Talk:Quantum Mechanics
From SkepticWiki
This doesn't seem to be finished.
The section on Bell's Theorem is terse, to say the least.
--- Dr A.
The 'Relationship to the paranormal' section is rather uninformative - I hope to address this.
--- Rikstar
That's Great Rik! Definately out of my scope as a sound engineer. Good to have such informed and educated folk around on this subject. Welcome!
---Ducky
The definition of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is incomplete. The relationship is not just between the uncertainties of position and velocity. The HUP says that product of the uncertainties of position and momentum are always greater than Planck's constant. Momentum is Mass x Velocity, so the uncertainty of momentum can be written as the uncertainty in velocity times mass. The significance is that this puts mass on the left side of the equation. The mass of anything which is visible to the naked eye is so much larger than Planck's constant that the HUP is preserved even if the uncertainties of position and velocity are vanishingly small (but not zero). This is why we never see the effects of the HUP in our daily lives.
One other addition for this section might be to use zero point motion (or zero point energy) to illustrate that the HUP is not just a limitation of measurement. Zero point motion is the vibration of particles which are at (or, more realistically, very close to) absolute zero. They vibrate because if they actually stopped moving completely their momentum would be zero and therefore the uncertainty of their momentum would be zero. This would violate the HUP. So zero point motion is literally particles moving around in spite of the absence of thermodynamic energy just so they do not violate the Uncertainty Principle.
My interest in physics is strictly amateur hour, so I do not want to edit the main page until better educated people have had a chance to shoot down the above. I'll stop back in a couple of weeks. If no one has pointed out that I am off base, I will edit the main page section on the Uncertainty Principle. I promise I will write it better than this.
-- Terrapin
