A website from the Institute of Physics

• Sign in
• Forgotten your password?
• Sign up
• Contact us

4 comments

Comments on this article are now closed.

• 1
  M. Asghar Mar 8, 2013 4:02 PM

  Real thing

  As QM represents Nature at a certain scale of things, the wavefunction has to be an intrinsic part of it. When one does not know this wavefunction, one has to use mathematical(iterative) operations to guess/dig it out.

  • Offensive? Unsuitable? Notify Editor
• 2
  walkerlee Mar 10, 2013 1:54 AM

  Standing waves and energy levels

  Is there a formula that would describe the conversion of a normal distribution curve to a sine wave, and from this relatively high amplitude and low frequency sine wave to lower amplitude and higher frequency sine wave? I notice this effect and looking into what is known about it.
  If you like standing waves being converted to higher energy standing wave and how it was made from a material buckled into a bell curve you may want to view this video.
  
  youtu.be…wrBsqiE0vG4
  
  wlg

  • Offensive? Unsuitable? Notify Editor
• 3
  ASIWEL Mar 24, 2013 4:27 AM Kalamazoo, United States

  Obvious but still interesting

  @walkerlee: That was a nice YouTube video clip, very interesting. Funny, it seemed "obvious" to me what was going to happen ... but, on second thought, I am not quite sure why it seemed that way ... or quite what the ramifications might be in terms of, say, probability, transforming the normal distribution in this manner. I am now "wondering" how the mean and standard deviation of the ND would relate to the amplitude and freq of the wave. It would be curious to apply Fourier transforms to, say, noise source or achievement test score data, etc., use spectroscopy to identify "factors" and "latent traits", etc. (Ha, maybe it is too late at night to be commenting.)

  Edited by ASIWEL on Mar 24, 2013 4:35 AM.

  • Offensive? Unsuitable? Notify Editor
• 4
  peerally Mar 25, 2013 7:50 PM Vacoas, Mauritius

  Wave function

  The issue of what is a wavefunction and whether it is real is a very difficult one to answer. What we can understand is that it lies at the root of existence and of the origin of the universe. It is the indetermistic nature of the WF which is its greatest nature. Without it, there would not be a universe like ours. Now whether is it real is a strange question. There is something that we know exist but it is between what is real for us and the unreal. How could it be otherwise. Had it been real real then would zillions of such states exist. It has got to be sort of neutral and then takes some reality when measured for instance. On the issue of whether mere observation or some form of consciousness could trigger it into a formal observation is not impossible but cannot be known for sure. This is because we do not understand what consciousness actually is. It might be something welldemarcated or it might be fuzzy, or it might be in interplay with a more general state. The future in this domain will reveal lots of exciting things and that is where we need to put in a lot of enegy.

  • Offensive? Unsuitable? Notify Editor