Saturday, July 3, 2010

Heisenberg's Uncertainty and some other minor physics things

I'm bored as usual I don't have much to do for the next hour or so. I figured why not add a post. I'm not feeling too philosophical or going too in-depth with anything in my life. I just thought I would discuss some things I know/think and am interested in.

I'm a big fan of physics especially modern physics. It is a field which we know very little compared to other fields in physics. The realization of it only came about in the last century. Great names like Heisenberg and Schrodinger and Planck all worked on the field we now call quantum mechanics.

Heisenberg said that both momentum and position of a particle cannot be known simultaneously with great accuracy. The way to measure a particle is to hit it with a wave. Waves can be all sizes. It can be high energy or frequency and short wavelength or low energy and long wavelength or anywhere in between. With a high energy wave you can measure the position very accurately because the wave is hitting the particle a lot and the wavelength is very short. However, the higher the energy the more the wave hits the particle and the more it moves the particle and changes the velocity or momentum. The advantage of lower energy waves is that the particle will not be moved as much; however, this means that the wave will not hit the particle as much and not be able to measure the position as accurately. This is Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, in a nutshell from a person who has not officially taken modern physics yet. All of these theories are just things that I remember from reading Stephen Hawking and from past physics learning.

There are so many theories that are found in the modern physics field. Schrodinger's equation, Planck's black body radiation, quantum tunneling and all kinds of other stuff that I have no idea about. I just love to learn about these things I couldn't tell you why. There are other things in modern physics that are also interesting. General and special relativity and M theory. They are all so great to learn about. I don't even know much about them.

I don't even know what else to talk about, I don't feel much like typing anymore. I'm sure there is more to come

2 comments:

  1. I read this entire thing and the most I got out of it was modern physics. Just kidding. But this my friend is one of the reasons why I am a psychology major.

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  2. I did try to make it as simple as possible. I hope you got more than just modern physics. Anyway thanks for reading again. Hope it didn't bore you too much.

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