Picturesque Physics

For the love of Physics (φυσική (fysikí̱))📖💡📕🌌📐🔬🔭Δ ρ ν α β γ θ ψ λ η μ π δ τ φ //

[chillyfeetsteak]

Ok I'll bite

What is your special interest and do you have any fun facts about it?

ok there's this thing in the sahara desert called the Richat Structure. It's 30 miles wide, it can only really be seen from space. it just looks like this giant fucking EYE in the middle of the desert. i came across it by accident while just scrolling around on google earth like a decade ago and went HUH???? cause it's so creepy and weird so then I got obsessed.

basically scientists think it's a highly eroded dome and not an impact site or man-made or anything. a bunch of different kinds of rock are exposed in concentric rings. however, it is an archeological site and they've found a bunch of Archeulean tools and artifacts in great condition there (like stone axes and stuff from homo erectus). archeologists think this area was used in tool manufacturing.

im just totally fascinated i think it's cool as hell

[philosophybits]

“Nature forms us for ourselves, not for others; to be, not to seem.”

— Michel de Montaigne, Essais

[philosophybits]

“Anybody can be angry, but to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, that is not easy.”

— Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

[philosophybits]

“One recognizes one’s course by discovering the paths that stray from it.”

— Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

[picturesquephysics]

From the point of view of a physicist, the exponential, sine and cosine functions are interesting only because they are the solutions to differential equations. To us, they are defined to be the solution to ODEs, akin to how the Hermite, Legendre, Laguerre etc. polynomials are defined to be solutions to PDEs. P.S. If you ONLY knew about the geometric definition of the sine function, you’d have to be very smart to see that it’s the solution to d^x/dx^2=-(constant)x Think about it this way: let's say you want to describe some natural phenomena you see, for example radioactive decay and simple harmonic motion. If you go about trying to solve the equations describing these phenomena, you would have discovered / invented the exponential and sine functions. Wow. The exponential and trig functions indeed are deep rooted in nature.

A math lecture

[picturesquephysics]

A mathematical challenge.

In 1929 in Göttingen, a challenge to express any whole number using the number 2 precisely four times, and using only well-known mathematical symbols, was introduced. 

The first few numbers are easy:

1 = (2 + 2)/(2 + 2),

2 = (2/2) + (2/2),

3 = (2 x 2) - (2/2),

4 = 2 + 2 + 2 - 2.

The game became much more difficult even for Göttingen’s finest mathematical minds. Hundreds of hours were spent playing the game with higher and higher numbers - until Paul Dirac found a simple and general formula enabling any number to be expressed using four 2s, entirely within the rules. He had rendered the game pointless. 

Dirac’s solution relies on a basic property of logarithms: 

and is

where the number of radicals is exactly n square roots. 

One may think that Dirac killed the game using only three 2s. Each symbol in the formula is very common in mathematics, so Dirac’s solution is still within the rules of the game. 

Content inspired by The Strangest Man by Graham Farmelo 

[curiosamathematica]

When you are collecting mushrooms, you only see the mushroom itself. But if you are a mycologist, you know that the real mushroom is in the earth. There’s an enormous thing down there, and you just see the fruit, the body that you eat.  In mathematics, the upper part of the mushroom corresponds to theorems that you see, but you don’t see the things which are below, that is: problems, conjectures, mistakes, ideas, and so on.

Vladimir Arnold

(via curiosamathematica)

I think this applies to almost everything in life. It is a human convenience to take things at surface value; we rarely think deeply and analyze what we are seeing. Every successful product/ idea/ paper/ company is a result

[picturesquephysics]

From Quanta Magazine's article: "3-D Fractals Offer Clues to Complex Systems".

[picturesquephysics]

“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” ~ Sartre

[picturesquephysics]

The conception of objective reality ... has thus evaporated ... into the transparent clarity of mathematics that represents no longer the behavior of particles but rather our knowledge of this behavior

Werner Heisenberg, on the role of measurements in quantum mechanics

[picturesquephysics]

Awesome sugar pack! Cern’s LHC during the 2016 run accelerated the number of protons contained in one grain of sugar. (Edited) pictures from here, original post by Life Lab Foundation. 

[picturesquephysics]

No one else judges you. No one has the right to judge you. Only you do. You all know that. At least you should do. The most wonderful thing is to not judge yourself at all.

Ajahn Brahm, Buddhist 

[picturesquephysics]

First paper I read to get started on my dissertation on weak measurements and values. Was overwhelmed by the 28 citations before the end of the first page. But after having read many more papers, one gets used to it. ƪ(˘⌣˘)ʃ 

This 2014 paper by Denmmayr et. al., titled "Observation of a quantum Cheshire Cat in a matter-wave interferometer experiment" is an attempted experimental realization of the theoretical proposal of "Quantum Cheshire Cats" by Aharonov et. al. in 2013, in which it was claimed that a particle and its property can be spatially separated... 

Akin to the separation of the Cheshire cat's grin from its body in Alice in Wonderland, this paper reported results which indicate that a neutron (the cat) travelled through one beam path while its magnetic moment (the cat’s grin) travelled along another in an interferometer. 

To date, there is still much debate on the interpretation of this phenomenon. 

You might like to check out Numberphile’s video on this.

👻

[picturesquephysics]

Bless the person who made this. I love it. 

[numb3rth30ry]

Fractalize.

[picturesquephysics]

It’s my favorite time of the year 👻🎃🕯

[thephysicsqueen]

05.09.2018 ~

Lecture notes from thermodynamics/statistical mechanics 🌻

Today consisted of quantum mechanics worksheet due friday, lectures and more lectures. Overall, a very productive day (:

[picturesquephysics]

This brings back ‘Fundamentals of Solid State Physics’ memories.