Here is a bad analogy:
If you sit down and calculate the probability of rolling a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 on a dice, you don't say that the probability is the number that comes up when you roll the dice.
The probability is the probability. The number you get when you roll is the actual number you...
I agree that absorption and emission can be described by quantum mechanics, but that would be like trying to understand how a car works by quantum mechanics. Why would you do that when classical physics works better with less uncertainty? o_O
It's not really an amplitude, is it? You calculate the probability of the particle being found in a range from x to x + delta. Then you get a probability amplitude.
Is it really a quibble to make the distinction between a wave and a particle, if there are so many folks that think that the...
This discussion, and a lot of pop-fizixs textbooks, wouldn't exist if the probability distribution was not called a "wave", because the confusion wouldn't exist.
The probability distribution is no more the physical particle than a bookies' odds are the actual horse your betting on.
There is no wave. The graph of the probability distribution looks like a wave, and follows the similar math as a wave (but with phase differences that require in the most general case complex and not real solutions), but there is no medium to this wave, it is a mathematical description of the...
Wave equations are not particles and it is unfortunate that they are even called 'wave equations'. They are probability distributions. This probability distribution is not a particle. It is a mathematical construct, a probability distribution. If you have a probability distribution for IQ for...
The idea is that a the mass of the piezoelectric material changes with the square of the rate of change of the energy in the material. You can even make the mass go negative.
Note: This is a violation of conservation of energy. You can lift an arbitrarily large mass upwards in a...
1) Interpret it as a negative voltage. So in your picture, the voltage across the device would be 9 V - (-9 V) = 18 volts. Calculate accordingly.
2) 0 Volts is usually taken as "ground". It is just a reference potential. Some voltages are below it, some above.
3) Yes, it can be +9 V to...
Experiments show that the particle does pass through both slits, before the wave function has been collapsed by a measurement. It was done by noting that it produces interference, which it wouldn't do if it passed through one slit. Copenhagen doesn't stifle thought. Of the alternatives, it is...
Well... Griffiths, "Introduction to Quantum Mechanics", 3rd ed, page 4 does point out that the Copenhagen interpretation has been verified experimentally and dispels the agnostic "shut up and calculate" view. Griffiths points to J.S. Bell's excellent book "Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum...
I believe in the many world interpretation, at the time you open the box, the event splits into two universes: one with the cat alive, and one with the cat dead.
No, I didn't do the experiment. I'm a dog person, but I like some cats, and I would never do that to any cat. I might do it to a...
I think f95toli explained it: you can always adjust a single wave function so that it is real.
Interference was mentioned as a reason for using complex functions, but you also need them if you have more than one orthonormal spanning basis function as part of your wave function.
jostpuur's...