Everything is Connected | Cosmic Variance More recently, though, another excerpt from this lecture has been passed around, this one about ramifications of the Pauli Exclusion Principle. (Headline at io9: “Brian Cox explains the interconnectedness of the universe, explodes your brain.”) The problem is that, in this video, the proffered mind-bending consequences of quantum mechanics aren’t actually correct. Some people pointed this out, including Tom Swanson in a somewhat intemperately-worded blog post, to which I pointed in a tweet. Which led to some tiresome sniping on Twitter, which you can dig up if you’re really fascinated. Much more interesting to me is getting the physics right. One thing should be clear: getting the physics right isn’t easy. And finally, when one translates from the relative clarity of the equations to a natural-language description in order to reach a broad audience, it’s always possible to quibble about the best way to translate. Of course the answer is “none whatsoever.” Absolutely nothing.
On the origins of the Schrodinger equation (Phys.org) —One of the cornerstones of quantum physics is the Schrödinger equation, which describes what a system of quantum objects such as atoms and subatomic particles will do in the future based on its current state. The classical analogies are Newton's second law and Hamiltonian mechanics, which predict what a classical system will do in the future given its current configuration. Although the Schrödinger equation was published in 1926, the authors of a new study explain that the equation's origins are still not fully appreciated by many physicists. In a new paper published in PNAS, Wolfgang P. Schleich, et al., from institutions in Germany and the US, explain that physicists usually reach the Schrödinger equation using a mathematical recipe. Although much of the paper involves complex mathematical equations, the physicists describe the question of the Schrödinger equation's origins in a poetic way: Coauthor Marlan O. Explore further: Beam me up ...
Double-slit experiment Physics experiment, showing light can be modelled by both waves and particles Photons or particles of matter (like an electron) produce a wave pattern when two slits are used Light from a green laser passing through two slits 0.4mm wide and 0.1mm apart The experiment belongs to a general class of "double path" experiments, in which a wave is split into two separate waves (the wave is typically made of many photons and better referred to as a wave front, not to be confused with the wave properties of the individual photon) that later combine into a single wave. Other atomic-scale entities, such as electrons, are found to exhibit the same behavior when fired towards a double slit.[6] Additionally, the detection of individual discrete impacts is observed to be inherently probabilistic, which is inexplicable using classical mechanics.[6] The experiment can be done with entities much larger than electrons and photons, although it becomes more difficult as size increases. Overview[edit]
Schrödinger Equation -- from Eric Weisstein's World of Physics The Schrödinger equation is the fundamental equation of physics for describing quantum mechanical behavior. It is also often called the Schrödinger wave equation, and is a partial differential equation that describes how the wavefunction of a physical system evolves over time. Viewing quantum mechanical systems as solutions to the Schrödinger equation is sometimes known as the Schrödinger picture, as distinguished from the matrix mechanical viewpoint, sometimes known as the Heisenberg picture. The time-dependent one-dimensional Schrödinger equation is given by where i is the imaginary unit, is the time-dependent wavefunction, is h-bar, V(x) is the potential, and is the Hamiltonian operator. to write thus obtaining Setting each part equal to a constant then gives so
Thomas Young (scientist) 18th/19th-century English polymath Thomas Young FRS (13 June 1773 – 10 May 1829) was a British polymath who made notable contributions to the fields of vision, light, solid mechanics, energy, physiology, language, musical harmony, and Egyptology. He was instrumental in the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs, specifically the Rosetta Stone. Sacred to the memory of Thomas Young, M.D., Fellow and Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society Member of the National Institute of France; a man alike eminent in almost every department of human learning. Plate from "Lectures" of 1802 (RI), pub. 1807 Young performed and analysed a number of experiments, including interference of light from reflection off nearby pairs of micrometre grooves, from reflection off thin films of soap and oil, and from Newton's rings. Young's Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy Young devised a rule of thumb for determining a child's drug dosage. Young developed Young temperament, a method of tuning musical instruments.
Max Born Max Born was born in Breslau, Germany, on December 11, 1882. He was awarded the Prize of the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Göttingen for his work on the stability of elastic wires and tapes in 1906, and graduated from this university a year later on the basis of this work, earning a Ph.D in physics. Born went on to Cambridge briefly to study under Larmor and J.J. Thomson. In 1913, Born married Hedwig Ehrenberg, with whom he went on to have three children. In 1921, Born was appointed Professor at Göttingen and remained there for 12 years, during which time he did a series of studies on the quantum theory. A Jew, Born fled the Nazis in 1933 and became Stokes lecturer at the University of Cambridge, focusing on the field of nonlinear electrodynamics, which he developed in collaboration with Infeld.
Born rule The Born rule (also called the Born law, Born's rule, or Born's law) formulated by German physicist Max Born in 1926, is a law[citation needed] of quantum mechanics giving the probability that a measurement on a quantum system will yield a given result.[1] In its simplest form it states that the probability density of finding the particle at a given point is proportional to the square of the magnitude of the particle's wavefunction at that point. The Born rule is one of the key principles of quantum mechanics. The Born rule states that if an observable corresponding to a Hermitian operator (see bra–ket notation), then the measured result will be one of the eigenvalues of , andthe probability of measuring a given eigenvalue will equal , where is the projection onto the eigenspace of corresponding to . (In the case where the eigenspace of corresponding to is one-dimensional and spanned by the normalized eigenvector is equal to , so the probability . assigns to the eigenvector . History[edit]
Hermann von Helmholtz German physicist and physiologist (1821–1894) Helmholtz's polyphonic siren, Hunterian Museum, Glasgow Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz[a] (31 August 1821 – 8 September 1894) was a German physicist and physician who made significant contributions in several scientific fields. The largest German association of research institutions, the Helmholtz Association, is named after him.[5] In physiology and psychology, he is known for his mathematics of the eye, theories of vision, ideas on the visual perception of space, color vision research, and on the sensation of tone, perception of sound, and empiricism in the physiology of perception. In physics, he is known for his theories on the conservation of energy, work in electrodynamics, chemical thermodynamics, and on a mechanical foundation of thermodynamics. Biography[edit] Early years[edit] As a young man, Helmholtz was interested in natural science, but his father wanted him to study medicine. University posts[edit] Research[edit]