Quantum physics

[arensb@xxxxxxxxxxx (Andrew Arensburger)]

(This just materialized on my desk one day.  It's in my handwriting, so
I must have written it, though I'll deny it if I'm indicted.  -AA)

The topic for today is quantum physics.  Quantum physics was developed
in the 1930's, as a result of a bet between Albert Einstein and Niels
Bohr, to see who could come up with the most ridiculous theory and
still have it published.  Most people agree that Bohr won hands down,
although Einstein did very well in the swimsuit competition.

One of the most important researchers in quantum physics is Werner
Heisenberg, a man with a wonderful sense of humor, who was always
cracking one-liners, like "delta-p times delta-x is less than h!"  Ha!
ha!  What a card!  This is known as Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle,
which is closely related to Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem, which says
that some things are true, but you can't prove them, like when my wife
and I argue over whether it's her turn to take out the garbage or not.

What Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle says is that if something is
small enough, you can't say anything about it.  Anyone with the I.Q.  of
baking powder immediately understood that this means that if you look
at something so small that you can't even *see* it, like my dog, Oscar
Wilde's, brain, then you obviously can't tell, say, what color it is.

But some people didn't get the joke, and decided to investigate this
principle further.  They would gather and sit around all day, drinking
beer and performing "Gedankesexperimenten," or "Thank God we're
theoretical physicists so we don't have to get our hands dirty with
particle accelerators and other heavy machinery."  The most famous of
these is Schroedinger's Cat, where several physicists kidnap Erwin
Schroedinger's cat Fluffy and lock it up in a box, along with a
radioactive source such as Cheez Doodles.  Then they walk around with
concerned expressions on their faces, commenting about how they don't
know what's going on inside the box.  This goes on until the cleaning
lady discovers the box, opens it and tells the physicists whether the
cat is dead, or whether it has mutated into a man-eating flea the size
of Norway.

The point of this experiment is to show that uncertainty at the quantum
level can be detected in the macroscopic world and produce widespread
anxiety and paranoia.  It also explains why paper clips just lie there
while you look at them, but as soon as you turn your back, they run
away, giggling wildly, and transform themselves into coat hangers.

Another famous researcher is Richard Feynman, who invented Feynman
diagrams, which are bunches of squiggly lines with greek letters next
to them.  The way they were discovered was, one day, Hans Bethe came in
to Feynman's office to say that some of the guys down in particle
research were having a jam session down by the cyclotron, and would
Richard like to come over and bring his bongos?  Feynman was out, at
the time, cracking a safe or something, so Bethe tried to leave him a
note.  On the desk, he found one of Feynman's daughter's kindergarten
drawings.  Bethe couldn't make head or tail of it, and figured that if
even he couldn't understand it, then it must be something Terribly
Clever, and promptly called it a Feynman diagram.

This was a major scientific breakthrough, and ever since, proud parents
have been hanging their children's Feynman diagrams on refrigerators
with little muon-shaped magnets, confident that their Little Darlings
are developing important scientific theories every day, because they
are, after all, Gifted Children.