/sci/ - Science & Math

My dumb monkey brain insists that a) is because virtual particles are fluctuations within the lower bound of the classical minimum energy of a system (ie 0) and the upper bound of the quantum minimum energy (ie something like thats also bounded by Et >= hbar/2), and because of this difference in energy, the two plates are attracted to each other, like in an electrostatics problem. My gut says this is wrong, especially since he seems interested in the virtual particles themselves.

For b) I'm wondering, if I use kinematics (ie imagine a particle going from plate 1 to plate 2 at some speed v, arriving at plate 2 at some time t) and then apply the uncertainty relation, will I get what I'm looking for? "The longest time" seems like a weird thing to look for since the uncertainty relations lend themselves to checking "minimums" of things