Monday, April 21, 2008

Art Pisstory

I used art history in an explanation of quatum physics...

Quantum Randomness. Ok determinism in general states that a die can be thrown and if you know all of its physics you can predict exactly what side it will land on. This eliminates classical randomness as an obstical. Now, in quantum randomness, there aren't precise ways to calculate an objects position or momentum. Instead, there are probability fields, for example there is a probability field that an electron exists in. Now one part of the region may be more likely to contain the electron than another, but we know where it probably is. Now all of these tiny probabilities all added up and super-positioning on one another create a very classical looking macroscopic universe. I have done the calculation myself. It is called the correspondence principle, if you want to look it up. Basically, even though the basic constituents of the universe are run by probabilities, the universe as a marcoscopic whole is very deterministic. A good analogy would be Seurat's painting, "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte", it is made out of random colored dots if you look at it up close, but from far away it looks like a picture of something.

I guess I was wrong when I said that class was totally useless.

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