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PBS Video Comment: “What If Physics IS NOT Describing Reality”

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PBS Space Time produces some very good videos on the foundations of quantum mechanics (QM), so let me comment on their video What If Physics IS NOT Describing Reality to provide (crucial) missing information. This comment pertains only to the first 9 min of the video, i.e., it has nothing to do with “entropic uncertainty,”…

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Aspects Behind the Concept of Dimension in Various Fields

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Abstract It took until the last century for physicists and mathematicians in the Netherlands to question the Euclidean concept of dimension as length, width, and height. Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer published a ground-breaking paper On the Natural Concept of Dimension (Amsterdam, [2]) in 1913 about the mathematical definition of dimension picking up a thought from…

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Addition of Velocities (Velocity Composition) in Special Relativity

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The “Addition of Velocities” formula (more correctly, the “Composition of Velocities” formula) in Special Relativity [tex]\frac{v_{AC}}{c}=\frac{ \frac{v_{AB}}{c}+\frac{v_{BC}}{c} }{1 + \frac{v_{AB}}{c} \frac{v_{BC}}{c}}[/tex] is a non-intuitive result that arises from a “hyperbolic-tangent of a sum”-identity in Minkowski spacetime geometry, with its use of hyperbolic trigonometry. However, I claim it is difficult to obtain this by looking at…

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Schrödinger’s Cat and the Qbit

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The concept of quantum superposition (or superposition for short) is very counterintuitive, as Schr##\ddot{\text{o}}##dinger noted in 1935 writing [1], “One can even set up quite ridiculous cases.” To make his point, he assumed a cat was closed out of sight in a box with a radioactive material that would decay with 50% probability within an…

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The Slinky Drop Experiment Analysed

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The slinky drop is a rather simple experiment. In its most basic form, it requires only a popular toy for children, a stable hand, and a keen eye. For a better view, using a modern smartphone to capture a video of the experiment also helps to capture the falling slinky. Apart from the commonly quoted…

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Is the Universe Finite, or Is It Infinite?

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Standard cosmological models come in three flavors, open, flat, and closed,[Carroll] whose spatial curvatures are negative, zero, and positive. The open and flat types have infinite spatial volume. The closed one has finite spatial volume; spatially, it is the three-dimensional analog of the surface of a sphere. Since all three are solutions to the Einstein…

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How to Solve a Multi-Atwood Machine Assembly

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Introduction The figure on the right shows a “double-double” Atwood machine with three ideal pulleys and four masses.  All pulleys are released from rest simultaneously.  Which of the choices below describes the angular motion of the top pulley P after some time has elapsed and why? It rotates clockwise with increasing angular speed. It rotates…

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Epsilontic – Limits and Continuity

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Abstract I remember that I had some difficulties moving from school mathematics to university mathematics. From what I read on PF through the years, I think I’m not the only one who struggled at that point. We mainly learned algorithms at school, i.e. how things are calculated. At university, I soon met a quantity called…

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The Poor Man’s Milli-Ohm Meter

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Introduction In a previous article on measuring battery internal resistance, a simple technique for low-resistance measurement was outlined. In this article, the technique has been modified and expanded somewhat although the basic method remains the same. It is about as simple as it gets – one passes current through a reference resistor in series with…

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