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Dogs sense wrong physics

17.01.2022

Some simple physical patterns we feel intuitively from a very early age. For example, even small children know that if you drop a cup from your hands, it will fall down - and they will be very surprised if the cup suddenly starts to slowly take off.

Intuitive ideas about the physics of the world around us are not only in humans, but, for example, in chimpanzees and dogs. The study was conducted by employees of the University of Vienna. They chose fourteen dogs, who were first taught to sit in one position with their heads resting on a special pillow. In this position, it was convenient to follow the pupils of the dogs, which testified to their emotions.

Then a screen was placed in front of the dogs, and a video was shown on the screen: two balls rolling towards each other. The balls collided, and then one stopped, and the second rolled back - all in accordance with ordinary mechanics. After the dogs had seen enough of the colliding marbles, they were shown a second video in which the first marble stopped before it met the second, and the second, without any collision, suddenly began to roll back. The dogs were surprised: firstly, they looked at the wrong balls longer than usual, and secondly, their pupils dilated. Both a long gaze and dilated pupils are considered signs of surprise. The same signs are used, for example, when studying the psychology of young children who cannot yet speak, or adults, when they want to know some kind of unconscious reactions (and how these reactions differ from what people say).

Scientists have found that dogs are able to distinguish correct physics from incorrect. By the way, relatively recently - last year - something similar was told about cats who were embarrassed that the same voice was almost simultaneously heard from different corners of the room, as if the owner of the voice could teleport. Seals, as the authors of that work claimed, did not believe in teleportation.

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In a pilot plant built at the Dortmund Center, a 7-micrometer-thick zinc-coated steel strip passes at a rate of meters per second through a vacuum chamber where magnesium vapor is blown over it. Locks are installed at the entrance and exit of the chamber, the air from which is pumped out by powerful pumps so that it does not penetrate into the chamber. Zinc is covered with a layer of magnesium a few nanometers thick. After additional heat treatment, magnesium atoms diffuse into the zinc surface. The resulting layer is more than ten times more resistant than conventional zinc coating.

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