I was afraid of that. The guy at Fermi paint where I get my supplies always hits me with a Planck when I ask for gluon paint. But at least he's constant. He always tells me the paint must not be shaken or stirred, but spun, one and only one time. Go figure.
I asked my friend Werner about the electron popping thing - he said he was uncertain. 'Nuff for now - pardon me while I duck.
Ed
I thought the idea was that you can know where the electron is or what direction it is travelling, but never both at the same time. So (theoretically) you could know exactly where it is located, which would lead to it popping in and out of the space under examination, since the "exactness" restricts the space to ever smaller observational limits.
It makes it hard as hell to paint the damn things. :-)
Ed
On 20 Aug 2005 06:28:39 -0700, "redbelly" Gave us:
The guy is a freakin' loon.
Which would prove what exactly? I could do the same with a piece of string strung out over the quarter mile, and that doesn't mean I can pull on the string to move it at a rate faster than you can drive.
just because the signal reaches the end of the wire doesn't mean it's the exact same electrons coming out one end that went in at the other a fraction of a second earlier, because it isn't.
Well, yes, that's a somewhat better description of the uncertainty principle. But it really is talking about a particle's position and momentum. The direction of travel is included in that.
Still, electrons do not pop out of existance, as one might believe after reading the wikipedia description. The space the electron might be located in (after having been located precisely at some earlier time) is not infinite in size, since the electron can not travel faster than the speed of light. Choose a large enough volume of space, and you can be certain the electron is still located somewhere within it.
Mark
existance -> existence
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