Suspension of disbelief

Um, actually I didn't contradict him - I just said that most people don't know that the theory of relativity extends beyond E=MC^2.

While I'm no expert, I have heard about theories that have been spawned in recent decades. If I recall correctly, one researcher was even able to factor time out of the equations - which implies that time (as we know) might not exist the way we think it does and...

No. I've already derailed on thread, turning it into a WWII. This thread is about how far you can suspend disbelief and tricks on how to make it work, not physics ....

Back to the "bare bums paddled in high school in modern day" story - I can see another way to work it. A very detailed story that ends abruptly with "James, I asked what Newton's third law of motion is" - and then a part revealing that the entire thing was a daydream that James was having and that the paddled girls are his fellow students who are sitting a few rows up from him. Now that could work for a story.

Goodgulf

The never ending spanking is based on the idea of time dilation, but for the participants everything would seem to be normal. It is an observer who could somehow "see" without being at the event horizon who would report that the travelers in the ship appeared to be standing still. There is a very good explanation of this in a book called THE BLACK HOLE WARS by a physicist named Leonard Susskind.

Back on topic, James, above, might also ponder the first law of thermodynamics and how kinetic energy is converted to heat.

Very subtle, Rollin. The kinetic energy contained in well swung paddle or cane converted to the heat felt in a seat...

Not exactly how the first law is usually described, but close enough.

But it applies. The first law is dU=dQ-dW where U is the energy of the system, W is work and Q is heat. If we move dW to the other side of the equation, then

dU+dW=dQ.

dW will change as the paddle is swung, because that is work. The internal energy of the system will change as paddle impacts bottom because the energy has to go somewhere. This results in the positive change in heat, dQ.

This is dangerously close to "and then I woke up", a classic resort of authors who have gotten their hero/heroine into a situation and can't figure out how to extract them.

"Then I woke up" has a kindred spirit in "And with a leap and a bound, he was free". This was a way to get a hero out of a certain-death situation without having to work out the exact details of how the extraction would work in real life.

You didn't by any chance happen to be a scriptwriter for the television melodrama "Dallas" back in the 1980s, did you?

Just wondering... --C.K.

No, I didn't write the "it was all just a dream" - but you have to admit "it was dream" was better than "the whole thing took place in the mind of an autistic child" (aka St Elsewhere).

Let's face it - the idea of bare bum paddling in the average high school is so far fetched that "it was just the sexual day dream of the boy looking at the bum of the girl standing at the board writing the answer to a question" is one of the few ones I could think of.

And there is a good way for "it was just a dream" to go on - if the person comes out of the dream and then things start happening just like they did in the dream. There was a novel in 80s (Days at Florville - something like that) that did that and it worked.

Goodgulf

The sound energy produced is undoubtedly solely derived from the laws of thermodynamics; however the heat in the seat felt by the recipient is probably mainly derived from chemical intermediaries in the cells as damage occurs. Some will be produced from the conversion of kinetic energy, but I suspect most will be due to the extraordinararily complex set of internal chemical reactions produced by the blow and the consequential nerve reactions.

Not really anything wrong with a dream sequence if it is handled deftly, or another way, if what is being described isn't really what it seems. I did this in "Beverly and The Principal" and I think it worked.

A Walter Mitty type of daydream in the overactive hormonally charged brain of a teenage boy could work, but here, for the ultimate twist to work, it would have to actually be a little over-the-top. The reader would have to be saying to himself, "now wait a minute" just before the twist.