Ryan Dill
Prof. Sam Coale
English 346
6 February, 2014
On Quantum Theory I find Quantum Theory to be so innately unsatisfying at times. Much like when arguing with a stingy pedant, in dealing with Quantum Mechanics one must laboriously approach a problem from several angles and wade through all the minutiae festering in its underbelly, fighting at every turn, to make any progress, only to emerge either more addled than before or with more appreciation for surviving the ordeal than for the sentiment of corroborating your claim, and still addled. As with the laws of thermodynamics, you can’t win and you can’t break even; you just do as best as nature will allow. Perhaps most frustrating about all things quantum is their tendency toward inexactness, or, as was popularized by Werner Heisenberg, uncertainty. Unlike in many realms of quantitative analysis, Quantum Physics rarely – and, were it not for the fastidiousness in accounting for results that the subject requires, I would be inclined to say never – lends itself to exact answers. So, we talk about problems in Quantum Physics with probabilities, some much rangier than others. Does a gold atom on a thin sheet of foil deflect an alpha particle directly back to its source? Not usually, but Rutherford observed it once, so it must be possible. And lo, the atomic nucleus was revealed to mankind. I suppose it should be formally stated, then, that, notwithstanding existential crises, I find Quantum Theory to be endlessly fascinating. It is widely speculated that the things that most easily capture our attention are those we find most mystifying and elusive; we want most what we can’t have. The stars that populate our night sky and the infinity beyond, the shadowy abyss of the deep sea, the buzzing labyrinth of the human mind – all things that have been pondered by generation after generation of man, and still the mystery shrouding them rests more or less unscathed and their beauty, palpable within, remains untarnished. The common denominator among these subjects and Quantum Theory, as well, is a lack of accessibility. Outer space is too big, and it’s getting bigger. Billions of tons of water does bad things when pressed on a human body. A thought is something that can’t be held in your hand. Brushing away the solipsism, the other way in which Quantum Theory grabs me is through subversion of established ideas. The idea that divisions of space, mass, and energy are discrete is earth-shattering; that we could ostensibly look deep enough into the machinery underlying our universe and see that it is not perfectly “smooth,” as a mathematician might phrase it. Equally terrifying is the thought that time could be the same way and we might never know, as our observation
background and study the physics behind them. Extremely deep theories that scientists such as Hawking have been trying to piece together to better understand are the general theory of relativity, the theory of quantum mechanics, and the quantum theory of gravity. For many years the extremely well known scientist, Albert Einstein put forth the work to develop the general theory of relativity. As stated in Hawking’s book, “This theory put an end to the idea of absolute time, and seemed to offer…
central concept of quantum mechanics, this duality addresses the failure of classical concepts like particle and wave to fully describe the behaviour of quantum-scale objects. The idea of duality originated in a debate over the nature of light and matter that dates back to the 17th century, when Christiaan Huygens and Isaac Newton proposed opposing theories of light, one theory was that light consisted of waves and the other theory was that light consisted of particles. These two theories were both valid…
Quantum mechanics (QM – also known as quantum physics, or quantum theory) is a branch of physics which deals with physical phenomena at microscopic scales, where the action is on the order of the Planck constant. Quantum mechanics departs from classical mechanics primarily at the quantum realm of atomic and subatomic length scales. Quantum mechanics provides a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. Quantum mechanics…
Quantum mechanics (QM; also known as quantum physics, or quantum theory) is a fundamental branch of physics which deals with physical phenomena atnanoscopic scales, where the action is on the order of the Planck constant. The name derives from the observation that some physical quantities can change only indiscrete amounts (Latin quanta), and not in a continuous (cf. analog) way. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the quantum realm of atomic andsubatomic length scales. Quantum mechanics…
String Theory; what is it? Most teens have no idea what String Theory is and do not care to learn about it. Little do they know but the ideas behind String Theory affect their everyday lives. Soon many more fields of jobs will be using the ideas behind the theory and people will have to at least know the works behind it in order to even survive in those jobs. Still what is String Theory? String Theory is one of the theories attempting to connect quantum mechanics and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity…
nature of reality, specifically theories/arguments involving Metaphysical Realism and Anti-Realism. Taking the anti-realist position on the nature of reality I will support that consciousness is fundamental, and that the material universe is derivative from consciousness, (not consciousness from the material universeidealistic). I will present the anti-realist perspective on reality using the metaphysical assumptions of quantum theory and the conceptual relativity theory to support idealism. I will…
Lecture Highlights #4 Quantum mechanics is a body of scientific principles often regarded as the best choice in fundamentally and universally describing the physical world. The basic framework of this idea differs from that of classical physics. Classical mechanics is completely deterministic. This means that if one was given the exact position and velocity of a particle at a given time, one can calculate the future and past positions and velocities of that particle at any given time. The consequence…
Joseph Reyes CTS-287-MON01 Quantum Computing In our search to conquer all the biggest things in life, our technology gets smaller and smaller every year. We went from having floppy disks that could only hold 1.4MB of data to a usb flash drive that can now store up an over a terabyte of data. The recent explosion in this cheap, high-capacity hardware is down to the ability of computer engineers to reduce the size of the memory cells that make up the devices. Currently engineers can pack the cells…
moving either with less velocity or that are at rest. The major division of the mechanics discipline separates classical mechanics from quantum mechanics. Historically, classical mechanics came first, while quantum mechanics is a comparatively recent invention. Classical mechanics originated with Isaac Newton's laws of motion in Principia Mathematica, while quantum mechanics didn't appear until 1900. Both are commonly held to constitute the most certain knowledge that exists about physical nature…