5 ms·

The Schrödinger equation emerges from classical mechanics most closely (well ok that's a bit subjective) from the Hamilton Jacobi frame work, and it was indeed

by ben_WG 3y ago

The Schrödinger equation emerges from classical mechanics most closely (well ok that's a bit subjective) from the Hamilton Jacobi frame work, and it was indeed here that Schrödinger saw, in hindsight, because in the beginning he pretty much guessed it, the biggest connection to classical dynamics. This is also related to the optic-mechanical relation that abstracts mechanics to the point it becomes comparable to optics. Hamilton Jacobi theory: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton%E2%80%93Jacobi_equation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton%E2%80%93Jacobi_equa... Optic-mechanical analogy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton%27s_optico-mechanical_analogy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton%27s_optico-mechanic... Schrödinger equation from HJ theory: https://www.reed.edu/physics/faculty/wheeler/documents/Quantum%20Mechanics/Miscellaneous%20Essays/Schrodinger's%20Argument.pdf https://www.reed.edu/physics/faculty/wheeler/documents/Quant...

patcon 3y ago
> in the beginning he pretty much guessed it Ah, you've given me a thought I'm grateful for. Thanks! I'm someone who's had a gut feeling about something in some random niche of science for several years. I've spent that time slowly gathering evidence from the literature to validate my hunch. It feels less like a "guess" and more like a high dimensional observation (of a form that's hard to cite or trace origins for) that first needs to be re-grounded in "real research". Though maybe it DID feel like a guess to Schrödinger...! but if he didn't say it that way, I'd assume it's not quite so accurate a framing :) though it is an entertaining way to communicate it, and I appreciate that it lends a sense of serendipity and happenstance and luck, which is perhaps the most important thing to telegraph about how science happens... to take a swing at the false inevitability and certainty that has its hooks in our histories!
- danbruc 3y ago
  I've spent that time slowly gathering evidence from the literature to validate my hunch. That is most likely the wrong way to go about this, you should probably look for evidence that your hunch is wrong, that it is in conflict with established physics.
  - exe34 3y ago
    It can mean the same thing - when I have a hunch I think of as many ways of shooting it down as possible - but that often involves predicting something starting from the hunch and then testing that prediction against nature/existing literature. I'd still call it "trying to validate this hunch".
  - jdewerd 3y ago
    Right, in fact it's very much "a thing" for bored/retired engineers (or otherwise physics-adjacent) to guess a new physics principle and convince themselves that it must be correct without actually doing the boring and difficult work of checking it against existing known-good principles / data and coming up with experiments that prove it to be usefully differentiated. You know, the difficult parts of science. This is the source of a steady stream of crackpots that regularly pester the physics community. Don't be one of them. If your trajectory doesn't include a bunch of graduate level physics classes, a literature review, and a big math slog, you are at risk. Existing techniques are very powerful and you need to know them well before you know what counts as a genuine addition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11lPhMSulSU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11lPhMSulSU
    - i_am_a_peasant 3y ago
      Meh, I wish I'd had taken the physics path. But life happened. Too late to change now. Maybe I can at least make a lot of money by making something useful.
      - jdewerd 3y ago
        The fact that physical theory has such good coverage of everyday circumstances is really tough news if you want to do physics, but it's excellent news if you want to do engineering :)
  - emmelaich 3y ago
    Yes, pruning hunches fast is important - then again it's important to have the hunches in the first place.
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago
  wat?
  - i_am_a_squirrel 3y ago
    I'm guessing mushrooms and/or some sort of stimulant.
    - mlyle 3y ago
      Thinking about where ideas come from is valuable. This thing that I'm intuiting, but don't have a firm logical path to prove or explain: - Is it actually grounded in subconscious observations of real things, and things that I'm learning but cannot yet articulate? - Or is it just something that I made up and I'm pursuing uncritically? Being able to tell the difference more of the time saves a lot of effort.
  - glompers 3y ago
    GP is saying that there are hunches that are not ready for primetime but which are creative thought nonetheless, and which need to be worked with before they can become workable. It's a good thought, echoed by quotes from other designers like Alden Dow, as well as theologians, scientists, and engineers. Not an encouraging way of letting GP know you encountered difficulty in engaging the nonstandard phrasing. GP was trying to discuss the phenomenon without disclosing his or her hypothesis directly.
- _fizz_buzz_ 3y ago
  It was a guess in a sense, but a very educated guess. Schrödinger didn’t get lucky, he was hard working, talented and very educated in his field. He was already one of the most revered physicist at the time he came up with the Schrödinger equation.
  - NotSuspicious 3y ago
    And in the Christmas spirit, he made his big discovery while cheating with his wife on a Christmas retreat in 1925-1926 >A few days before Christmas, 1925, Schrodinger, a Viennese-born professor of physics at the University of Zurich, took off for a two-and-a-half-week vacation at a villa in the Swiss Alpine town of Arosa. Leaving his wife in Zurich, he took along de Broglie's thesis, an old Viennese girlfriend (whose identity remains a mystery) and two pearls. Placing a pearl in each ear to screen out any distracting noise, and the woman in bed for inspiration, Schrodinger set to work on wave mechanics. When he and the mystery lady emerged from the rigors of their holiday on Jan. 9, 1926, the great discovery was firmly in hand. https://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/07/books/the-lone-ranger-of-quantum-mechanics.html https://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/07/books/the-lone-ranger-of-... He was also an admitted pedophile. It is possible that that "mystery girlfriend" he was with while coming up with his revolutionary perspective on quantum physics was an underage girl he was grooming https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/how-erwin-schrödinger-indulged-his-lolita-complex-in-ireland-1.4749204 https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/how-erwin-s... https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccacoffey/2022/01/24/schrdinger-pedophilia-the-cat-is-out-of-the-bag-box/?sh=2f3c88a842ff https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccacoffey/2022/01/24/schrdi...
    - kridsdale1 3y ago
      Sounds like a stretch if she was described as “an old girlfriend” (as in, much time has passed, not that she is old). But she may have been significantly young in their first relationship, who knows?

by ben_WG 3y ago

patcon 3y ago

> in the beginning he pretty much guessed it Ah, you've given me a thought I'm grateful for. Thanks! I'm someone who's had a gut feeling about something in some random niche of science for several years. I've spent that time slowly gathering evidence from the literature to validate my hunch. It feels less like a "guess" and more like a high dimensional observation (of a form that's hard to cite or trace origins for) that first needs to be re-grounded in "real research". Though maybe it DID feel like a guess to Schrödinger...! but if he didn't say it that way, I'd assume it's not quite so accurate a framing :) though it is an entertaining way to communicate it, and I appreciate that it lends a sense of serendipity and happenstance and luck, which is perhaps the most important thing to telegraph about how science happens... to take a swing at the false inevitability and certainty that has its hooks in our histories!

danbruc 3y ago
I've spent that time slowly gathering evidence from the literature to validate my hunch. That is most likely the wrong way to go about this, you should probably look for evidence that your hunch is wrong, that it is in conflict with established physics.
- exe34 3y ago
  It can mean the same thing - when I have a hunch I think of as many ways of shooting it down as possible - but that often involves predicting something starting from the hunch and then testing that prediction against nature/existing literature. I'd still call it "trying to validate this hunch".
- jdewerd 3y ago
  Right, in fact it's very much "a thing" for bored/retired engineers (or otherwise physics-adjacent) to guess a new physics principle and convince themselves that it must be correct without actually doing the boring and difficult work of checking it against existing known-good principles / data and coming up with experiments that prove it to be usefully differentiated. You know, the difficult parts of science. This is the source of a steady stream of crackpots that regularly pester the physics community. Don't be one of them. If your trajectory doesn't include a bunch of graduate level physics classes, a literature review, and a big math slog, you are at risk. Existing techniques are very powerful and you need to know them well before you know what counts as a genuine addition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11lPhMSulSU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11lPhMSulSU
  - i_am_a_peasant 3y ago
    Meh, I wish I'd had taken the physics path. But life happened. Too late to change now. Maybe I can at least make a lot of money by making something useful.
    - jdewerd 3y ago
      The fact that physical theory has such good coverage of everyday circumstances is really tough news if you want to do physics, but it's excellent news if you want to do engineering :)
- emmelaich 3y ago
  Yes, pruning hunches fast is important - then again it's important to have the hunches in the first place.
_a_a_a_ 3y ago
wat?
- i_am_a_squirrel 3y ago
  I'm guessing mushrooms and/or some sort of stimulant.
  - mlyle 3y ago
    Thinking about where ideas come from is valuable. This thing that I'm intuiting, but don't have a firm logical path to prove or explain: - Is it actually grounded in subconscious observations of real things, and things that I'm learning but cannot yet articulate? - Or is it just something that I made up and I'm pursuing uncritically? Being able to tell the difference more of the time saves a lot of effort.
- glompers 3y ago
  GP is saying that there are hunches that are not ready for primetime but which are creative thought nonetheless, and which need to be worked with before they can become workable. It's a good thought, echoed by quotes from other designers like Alden Dow, as well as theologians, scientists, and engineers. Not an encouraging way of letting GP know you encountered difficulty in engaging the nonstandard phrasing. GP was trying to discuss the phenomenon without disclosing his or her hypothesis directly.
_fizz_buzz_ 3y ago
It was a guess in a sense, but a very educated guess. Schrödinger didn’t get lucky, he was hard working, talented and very educated in his field. He was already one of the most revered physicist at the time he came up with the Schrödinger equation.
- NotSuspicious 3y ago
  And in the Christmas spirit, he made his big discovery while cheating with his wife on a Christmas retreat in 1925-1926 >A few days before Christmas, 1925, Schrodinger, a Viennese-born professor of physics at the University of Zurich, took off for a two-and-a-half-week vacation at a villa in the Swiss Alpine town of Arosa. Leaving his wife in Zurich, he took along de Broglie's thesis, an old Viennese girlfriend (whose identity remains a mystery) and two pearls. Placing a pearl in each ear to screen out any distracting noise, and the woman in bed for inspiration, Schrodinger set to work on wave mechanics. When he and the mystery lady emerged from the rigors of their holiday on Jan. 9, 1926, the great discovery was firmly in hand. https://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/07/books/the-lone-ranger-of-quantum-mechanics.html https://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/07/books/the-lone-ranger-of-... He was also an admitted pedophile. It is possible that that "mystery girlfriend" he was with while coming up with his revolutionary perspective on quantum physics was an underage girl he was grooming https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/how-erwin-schrödinger-indulged-his-lolita-complex-in-ireland-1.4749204 https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/how-erwin-s... https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccacoffey/2022/01/24/schrdinger-pedophilia-the-cat-is-out-of-the-bag-box/?sh=2f3c88a842ff https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccacoffey/2022/01/24/schrdi...
  - kridsdale1 3y ago
    Sounds like a stretch if she was described as “an old girlfriend” (as in, much time has passed, not that she is old). But she may have been significantly young in their first relationship, who knows?