What is an Object?

Would water be considered a single object when in a vessel, or is it included with the vessel it's being held in?
- Meredith (age 16)
Boulder,CO,USA

Nature doesn't really care what names you call it. So it's your choice to pick how to divide it up into objects in whatever way is most convenient for you. If the water is sloshing around in the vessel, it might not be convenient to call it part of the same object, since you need another position to describe where the water is at some time. If it's swirling around in a complicated way, you might want to divide things up even further, since you may need to describe more details of what the water is doing.

Mike W.

(published on 12/03/2013)