Quotes About Mechanics

Dirac's quantum mechanics thus allows us to do two things. First, to calculate which values a physical variable may assume. This is called "calculation of the spectrum of a variable"; it captures the granular nature of things.

Time sits at the center of the tangle of problems raised by the intersection of gravity, quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics.

Remember that a key result of quantum mechanics is precisely the fact that information is finite. The number of alternative results that we can obtain measuring a physical system* is infinite in classical mechanics; but thanks to quantum theory, we have understood that, in reality, it is finite. Quantum mechanics can be understood as the discovery that information in nature is always finite.

The entire formal structure of quantum mechanics can be in large measure expressed in two simple postulates:1 The relevant information in any physical system is finite. You can always obtain new information on a physical system.

A handful of elementary ingredients that act like bricks in a gigantic Lego set, and with which the entire material reality surrounding us is constructed. The nature of these particles, and the way they move, is described by quantum mechanics.

Why are precisely these elements listed there, and why does the periodic table have this particular structure, with these periods, and with the elements having these specific properties? The answer is that each element corresponds to one solution of the main equation of quantum mechanics. The whole of chemistry emerges from a single equation.

The world of quantum mechanics is not a world of objects: it is a world of events.

In quantum mechanics no object has a definite position, except when colliding headlong with something else. In order to describe it in mid-flight, between one interaction and another, we use an abstract mathematical formula that has no existence in real space, only in abstract mathematical space.

Growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I was fascinated by mechanical and electrical gadgets—anything with a cord, a plug, a battery, a light, a motor.

Anthropogenic": What agenda allows us to put "human influence" (greenhouse gases, aerosols, emissions) to the fore and celestial mechanics (and Mother Nature) to the rear?

It is a curious historical fact that modern quantum mechanics began with two quite different mathematical formulations: the differential equation of Schroedinger and the matrix algebra of Heisenberg. The two apparently dissimilar approaches were proved to be mathematically equivalent.

There are three types of pitchers you have to deal with. Some, you just have to tell what town they're in, remind them where they are. Some, you remind them about mechanics, and some, you have to bust their tail. You have to make them your friend and have them trust you.

My optimism is not based primarily on the successful march of democracy in recent times but rather is based on the experience of having lived in a fear society and studied the mechanics of tyranny that sustain such a society.

I have given a version of that first lecture I saw, during which I opened the casing of my own arm and directed my students' attention to the rods that contracted and extended when I wiggled my fingers.

Me and my cousin, most of the time we worked on radios and fixed them. I guess we started because I was curious to understand how radios work. When I was little, I used to think there were small people inside. Most of the time, I was just trying to see the people who are speaking in the radio.

A lot of the physical flirtation with fear I did early on in my career, when I was a much younger person - stuff I wouldn't do now. But I was very interested in the mechanics of risk and fear in those days. And I found out fear pretty much always feels the same, whether it's doing a rock climb or speaking in front of an audience.

Most of what Einstein said and did has no direct impact on what anybody reads in the Bible. Special relativity, his work in quantum mechanics, nobody even knows or cares. Where Einstein really affects the Bible is the fact that general relativity is the organizing principle for the Big Bang.

There's nothing wrong with pitch counts. But not when it's spit out by a computer, and the computer does not look at an individual's mechanics. And you can't look at his genes. It should come from the individual and the pitching coach and the manager.

The team wasn't just riders. It was the mechanics, masseurs, chefs, soigneurs, and doctors. But the most important man on the team may have been the chiropractor.

This was governed entirely by Newtonian mechanics. Each piece of the moon attracted every other piece more or less strongly depending on its mass and its distance. It could be simulated on a computer quite easily. The whole rubble cloud was gravitationally bound. Any shrapnel fast enough to escape had done so already. The rest was drifting around in a loose huddle of rocks. Sometimes they banged into one another. Eventually they would stick together and the moon would begin to re-form.

It had come from one of two corgis who were even now slamming their preposterous bodies into each other not far away, trying to roll each other over, which runs contrary to the laws of mechanics even in the case of corgis that are lean and trim, which these were not. This struggle, which appeared to be only one skirmish in a conflict of epochal standing, had driven all lesser considerations, such as guarding the gate, from the combatants' sphere of attention...

Anyone who made it through the screening and the training required to become an Arkie"—which doesn't include you, Julia—"will understand exactly what we are trying to do from an orbital mechanics standpoint.

But our relationship to these infinite pasts and futures isn't random—plausibility throws its weight around, per some freaky quantum mechanics stuff that Dr. Oda calls Feynman Diagram History Pachinko.

The hasty shake-and-bake nature of the Ymir expedition, which had stirred up so much controversy, had been forced by the implacable timeline of celestial mechanics. Time, tide, and comets waited for no man.