Recent content by hmm.max

That's a good way of putting it.

Yeah those are eigenfunctions of the "free particle" hamiltonian (where V = 0 everywhere), but not of the infinite square well hamiltonian.

of course, i completely agree, sweet springs. in a non-zero potential, momentum eigenstates don't have definite energy. i was first talking specifically about the case of zero potential, in order to address the difference between a sinusoidal wave function and a momentum eigenstate, in concrete...

You may have resolved this already, but to elaborate on what I just said, there isn't a one to one correspondence, even for zero potential energy. There are many different momentum states with the same energy. So in general, energy states are superpositions of different momentum states. For...

I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but here's a simple answer- Even in situations with NO potential energy anywhere, energy eigenstates are not generally momentum eigenstates. A particle's kinetic energy depends on the magnitude, but not the direction of its momentum. So most...

As a reader of this thread, I would personally rather that ThomasT wasn't discouraged from participating in the conversation. As someone trying to understand the current state of affairs with "hidden variable theories", his comments were the only part of this thread that peaked my interest, i.e...

I'm wondering how it has been determined that the electron is really a point-like particle. Searching for this topic, I came across a post by humanino, saying that one way we know this is that observations of the electron's "form factor" are consistent with what you'd see for a pointlike...

my situation and aspirations are exactly the same. i have the vague notion that i want to get into condensed matter physics and materials science. i'd also be interested to hear any ideas.

applied to a bunch of physics and materials science programs. rejected by- national nanotechnology infrastructure network optics in paris through the university of michigan accepted by- materials science at georgia tech plasma physics NUF at General Atomics in san diego haven't heard...