Quantum Universe

I have been more than forthcoming in these posts regarding my lack of love for physics classes, so much so I am sure more than one of you has questioned my choice to become a physicist. But if I was going to be really honest, I should have footnoted that statement and confessed I actually really liked my quantum classes. Not only was it a little trippy (I mean, the cat is half dead AND half alive until you look at it, DAMN!), but there was something zen-like about solving the problems. I have distinct memories of staying up until 4am in the common kitchen of my dorm putting the final touches on a 40-page problem set and feeling very satisfied about it. All of it so elegant, so beautiful – I honestly loved it.

Don't look at me that way, we all have our dirty little secrets and this one happens to be mine.

Unlike most of my other classes, quantum mechanics was interesting to me in the abstract and I really never thought much about its applications and never really cared about the practical problems. Blessed be the infinite square well and other useless scenarios. But I probably should have paid more attention to the hydrogen-like atom in external magnetic and electric fields problem, 'cause I have been thinking about that exact situation a lot lately. So after a rather long absence from quantum, I am back to working with Clebsch-Gordon coefficients and Hamiltonians, but now I have a graduate student to do all the math for me. I believe this is what they call the high life. And yes, I am loving it.

Comments

[Tony Halaris]

The Romanze/F major/ Adante

Rivers flowing uphill
Slowly taking over the landscape
The Nile becomes life when it retreats

The Pyramids a place above flood stage
The land now a watery field
A sailor fishing rather than a peasant harvesting

Romance is in the painting
The carpenter is building your piano
The wirer wraps the wires, the tuner refines the harmony

Is Giza a power station?
Or a place to rest after 3D
Or is it an island for a sound machine?

12 7 2005

[Tony Halaris]

Archetypes

When an Archetype visits your life changes
Only if you believe that this is a message from the inner part of you
Concealed in wrappings of mother, father, daughter or son

When you meet a stranger with manners of someone you know
A puzzle starts to build momentum
As PO develops many alternatives tangibles or ideas

Eight is the magic integer with Archetypes
I invite them to dance with me each night
As the dawn comes I have insights or humor, may be another puzzle

Check this out! If Archetypes are related to quantum energies then you may not be bored with the dry math!

[grimode]

An Energy Vision

If I could dream a simple solution
For Michigan or for the world
I would build a time machine
To ride along

The journey would be strange new to my perceptions
The purpose would be noble and benevolent
Unmotivated by short term profits

This journey would bring a strange structure
Architects would admire the elegance
Engineers the simplicity
Environmentalists the friendliness
A Benefit to all users
A priceless creation in harmony with nature and mother earth

9 15 2005

[Rob]

Not poetry, but....

You might get a kick out of this article (http://www.aip.org/pnu/2005/split/756-2.html), given your interests. They stripped all but three electrons off a uranium atom so that they could measure the shift in energy levels caused by some higher-order QED processes.

[Rob]

Two things:

1. Your blog formatted the URL incorrectly because of the way I typed it. It should be:

http://www.aip.org/pnu/2005/split/756-2.html

2. Have you ever done the calculation for a hydrogen atom and then gone into the lab and measured the spectra? Between that and some experiments with the heat capacity of a gas, I've actually witnessed quantum mechanic effects myself. We study all this physics (ok, in my case, chemistry - quantum and statistical mechanics was a chemistry course) but until you calculate it yourself and measure it with your hands and see it with your eyes, it's too abstract.

3. While we're at it, get someone with a scanner to tune in the International Space Station on a favorable orbit. Listen to the frequency change as the space station travels across the sky -- it's around a couple kHz. Congratulations: you've just experienced Special Relativity. If you have a GPS unit, the thing takes into account General Relativity effects to get the correct location -- but it's not nearly as fun (unless you're geocaching).

[Rob Oldenburger]

First I'm glad to hear from you again, not being curled up in hypothermic shock at your desk and all! It must be fun using the model of the hydrogenatom in magnetic - and electric fields, to find a solution to the problem you are working on. Except from the blistering cold, I mean. Hope you will find a solution to that problem too. But about the hydrogenatom in a magnetic field, do you think this model will give you an idea of where the formula for the four relative populations come from? I'm just curious. Wish I could give you the answer to the question about where these formula that describe relative populations come from, but sadly, I don't have a clue. Good luck on the job. O, and I also regret that you will stop blogging, but can imagine you do! And you did great, I think. Very entertaining blog. Thank you.

[huh]

>>

Really? The space station can't be moving more than 10 or 20 miles/sec, can it? That gives a doppler shift of .01%. At 1000 mi/s, it's .5%. Can you really *hear* this? What am I missing?

[jls]

I got a deep dorky joy out of setting up and solving Euler-Lagrange equations first, but it was quantum that really hooked me, too. The single best class I took in college was grad quantum -- it was so elegant and so powerful and so deeply, beautifully weird, I just loved it (and sacrificed much sleep to it). Then I took quantum field theory and was quite miffed to discover how messy it all was.

(Longtime reader, first-time commenter. I really enjoy your blog.)

[Geoffrey Alan Cope]

Here is a reference you might find useful for your (physics) problems: "Atoms in an Electromagnetic Field". Perhaps referencing a Nobel Prize winner might help much more so than a poser such as myself. Same Cohen - Tannoudji who authored the two volume classics in Quantum Mechanics. Reiters Scientific Bookstore in Washington, D.C. has two copies in stock!

http://www.worldscibooks.com/physics/5609.html

www.reiters.com

[Paul Valletta]

Not only is the cat half dead, half alive, humans also have half-lifes.

Just think quantumly, when your cat is not looking at you, you are definately "dead" !..but this is of course just a mental exercise for the connectivity of consciousness, un-consciousness state of entangled existence.

[Gordon Stangler]

I don't know about humans having half-lives, but I do know that the classes I TA seemed to have student attendance half-lives. Once every three weeks my attendence would drop by a factor of 1/2.

[Tim]

It's not half-alive or half-dead! Nonsense!

The cat is massive compared to quantum particles, so gravity _compels_ it into one state or the other. Haven't you read Penrose's new works? :)

I do miss my quantum physics courses, but I don't miss Clebsch-Gordon tables!

[Tim]

It's not half-alive or half-dead! Nonsense!

The cat is massive compared to quantum particles, so gravity _compels_ it into one state or the other. Haven't you read Penrose's new works? :)

I do miss my quantum physics courses, but I don't miss Clebsch-Gordon tables!

[Tim]

Double post... modern faux paus ... my apologies.

[Gordon Stangler]

@ huh:

No you cannot hear the doppler shift of the space station. It is in space, which has no mode of transmission for sound. Remember, sound is just the compression and decompression of air due to pertabations caused my movement. There is no air in space, ergo, no sound.

[Gordon Stangler]

@Tim,

Ok, then model the cat as a massless sphere in a vacuum.

[Rob]

The space station has an amateur radio system aboard; there's human and data transmission available (packet). Here's a basic page:

http://www.rac.ca/ariss/faqariss.htm

The basic frequency is 145.8 MHz in the VHF range. .01%=.015MHz = .015kHz. In actual practice, you only have to tweak the radio by 5kHz, the smallest step on two of my three VHF transmitter/receivers. The ear can compensate for the rest, and there's geometry involved that knocks down the frequency change.

For folks that have really good amateur satellite setups, the radio frequency is controlled by a computer that calculates the doppler shift and automatically tunes the radio for you. The satellite tracker program I use just tells me the expected doppler shift for a given frequency.

[Geoffrey Alan Cope]

It sounds to me like Rob is one of those "Stealth Ninjas" who COULD be responsible for "Global Cooling". It is rather unfortunate that they aren't more Robs and as opposed to Robbers or Robber Barons in this world!

[Rob]

"It sounds to me like Rob is one of those 'Stealth Ninjas' who COULD be responsible for 'Global Cooling'."

No, I'm not. But maybe I should be.

"They say that a hero will save us,
But I'm not going to stand here and wait."

Geoffrey, thank you for the kick in the tucas.

[Geoffrey Alan Cope]

Funny you should mention that Rob. The books I read mention heroes (plural not singular). The OED is much more specific:

Heroine:
1. In ancient mythology, a female intermediate between a woman and a goddess; a demi-goddess.
2. A woman distinguished by exalted courage, fortitude or noble achievements.

Hero:
A name given (as in Homer) to men of superhuman strength , courage, or ability, favoured by the gods; at a later time regarded as intermediate between gods and men, and immortal.

Perhaps the poets knew that discrete math didn't translate into eloquent English:

"Now is the time for all good men and/or women....."

I knew what they meant...

[Rob]

Right now, I'm reading "Superheroes and Philosophy."

If Mr. Fantastic were a utilitarian, and he had two wounded people who could be saved by organ transplants from a single bystander, should the single bystander be sacrificed?

What would Socrates say about Uncle Ben? Is Clark lying to Lois wrong about his alter ego? What would Mills think about costumed vigilantes?

Great fun, especially since I used to dress up in a costume with a utility belt and drive around at night in a tricked out vehicle rescuing people. There were a lot of good things about being a paramedic.