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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bra%E2%80%93ket_notation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bra%E2%80%93ket_notation I remember learning about this at uni in one of t
by reallydontask 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bra%E2%80%93ket_notation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bra%E2%80%93ket_notation
I remember learning about this at uni in one of the more advanced QM modules.
I remember thinking: Seriously, couldn't they've come up with a better name?
- eigenloss 7y agoIt's basically a 90-year-old pun involving splitting the word "bracket" into "bra" and "ket".
- _Microft 7y agoWhy bracket? The reason is that there is not only ket vectors |v> but also functionals <u| that can be applied to them, which will look like this <u|v>. So there are brackets around the construct. Think <bra|ket> if you like.
- saalweachter 7y agoSometimes I don't know whether to be proud of or disappointed in our species.
- eigenloss 7y agoYeah, it's not like any programmers have ever come up with bizzare and useless names for abstractions.
- najarvg 7y agoClearly OT but the excessive reliance on foo and bar in many of my early C lang learning examples really slowed down my ability to transfer said techniques into something meaningful. Eventually one of my friends working in the Visual C++ team (I'm dating myself here) explained the connection of foo and bar to fubar and kind of felt like this!
- eigenloss 7y agoI had the same experience; that's mostly what I'm referencing. Trying to use things like The Hacker's Dictionary (largely in-jokes, bad jargon, and obnoxious circular definitions) to clear it up made the problem worse. I get that it's just a humor book, but still.
- perl4ever 7y agoThe word "quark" is kind of whimsical, but the names of the types of quark seem arbitrary and unhelpful.
- reallydontask 7y agoit is strange that you have such a charming notion about the flavours of quarks. If we turn this notion upside down maybe we could then get to the bottom of this or should i say the top? I'll see myself out