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Re: In Search of Schrödinger's Cat

By: Decomposed in 6TH POPE | Recommend this post (0)
Thu, 09 Mar 23 1:23 PM | 54 view(s)
Boardmark this board | 6th Edition Pope Board 		Msg. 40838 of 60008
(This msg. is a reply to 40510 by Decomposed)
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This is a really good book. I'm in chapter seven (out of eleven) and am NOT completely lost. That's saying a lot since the quantum is impossible to understand and I've never taken a course in it. But the author does a great job of skating through topics that could easily bog a reader down: Quantum algebra, spin, p numbers, q numbers, matrix mathematics, relativistic effects, etc., while still conveying the necessary conclusions. All the mathematicians and physicists who deserve to have "The Genius" stapled to their first names are included: Hamilton, Planck, Bohr, Born, Jordan, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Pauli, de Broglie, Dirac, Rutherford, Balmer, Feynman, Rontgen, Thomson.

Throughout, like a driving force or the glue that held them all together, there was Einstein. It's hard for me to even believe how brilliant the man was. In spite of the publicity generated by his theory of relativity, the greatest of Einstein’s contributions was his work on quantum theory. At almost every stage, Einstein was in the thick of it. Even after his last great contribution in 1925, he was often the one who affirmed some unknown's discovery, propelling it to the front of scientific thought years before it otherwise would have. His E=mc² (when momentum is zero) was directly responsible for Dirac's description of the negative energy sea that permeates the subatomic world... and antimatter. In the 1940s, it was Einstein who persuaded FDR to develop the atomic bomb. In the 1950s, he expressed the (now thought to be correct) view that the 200+ subatomic particles that had been discovered shouldn't be worried about since they "would eventually appear as solutions to the equations of a unified field theory."

Einstein just had an innate talent for seeing past classical physics describing the world we know and connecting dots that explain the one we don't.

If you've got an interest in science, buy this book. You should be able to find a used copy for under $10. And if you ask nicely, I'd be happy to share my summary ... when it's done. It's currently 16 pages long and will probably come in at about 25.




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Gold is $1,581/oz today. When it hits $2,000, it will be up 26.5%. Let's see how long that takes. - De 3/11/2013 - ANSWER: 7 Years, 5 Months

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The above is a reply to the following message:
In Search of Schrodinger's Cat
By: Decomposed in 6TH POPE
Sun, 26 Feb 23 9:50 AM 		Msg. 40510 of 60008

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I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it.”
- Erwin Schrodinger, 1887 - 1961

I just started John Gribbin's book. It claims to be written for the layman, but I'm expecting it to be one of the most mind-boggling subjects I've ever tackled. I hope I can finish it.

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