Visualizing Quantum Mechanics

Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the computer.

[Note: There's a neat video below the fold. ]

A Confession

I was recently rereading the Feynman Lectures on Physics. If you haven't read them lately, I highly recommend them. Feynman is always a pleasure to read. As usual, I was surprised. This time the surprise came in lecture 9, which the way the course was laid out meant that this was something like the last lecture in the third week that these students had ever received of university level physics.

The lecture is on Newton's laws of dynamics. The start is of course Newton's first (second) law,
\[ F = \frac{d }{dt } (mv ) \]
which, provided the mass is constant takes the more familiar form
\[ F = ma \]

After discussing the meaning of the equation and how in general it can give you a set of equations to solve, he naturally uses an example to illustrate the kinds of problems you can solve.

What system does he choose to use as the first illustration of a dynamical system?

Another Reason Why The Core is Stupid

I assume everyone has heard of The Core, the terrible scifi movie from 2003.

If you haven't you're missing out on what appears to be, according to Discover magazine, the worst sci-fi film ever. There are already numerous sites that discuss the bad science in the core (here, or over at Bad Astronomy), but they all seem to ignore another fundamental problem with the plot.

I don't think I'll give too much away if I tell you that the basic premise of the movie is that the earth's core has stopped rotating, and so the earth's magnetic field is collapsing, which they claim will mean that all of the previously deflected microwaves (note: EM radiation is not bent by a magnetic field) will cook us all. Now, a lot of people have focused on the microwaves bit, which while bad science, one could argue that we would still have some bad effects from loosing our magnetic field.

The problem I have is that the Earth's magnetic field cannot change that abruptly.