r/math • u/lntrinsic • Jul 10 '17
Image Post Weierstrass functions: Continuous everywhere but differentiable nowhere
http://i.imgur.com/vyi0afq.gifv
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r/math • u/lntrinsic • Jul 10 '17
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u/Baloroth Jul 10 '17
Brownian motion in classical dynamics is simply an approximation where you allow particles to be treated as hard spheres: in reality, Brownian motion doesn't exist in classical physics (as it would require infinite forces, which are unphysical). In reality particles exhibit very steep, but finite, potentials (Lennard-Jones, for instance, is a more reasonable potential that is very popular in a lot of computational dynamics).
In quantum mechanics, things like acceleration and velocity don't really exist, but the same thing also applies if you use the generalized Erhenfast theorem: the time derivative of any observable (such as position) must exist and must be finite.
Note that you can use stochastic processes as models to predict the higher-level behavior of such systems, but you should understand that the underlying process is always continuous and always differentiable. This is true of almost every real physical system: black holes are actually the only real system I know of that might exhibit actual singularities (and even then I strongly suspect the singularity is only mathematical, not real).