The Museum of Introductory Physics Assumptions

Gas up the minivan, dig out your “I Heart Isaac Newton” T-shirt and head on down to the grand opening of the Museum of Introductory Physics Assumptions.

The building itself is a wonder. The walls meet only at angles of 30, 45, 60 or 90 degrees.

A state-of-the-art climate control system keeps the building at standard temperature and pressure, so bring a sweater. It can be chilly at 0 degrees Celsius.

The utilities are the best that money can’t buy: the pipes carry incompressible fluids and are laminar flow only, while the wires are all infinitely long and superconductive.

Every object in the building is carefully calibrated to have only integer mass, preferably in multiples of 10 kilograms.

But enough about the building – the exhibits are fun for the whole family. Mommy and Daddy can play tennis while neglecting air resistance.

(Disclaimer: Participants should supply their own supplemental oxygen if wishing to play on a vacuum chamber tennis court. Play at your own risk. The museum is not responsible for asphyxiation or head trauma caused by unexpectedly fast moving balls.)

The kiddies can ride the bumper cars – perfectly elastic collisions only. The wheels roll without slipping and they run on Carnot engines: more efficient than a Prius. Too bad they’re just not powerful.

In the Electricity Room, hold a point charge up to an infinite plate. 

Outside, check out the high ropes course with massless pulleys and inextensible ropes.

Before you come, however, a few rules: First, we follow a very strict Newtonian-only policy at the Museum of Introductory Physics Assumptions.

Every entrant to the Museum must pass through a security check, including a modern physics detector, with the possibility of a full body scan.

Probability and uncertainty are strictly forbidden – no dice, especially. God doesn’t like them. Also, blackbodies are not allowed.

Leave at home any maybe-dead cats in boxes. We will confiscate all boxes containing maybe-dead cats and open them.

No personal watches are allowed, as the absolute time of the museum is kept by the master clock, which uses an ideal pendulum with a small angle and a massless rod and resets to zero whenever anything important happens.

Any twins must sign a written affidavit swearing that they have never travelled in space near the speed of light.

As long as nobody tries to ruin the day and make things complicated by insisting on “realistic” assumptions, we won’t have any problems.

But, for every action of smuggling contraband, there will be an equal and opposite reaction of defenestration.

And if we do have to throw you out the window, we will neglect air resistance.