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04-19-2016, 11:05 AM
#24
Call me Pebbles
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Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: I do all my own physics.
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Supercritical Fluid CO2 THC Extraction or Neon Lamp plasma; that is the question... well actually since what's known as supercritical can be related to the pressure vs temp graph while plasma cannot does this not distinguish something?
Next physics thought???
Let's treat the parking lot/buildings around La Fiesta as an electron cloud. Now if the softball (i.e. electron) is in a known location (my hand) but I then throw it with a presumed known momentum once it leaves my hand (no longer in know location but with known momentum) can we say with any certainty that it will reach the roof (i.e. a future known location) or once we pinpoint the momentum do we obtain uncertainty in location allowing the possibility that the thrown "electron" may in actuality be located in BevMo or the Wendy's drive-through the next time we pinpoint said location even if this appears to contradict what the momentum leaving my hand would imply about future location only a couple of seconds into the future?
Heisenberg comes knocking... but who can really say what door he will knock upon?
Eh, now I'm just blurring the lines between Breaking Bad and the Uncertainty Principle (or more accurately my VERY limited look into it)
Next physics thought???
Let's treat the parking lot/buildings around La Fiesta as an electron cloud. Now if the softball (i.e. electron) is in a known location (my hand) but I then throw it with a presumed known momentum once it leaves my hand (no longer in know location but with known momentum) can we say with any certainty that it will reach the roof (i.e. a future known location) or once we pinpoint the momentum do we obtain uncertainty in location allowing the possibility that the thrown "electron" may in actuality be located in BevMo or the Wendy's drive-through the next time we pinpoint said location even if this appears to contradict what the momentum leaving my hand would imply about future location only a couple of seconds into the future?
Heisenberg comes knocking... but who can really say what door he will knock upon?
Eh, now I'm just blurring the lines between Breaking Bad and the Uncertainty Principle (or more accurately my VERY limited look into it)
Werner Heisenberg is among my favorite physicists. Fascinating insight into the Uncertainty Principle: it is not an assessment of or statement on the accuracy of measurements made or experimental methods employed as is most popularly believed. Uncertainty and error exist for all measurements made as an intrinsic characteristic or quality. The Uncertainty Principle is a result of the quantum mechanical wave function descriptions or representations of individual subatomic particles. The product of the uncertainties, as derived from the wave function(s) of the particle(s) in question, can be determined to some arbitrary minimum value.
A philosophical analog of the Uncertainty Principle for large systems of particles could be view as such: Say you were to measure both position and momentum (velocity, or even simpler speed to keep it unidimensional) of a moving an object. In order to measure the position, the object would need to be stationary, otherwise, only an approximation of position could be made by saying "it is somewhere between points (a) and (b)." Conversely, in order to measure the speed of the object, we would need to assign a starting (a) and ending position (b) and know how much time elapsed as the object traversed the distance between (a) and (b) as speed is the ratio of the distance travelled to the time taken to traverse that distance.. As we decrease the size of the range of positions we believe our object to be in, we are also decreasing the amount time available to make our measurement of speed thus increasing the uncertainty or error. Conversely, if we allow for more time to elapse to improve the accuracy of our measurement of speed, we are increasing the size of the range of positions we believe our object to be in and increasing the uncertainty or error. Not an exact analog, but adequate to first principles.
The detail and elegance of the Uncertainty Principle really shines when applied, as originally intended, to quantum states using wave-functions.
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