interference
vs.
diffraction
Diffraction is the same thing as interference. IMO interference is a better term, make diffraction a synonym of it; not the other way around (I think that it's a one-way process)
On math.SE, I've noticed tons of integration questions not being tagged homework, and being answered pretty quickly. I suppose that this is because integration is one of those topics that does need an expert at times, and each integration has a concept involved.
So, do we have something similar over here? If a question looks homework-y but has a deep concept involved (which isn't apparent), do we untag it?
On the integration thing: math.SE is a lot less strict about homework questions than we are. I suspect that if the equivalent of our standards were applied there, many of those integration questions would be retagged with homework, and a lot of them might be closed.
If a question doesn't look like a homework question, I'd say check with the OP, and if they confirm that it's not about a homework assignment or self-study or some such thing, then go ahead and remove the tag. But in general it's not so bad to have the tag on a question where it doesn't belong - at least, not as bad as not having the tag on a question where it does belong.
A month ago, when I right-clicked on mathjax equations, I was able to see the TeX source window. Now, a window does get opened (I see it in the taskbar), but I can't switch to it; no matter what I try. Alt-tab, clicking it, using taskmanager all don't work.
Does this happen to others?
Google Ch...
@Manishearth I'll have to think about that. This is getting kind of close to quantum electrodynamics, in which the magnetic field isn't really a thing on its own, so I'm not sure if you can just make magnetic field kets like that.
I have some things to do at the moment but I will get back to you on that
OK, here's the gist of my thought process: if the particle is in a superposition of spin up and spin down, you can apply Maxwell's equations to the case where it's spin up, and separately to the case where it's spin down, and calculate the resulting effect on the measuring device (or another particle, or whatever) in each case. The state of the measuring device will be a superposition of these two results.
This kind of comes out of the many-worlds interpretation of QM.
Yeah... you do have to keep in mind, though, that there is some very complex stuff (namely QED) going on behind the scenes that makes this happen. I doubt that I could actually derive this result from quantum field theory.
at least, not without a lot of time to read and then do calculations
Well, in the question I linked above, I had two points for it being wrong. With the maxwell-on-a-superposition thingy, it turns out that (1) is derivable from (2)
Yeah, pretty much. I basically agree with your answer. IMO the key point is that the magnetic field is not zero in the superposition. (I was about to post an answer emphasizing that but I'd just be saying the same thing you did, more or less)
Oughtn't we create wave-particle-duality or particle-wave-duality? I wanted to add it to my question, but I felt that if the tag isn't there, there's probably a good reason for it, so better ask out here.
MathJax allows the use of \newcommand in TeX. For example, this command:
\newcommand{\lorentz}[1]{\frac{#1}{\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}}}
would be pretty useful in lots of situations. If this was placed somewhere in the body (AFAIK before it is called), then \lorentz{m_0} would give the expression...
@DavidZaslavsky Actually, the question was on the historical confusion of waves/particles, with no relation to QM. But I felt that the historical situation could also be called wave-particle duality, since at that time, nobody was sure about the nature of light. That's a sort-of-duality :P
@Manishearth Oh, you mean the one about Newton's corpuscular theory? I see... I guess that works, although the meaning of wave-particle-duality in that case is a tiny bit different from what we usually use it to mean these days.
This is prompted by What is the origin of the naming convention for position functions?, which asks why s is used as the letter for position. We've had a few other questions like this; feel free to edit in more examples.
Are these questions on topic? They're not really about physical concepts, b...
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interference
vs.
diffraction
Diffraction is the same thing as interference. IMO interference is a better term, make diffraction a synonym of it; not the other way around (I think that it's a one-way process)
As a thank you for being awesome, if you have at least 1340 reputation (as of Feb 24) and are on page 1 or page 2 of …
http://physics.stackexchange.com/users?tab=reputation&filter=all
… we'll be sending you a little care package shortly:
Physics Stack Exchange t-shirt in you...
