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04:49
Hello!
@soupless Hi :-)
I want to ask a question. Our teacher taught us that the reference standards are meter, second, and kilogram. If meter and kilogram both depend on time, then time must be the only reference standard. Why include it?
The meter is defined from:
1. the second (defined from a caesium clock)
2. the speed of light (defined to be a constant)
So time alone isn't enough to define what a meter is. You need a second quantity, which is the speed of light.
Oh, ok. I got it. Thank you very much.
Likewise the definition of the kilogram requires the Planck constant as well as the second.
04:57
Final question for now, can I ask for links from Meta, something like How to ask a good question from Math.SE?
The meta can be used to ask about anything relating to the way the Physics SE works. For example that question you linked is about how best to ask questions on the Math SE.
I'm not sure what you mean by asking for links. Can you give an example of what you want to ask about?
I am having a hard time describing it, something like a walkthrough, guides, or any post about policies and rules of Physics.SE?
That sounds a reasonable question for the Meta.
To probably make it clearer, this post provides links to various posts regarding different topics such as How to write math and Enforcement of Quality Standards. Maybe there are links like this for Physics?
 
2 hours later…
07:07
@soupless This?
07:35
@soupless Have a look at the help center and faqs
08:29
0
Q: Should this "WTC collapse" question be reopened?

AbdullahI feel that this question should not be closed, as it is a physics-related question that stumps a lot of people, and contributes greatly to myths. 9/11 attack: How can a whole building fall even though impact only on the top of building? It has been closed as off-topic, despite asking for an "exp...

 
1 hour later…
09:33
Thank you very much.
10:13
it's kind of annoying to get a disputed/declined flag when the post was severely edited by the time it was reviewed...
10:24
Hi, is this really an electron? youtube.com/watch?v=ofp-OHIq6Wo&t=26s somehow I doubt it's the real electron but not sure
Hi! I have a question. I want to know what does it mean to say: "the smaller the time interval we have, the greater the uncertainty in energy is" This is to explain the equation delta E * delta t = h where h is Plank's constant. According to my understanding is that the smaller time interval we have, the greater amount of energy we need. Is this correct?
10:58
@user777 "energy we need" for what? See physics.stackexchange.com/q/53802/50583 for proper interpretations of "energy-time uncertainty"
@user777 the energy time uncertainty is more complicated than you think. It does not simply relate an uncertainty in energy to an uncertainty in time like the position-momentum uncertainty principle does.
Anyway, this is the original page for the video phys.org/news/2008-02-electron.html
11:58
@ACuriousMind I mean energy we need to move a quantum state to another distinguishable quantum state. Thanks for the link
I don't know what that means - in principle two states can have the same energy yet still be distinguishable by other observables
In many cases, even
12:32
0
Q: User name disappeared

ACB(Sorry for asking this silly question) Until yesterday, my username was visible in this circle. But now it does not seem. So I have to search my name under the 'users' section to go to my profile. Am I the only one facing this problem? What is the reason for this?

@ACuriousMind The reason I asked this question is because I'm reading this paper: Ultimate physical limits to computation by Seth Lloyd which said in page 3, the following: " ... the laws of quantum mechanics determine the maximum rate at which a system with spread in energy \Delta E can move from one distinguishable state to another." If this is not what I wrote above, then what he means here
12:48
did you read the answer by joshphysics in the question I linked? He explains exactly what $\Delta t$ means
I suspect your source just interprets "on observable has changed by a standard deviation" as "the system has changed from one distinguishable state to another", but "distinguishable state" is not really a formal notion in QM
13:32
@JohnRennie don't both these principles effectively come from the same mathematical expression? (the generalized uncertainty principle)
No
There's no time operator in QM
just read joshphysics' answer
 
2 hours later…
16:01
hi all
@ACuriousMind I forgot to thank you for the feedback
thanks a lot
16:42
no worries
16:57
I am confused whether in this question, the answer by Dale is correct or the answer by benrg is the correct one physics.stackexchange.com/q/590790/113699. Can anyone suggest what’s the correct thing….@Slereah
17:35
The Einstein synchronization convetion is, as the name implies, a convention
it's not a law of nature
There are many conventions you can adopt
Not all of them make sense but the Einstein convention isn't special
The important thing to take away from the notion is that synchronization isn't a trivial idea
18:04
@Slereah but as benrg points out that if we postulate that speed of light in an inertial frame is c, my understanding of the postulate was too the same that speed of light won’t depend on source direction etc ( only then can it be c always in an inertial frame). Hence the one way speed of light is c ( other wise the 2nd postulate will not hold true; speed of light won’t remain
same in two inertial frames, in one moving towards the right and in one moving towards the left)
I'm afraid that if I start answering that, things are gonna start being weird and abstract
That is
"What does it mean for the speed of light being $c$ for a single observer"
So this one way speed of light is a postulate, just the 2nd postulate and not a convention
@Slereah you mean we are back at the synchronisation problem, right
Pretty much
But that way we can’t calculate the one way speed of anything like a ball
What does it mena
*mean
but yes you are right, if we use different synchronization conventions, then it does mean that, in the sense of coordinates, the speed of light is faster in one direction
Basically the synchronization conventions is a choice of how you slice your spacetime into spacelike hypersurfaces
18:08
@Slereah so doesn’t that effect the 2nd postulate
I mean see above
What does it mean
If in some coordinate speed of light is faster than c
Those different speeds aren't something you can measure in a way that changes experiments
Yeah I get you, you saying we can just measure two way speed
But then this synchronisation trouble is there calculating one way speed of a ball too, right
Things get very complicated in relativity because there are plenty of obvious sounding things that you can't assume anymore
Sure, but on a physical level, it doesn't matter
When you do a physical measurement, it is always local
18:11
In Newtonian Mechanics things were good, only because we had an absolute time.
photons bounce off the ball and go into your eyes
Well Newtonian mechanics was already a nightmare
there were many many debates and there still are
people don't talk about them too much because they're not cool anymore
Actually the idea of synchronization is, technically, already an idea in Newtonian mechanics
But people didn't think about this back then
It was only discovered after relatvity that this idea was also applicable to classical mechanics
@Slereah do you know of any reference that discusses these abstract things in a detail in both in SR or Newtonian Mechanics, like a paper or book or maybe a book on philosophy of space time
Except of course, the synchronization is just the limit $c \to \infty$
So things are much easier
Just for time pass
@Shashaank Reichenbach's "Philosophy of space and time"
the standard book on the topic
18:14
Have you read it, is it nice
I have read it
it is... a book on the abstract notions of measurements in relativity
It is as nice as you consider this topic to be
Cool thanks I will try it
Hahaaa
Hahaa
I have just read a bit of Maudlin
Non Locality
you can also check out "Axiomatization of the theory of relativity" by Reichenbach if you want more
Although I'm not sure that's a topic people clamor for more usually
Cool
Yeah I have got Einstein’s copy @Slereah thanks
I think the important thing to keep in mind if you start thinking about such topics is
"What do I read on the instrument"
The coordinates you construct are important but if you start worrying about them being real you're not gonna have a good time
18:38
Coordinates weren't even an idea people had until the 16th century
So don't fetishize them too much
they are just a tool to use
 
3 hours later…
21:12
Can someone explain to me the difference in the type of radiation from something like a plutonium core vs a particle accelerator?
nuclear fission chain reactions just shoot out a ton of gamma/x-rays? Does an accelerated beam of particles just have a lot of energy thus making it harmful?
 
1 hour later…
22:45
So different sources can result of the radiation of different types of particles (note this is a bit different than considering photons as radiation like you do in E&M).
As far as I know, for circular accelerators like the LHC, the idea is to get the collision energy high enough to create particles of interest based on the collision alone, so particles below a certain mass range can be created by an accelerator of a given energy.
For the linear accelerators I know of, the idea is to accelerate some nucleus and collide it with a target of a given material. You then typically get a variety of
There's also this nice interactive table of nuclides since the ones on wikipedia don't seem to zoom
https://people.physics.anu.edu.au/~ecs103/chart/
0
Q: Justifying claims

ZeroTheHeroMany posters report claims in statements such as This author claims that… Some claim that… OR Someone claims that… I read that… containing no supporting evidence, source or reference. Should we insist that claims always be supported in the body of post (question or answer) by a source citation?


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