As I had mentioned in a previous post, complementarity doesn't even
crack a mention in the textbook I learnt QM from (Shankar's book). I
found it in another textbook I had (Schiff's book), which describes it
as being a another way of expressing Heisenberg's uncertainty
princple. I'm not even sure that's true, and in any case I believe
Shankar's book to be superior of the two.
When I thought about it, I realised what complementarity refers in the
double slit experiment - this is what I've been discussing. I'm not at
all certain how it applies in other contexts, however.
Cheers
On Sat, Aug 14, 2004 at 09:58:10AM -0400, John M wrote:
> Dear Russell,
>
> I really would like to read (if ever) about that darn complementarity -
> based on/around a different example from the stale double-slit experiment
> (which it was really constructed for).
>
> IMO the 'double' nature of particle-wave is not (well?) understood and this
> resulted in sweating out the 'complementarity' syndrome to explain some
> hard-to-follow experimental results within the ongoing formalism. (I mean to
> match the quantized items within the system).
>
> Since 2x10^m million experiments - calculations and 3x10^n papers (not to
> speak about hundreds of prizes, tenthousands of tenure) have been devoted to
> the concept - taught to 3 consecutive generations of
> young receptive brains, it would be a BIG job to reformulate it.
>
> Yet it would be refreshing to approach the concept from another side
> (another framework), - maybe a new one??????
>
> John Mikes
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Russell Standish" <R.Standish.domain.name.hidden>
> To: "Fred Chen" <flipsu5.domain.name.hidden>
> Cc: "'Everything List'" <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
> Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2004 5:50 AM
> Subject: Re: Quantum Rebel
>
>
--
*PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
may safely ignore this attachment.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/Prof Russell Standish Director
High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967, 8308 3119 (mobile)
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax 9385 6965, 0425 253119 (")
Australia R.Standish.domain.name.hidden
Room 2075, Red Centre http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
- application/pgp-signature attachment: stored
Received on Sat Aug 14 2004 - 20:07:59 PDT