priya tuli's randombloggz

Quantum
mechanics has always fascinated me; I don’t
understand it at all. I love reading the stuff because it makes me
laugh, it’s just so much gobbledygook. As long as I read it casually,
like a spy thriller, it’s fun. The moment I try to figure out what it’s
saying, it causes my eyes to glaze over and gives me ‘Hammer of
Thor’-type headaches that won’t go away for weeks. Physics was not one
of my preferred subjects at school, as you may have surmised by now.

Why
I like something I don’t understand is simple: something
in there triggers off something else in my headspace, and I get my
jollies messing around with it. Not in a bad way, you understand. Here’s
an example.

Very simply stated, the Heisenberg principle posits that both position and momentum
(of a particle, electron, wave etc.) cannot be accurately determined.
In other words, you can accurately determine one, or the other, but not
both.

Why anyone would even want to spend that much time on the
movements (or not) of an electron, I have no idea. But somebody had to do it, I guess. And I’m quoting directly from a scientific website, so you know this is accurate:

“The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa." ~ Heisenberg, Uncertainty Paper, 1927

Okay, now my premise.

I
think Heisenberg was actually talking about politicians,
government leaders and corporate heads. Because that’s exactly how it
works out there. As long as they’re GETTING there, they have the
momentum. Once they’ve achieved the position they’re after, the momentum
tails off and the inertia sets in. So maybe
Heisenberg was on to something, after all. What he may have overlooked
is the WHY. You can only accurately determine either position or
momentum, because they’re mutually exclusive. It’s like flipping a coin;
you can get either heads, or tails. Not both. And so it is with
position and momentum. Once you’re in position, you lose momentum, and
become a ‘body at rest’. You have achieved the position you were after;
the need for momentum is now over. QED.

Of the 39,598 websites I checked for background information,
this one was actually a great browse: http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p08.htm

I
was particularly tickled at the bit about electrons jumping at random
from one energy state to another, much like some people I know. These
jumpy electrons are actually used to safely scan the brain. So now you
know, make sure you say hello to the friendly little electrons in the
CAT scan machine.

Special
thanks to Mario Boccucci, currently out in the wilds of Africa, with
whom I had many random and jumpy conversations on Heisenberg and other
such esoterica; I miss you. And Akul
Chopra, who unwittingly kicked off this train of thought tonight by
spelling it 'Hisenberg’, which my beady editorial eye instantly fixed
upon. I love when that happens!