts a lot like jello. It also helps explain why things tend to break if you push or pull on them at rates that exceed the speed of sound in that material.