Tuesday, July 20, 2004

To the tune of My Favorite Things:

I take my car to a quantum mechanic.
He's a little bit strange, and perhaps a bit manic.
He strokes Schrodinger's cat, and uncertainly sings:
What are a few of my favorite things?

My position! My momentum! All that folderol.
I can know one of two of my favorite things,
So why can't I know them all?

(The answer to that last why question has something to do with non-commutativity of certain operators -- as I understand it, that's really what the uncertainty principle is about. I might be able to say something more if I actually understood something about quantum mechanics; alas, knowing something about spectral theory for continuous self-adjoint operators is not quite the same.)

  • Currently drinking: to the confusion of my foes?