Quantum Mechanics

I found this list of quotes concerning quantum mechanics, and I got a laugh out of them. Here they are:

do not like it, and I am sorry I ever had anything to do with it.
Erwin Schrödinger, speaking of quantum mechanics
Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum mechanics cannot possibly have understood it.
Niels Bohr (many variants exist)
God does not play dice with the cosmos.
Albert Einstein (several variants exist)
Who are you to tell God what to do?
Niels Bohr in response to Einstein
I think it is safe to say that no one understands quantum mechanics.
Richard Feynman
It's always fun to learn something new about quantum mechanics.
Benjamin Schumacher
If that turns out to be true, I'll quit physics.
Max von Laue, Nobel Laureate 1914, of de Broglie's thesis on electrons having wave properties.
Anyone wanting to discuss a quantum mechanical problem had better understand and learn to apply quantum mechanics to that problem.
Willis Lamb, Nobel Laureate 1955
J.J. Thomson
"To the electron: may it never be of any use!" [said to have been posted on the Cavendish Lab wall]
Ernest Rutherford
(1912) "Bohr's different. He's a football player!" [alleged comment on Continental theorists]
Niels Bohr
"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood a single word."
"The very nature of the quantum theory ... forces us to regard the space-time coordination and the claim of causality, the union of which characterizes the classical theories, as complementary but exclusive features of the description, symbolizing the idealization of observation and description, respectively."
"There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature."
"Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true." [to a young Physicist]
Groucho Marx
"Very interesting theory - it makes no sense at all."
Werner Heisenberg
"I myself . . . only came to believe in the uncertainty relations after many pangs of conscience. . . . "
Erwin Schrödinger
"Had I known that we were not going to get rid of this damned quantum jumping, I never would have involved myself in this business!"
Max Born
"One does not get an answer to the question, 'What is the state after collision?' but only to the question, 'How probable is a given effect of the collision?' From the standpoint of our quantum mechanics, there is no quantity which causally fixes the effect of a collision in an individual event. Should we hope to discover such properties later ... and determine [them] in individual events? ... I myself am inclined to renounce determinism in the atomic world, but that is a philosophical question for which physical arguments alone do not set standards."
Richard P. Feynman
"A philosopher once said, 'It is necessary for the very existence of science that the same conditions always produce the same results.' Well, they don't!" (1965)
(on quantum mechanics) "The paradox is only a conflict between reality and your feeling what reality ought to be."
"We have always had a great deal of difficulty understanding the world view that quantum mechanics represents. At least I do, because I'm an old enough man that I haven't got to the point that this stuff is obvious to me. Okay, I still get nervous with it.... You know how it always is, every new idea, it takes a generation or two until it becomes obvious that there's no real problem. I cannot define the real problem, therefore I suspect there's no real problem, but I'm not sure there's no real problem." (1982)
[with John Archibald Wheeler in Rev. Mod. Phys. 21, 425 (1949)]: "However unfamiliar this direct interparticle treatment compared to the electrodynamics of Maxwell and Lorentz, it deals with the same problems, talks about the same charges, considers the interactions of the same current elements, obtains the same capacitances, predicts the same inductances and yields the same physical conclusions. Consequently action-at-a-distance must have a close connection with field theory."
Lewis Carroll [from Through the Looking Glass]
'I can't believe that!' said Alice. 'Can't you?' the Queen said in a pitying tone. 'Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.' Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said; 'one cannot believe impossible things.' 'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'
David Bohm
[D. Bohm et al., Phys. Rep. 144, 321 (1987)]: "If the price of avoiding non-locality is to make an intuitive explanation impossible, one has to ask whether the cost is too great."
Albert Einstein
(after Heisenberg's 1927 lecture) "Marvelous, what ideas the young people have these days. But I don't believe a word of it."
"Quantum mechanics is very impressive. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory produces a good deal but hardly brings us closer to the secret of the Old One. I am at all events convinced that He does not play dice."
"It seems hard to look in God's cards. But I cannot for a moment believe that He plays dice and makes use of 'telepathic' means (as the current quantum theory alleges He does)."
"What nature demands from us is not a quantum theory or a wave theory; rather, nature demands from us a synthesis of these two views which thus far has exceeded the mental powers of physicists."
"However I cannot seriously believe in it because the theory is incompatible with the principle that physics is to represent reality in space and time, without spookish long-distance effects."
"The Heisenberg-Bohr tranquilizing philosophy - or religion? - is so delicately contrived that, for the time being, it provides a gentle pillow for the true believer from which he cannot very easily be aroused. So let him lie there." [Einstein and Bohr did not often see eye to eye.] - contributed by Jeff La Porte

I got them from Wikiquotes. There is some really funny stuff out there.

Rain, Scorpions, and Deadlines

Today and last night have been some of the most stressful hours of my life. Today was the deadline for several things, including a test, (which I wasn't allowed to take unless I spent about five hours doing a review, which I was assigned two days ago,) and a game about the American Civil War, which Jeremy set up and I should have done something with several weeks ago. I just finished taking the test, and it looks like I will be passing this year, going to Socotra, and feeling good about myself before I play some runescape.

Today, we welded the back two legs onto our scorpion monument, and the thing is strong enough to carry its own weight! So far, we need to attach the tail, which needs a stinger and another segment, and the claws, which we have put together but which have yet to be attached to the body, the head (or cephelothorax to use our teacher's term) and the third sets of legs. It is really exciting to see the scorpion coming together, it seems like it took forever to get this far, what with all the wire models we did before we actually got the steel grinder and the angle cutters and the welder out, and then it took forever to figure out how to use them. However, we now know how to use them, and the part of the class that really cares about the project is really excited.

It is raining today. It rained yesterday as well (which is when I learned that welders don't work while they are wet, and it is raining.) I love it when it rains. It rains every day for a month in spring, and then not at all for the rest of the year, so when that month rolls around, I have fun. (I suspect that rain makes me more active than I normally am, I certainly feel more energetic.) at any rate, It looks like I have a good 40 minutes to play Runescape.