Recent content by IHateMayonnaise

Hi there, Back in the day (10 years ago) I used to be really good at photography, however the hobby died out since I was in high school, my film budget was slim to none. Here we are ten years later, and I'm thinking of getting another camera: A DSLR. I like Nikon, so I want to stick with...

Homework Statement I just took a test, and I am very unsure of the validity of how I approached the problem. Just looking for some feedback cause this is bugging me! There is a circuit in the xz-plane (vertical), and the circuit has on it a gate. The gate is a pendulum of length L, which...

Ah; silly silly me. Sort of like successive Stern-Gerlach apparatus. If the same observable is measured, it should return the same result. In this case the new state would be \lvert \psi \rangle = R_{21} Y_1^0 \chi_+ Is this correct? Anyway, later on in the problem (part c) it asks...

Perhaps my perception of QM is askew but my understanding was that this was not the case. If the cat were a particle and I happened to measure spin up, to me what you're saying is that it will always be spin up with certainty for subsequent measurements. This cannot be; if for no other reason...

It changes it; it collapses in according with the outcome of the measurement. In Schrodinger's cat speak, if our initial wave function is \lvert \psi \rangle = \alpha \lvert \psi \rangle_{\text{dead}} + \beta \lvert \psi \rangle_{\text{alive}} Where we know that the cat has to be...

Thanks for the reply graphene. I understand what b) is asking; I just don't know how to find the new coefficients.

Homework Statement This is an extension to problem 4.55 in Griffiths. The problem is: The electron in a hydrogen atom occupies the combined spin and position state: \lvert \psi \rangle = R_{21} \left(\sqrt{1/3} Y_1^0 \chi_+ + \sqrt{2/3} Y_1^1 \chi_-\right) a) If S_z is measured, what...

I don't mean to be a lazy moocher, but can you be a bit more specific?

Thanks for the reply hotvette. I was afraid you were going to say that; as you can see this expression is not so fun, differentiably speaking. I checked my work and there were a couple mistakes, but it is equally disgusting. I differentiated in Mathematica, set them equal, and it can't solve...

Homework Statement I'm attaching a drawing depicting the problem, hopefully the mods will approve it soon. In words: A ball is dropped from some height h_0 and hits a point on a wedge at some angle \theta at some height up the wedge h^\prime. Optimize h^\prime and \theta for which the range is...

Homework Statement This is Exercise 9 from chapter 15 of merzbacer. It asks to find \lvert\psi(x,t)\rvert^2 given: \psi(x,t)=[2\pi(\Delta x)_0^2]^{-1/4}\left[1+\frac{i\hbar t}{2m(\Delta x)_0^2} \right]^{-1/2} \exp\left[\frac{-\frac{x^2}{4(\Delta x)_0^2}+ik_0x-ik_0^2\frac{\hbar...

I am not seeing how to do this.. my math methods books don't seem to be of much help. Can you recommend some literature specific to this? thanks for your help by the way!

There's only one pole right? At x->\infty? Typically I would integrate over the upper hemisphere.

Yes isn't that what I had? I am supposed to integrate it over the complex plane, this is what the problem asks and I won't get credit if I do it any other way.

Homework Statement I need to solve: \int_{-\infty}^{\infty}xe^{(a-x)^2}dx Homework Equations The Attempt at a Solution My first intuition would be to rewrite this as: \oint_cze^{(a-z)^2}dz and then use Cauchy's Residue theorem to calculate the integral. There is one singularity at x_o=0...