Recent content by tpg

You would have to define what you mean by the "speed of expansion of space" to get a completely meaningful answer to this. However, intuitively I think it we can say that it cannot be expanding at the speed of light. Just consider two points in space, A & B, separated by some distance. We...

Hi Biologik, If I interpret your question correctly, you are asking how friction generates heat you can feel. Is that right? If so, then I'm afraid there are a few problems with your explanation! So, all the electrons in your clothes and your chair will be bound to atoms. Quantum mechanics...

Firstly: as to why the speed of light assumes the value that it does, nobody really knows. The majority of current theories take it as a constant. As mathman says, relativity explains nicely why the speed of light is, in effect, a universal "speed limit". All massless particles, such as...

Consider dimensionally: A delta function of x has dimensions of [L-1]. For correct normalisation, we require the spatial wavefunction to have dimension [L-1/2], suggesting that the square root is correct.

On a fundamental level, the design of LaTeX means that the user will write down a document semantically, rather than deal with formatting directly. That is, you would never set something as "bold, size 14", but as a "heading". These tags are then tied to a 'style' template, of which you will...

If you intend producing papers for scientific publications in the future, I would recommend learning LaTeX, as it is almost a standard across different publications, so the time spent learning would be well invested. Else I'm sure you could manage fine with Word. As a compromise, you could try...

Mathtype is not identical to LaTeX, and has a distinctly different style. In my opinion, the symbols look messy in comparison to the Computer Modern font used by default by LaTeX. For a very nice LaTeX frontend, take a look at LyX (http://www.lyx.org" ). Whilst knowing the fundamental...

I don't think you need to use the state labels actually - I think it is actually as trivial as it looks!

Ah - I see. Of course, a state of well defined position will not remain that way, hence the Schrödinger equation does not apply. Thank you both very much for clearing that up. In that case, does anyone know how to derive one form of the Schrödinger equation from the other?

So is the application of the Schödinger equation to a theoretical state of well-defined position invalid? I'm working on a theoretical basis here, and under that assumption surely the two forms of the Schödinger equation ought to be compatible?

Hi everyone, I'm having an issue trying to make the abstract form of the schrodinger equation: i\hbar\frac{\partial}{\partial t}\left|\psi\right\rangle = H\left|\psi\right\rangle be consistent with the form that operates on wavefunctions in the position representation...

I don't think you necessarily need even to consider the centre of mass - I think you can just show that the TDSE turns out the same in both cases. I'm not entirely sure though, I'll try to have a look at this problem later. I think section 2.4 of "The physics of Quantum Mechanics", Binney &...