Books. Bikes. Boomsticks.
"What fresh hell is this?"
I laughed, therefore I am... a geek.
I started laughing as soon as I got to the name "Schroedinger". I knew where it was headed...Thank you!Joe
I giggled madly for a minute.(As for my geekiness, I doubt it was ever in doubt.)
Had to laugh...
I feel a little uncertain - am I laughing or not?
Two hydrogen atoms are walking down the street. Suddenly, one stops!"Holy shit, I've lost an electron!" says the first one."Damn! Are you sure?" asks the other atom."Yes! I'm positive!"
I found pdb's joke funnier.
Heisenberg got pulled over by a highway patrolman. "Do you know how fast you were going?" "No, but I know where I am."
"Heisenberg slept somewhere nearby."Most of what I "know" about Heisenberg and Schroedinger I got from Robert Heinlein and Walter Jon Williams.
Yeah, I thought is was funny. But I am a bit warped anyway.Mr Fixit
I go with Heinlein's comment about a "harmless, necessary cat."But for THE definitive discussion of Schrodinger and Heisenberg and cats, I refer you to Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope:Dear Cecil:Cecil, you're my final hopeOf finding out the true Straight DopeFor I have been reading of Schroedinger's catBut none of my cats are at all like that.This unusual animal (so it is said)Is simultaneously live and dead!What I don't understand is just why heCan't be one or other, unquestionably.My future now hangs in between eigenstates.In one I'm enlightened, the other I ain't.If you understand, Cecil, then show me the wayAnd rescue my psyche from quantum decay.But if this queer thing has perplexed even you,Then I will and won't see you in Schroedinger's zoo.--Randy F., ChicagoDear Randy:Schroedinger, Erwin! Professor of physics!Wrote daring equations! Confounded his critics!(Not bad, eh? Don't worry. This part of the verseStarts off pretty good, but it gets a lot worse.)Win saw that the theory that Newton'd inventedBy Einstein's discov'ries had been badly dented.What now? wailed his colleagues. Said Erwin, "Don't panic,No grease monkey I, but a quantum mechanic.Consider electrons. Now, these teeny articlesAre sometimes like waves, and then sometimes like particles.If that's not confusing, the nuclear danceOf electrons and suchlike is governed by chance!No sweat, though--my theory permits us to judgeWhere some of 'em is and the rest of 'em was."Not everyone bought this. It threatened to wreckThe comforting linkage of cause and effect.E'en Einstein had doubts, and so Schroedinger triedTo tell him what quantum mechanics implied.Said Win to Al, "Brother, suppose we've a cat,And inside a tube we have put that cat at--Along with a solitaire deck and some Fritos,A bottle of Night Train, a couple mosquitoes(Or something else rhyming) and, oh, if you got 'em,One vial prussic acid, one decaying ottomOr atom--whatever--but when it emits,A trigger device blasts the vial into bitsWhich snuffs our poor kitty. The odds of this crimeAre 50 to 50 per hour each time.The cylinder's sealed. The hour's passed away. IsOur pussy still purring--or pushing up daisies?Now, you'd say the cat either lives or it don'tBut quantum mechanics is stubborn and won't.Statistically speaking, the cat (goes the joke),Is half a cat breathing and half a cat croaked.To some this may seem a ridiculous split,But quantum mechanics must answer, "Tough @#&!We may not know much, but one thing's fo' sho':There's things in the cosmos that we cannot know.Shine light on electrons--you'll cause them to swerve.The act of observing disturbs the observed--Which ruins your test. But then if there's no testingTo see if a particle's moving or restingWhy try to conjecture? Pure useless endeavor!We know probability--certainty, never.'The effect of this notion? I very much fear'Twill make doubtful all things that were formerly clear.Till soon the cat doctors will say in reports,"We've just flipped a coin and we've learned he's a corpse."'So saith Herr Erwin. Quoth Albert, "You're nuts.God doesn't play dice with the universe, putz.I'll prove it!" he said, and the Lord knows he tried--In vain--until fin'ly he more or less died.Win spoke at the funeral: "Listen, dear friends,Sweet Al was my buddy. I must make amends.Though he doubted my theory, I'll say of this saint:Ten-to-one he's in heaven--but five bucks says he ain't."--CECIL ADAMS
It's 0700 here, so apologies for the poor quality of this one (especially after that brilliant bit of Adams)A polygon of dimensions 1,1,1000 walks into a bar. Barkeep says "Why the long face?"
I feel a little uncertain - am I laughing or not?Depends, have you been observed?
Too funny!And a visual aid:http://icanhascheezburger.com/2007/06/02/im-in-ur-quantum-box/
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