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Carpal Tunnel
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To say that a quantum leap is a very small distance really misses the point. It's only a small distance from our macro point of view. The point is that in a quantum leap the subatomic particle starts at point A and ends up at point B without ever being anywhere in between.
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Carpal Tunnel
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"According to this new theory, and electron moving between orbits would disappear from one and reappear instantaneously in another without visiting the space in between. "This idea -the famous "quantum leap"- is of course utterly strange, but it was too good not to be true."
"It seemed as if there was no end to strangeness. As physicists delved deeper, they realized they had found a world where not only could electrons jump from one orbit to another without travelling across any intervening space, but matter could pop into existance from nothing ar all-"provided", in words of Alan Lightman of MIT, "it disappears again with sufficient haste"
(This is a passage from "A Short History of Nearly Everthing" by Bill Bryson.
It is written for persons like me, with no scientific education whatsoever. But it reads like a novel and do I understand right from these two quoted parts that quantum leaps refer to both micro and macro? )
Things I never knew of but vaguely now prove to be really very interesting.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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the two quotes both speak of electrons; how, from that, do you arrive at a 'macro' reading?
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Carpal Tunnel
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It's called analogy. Or either that, or metaphor, one. The literal meaning of quantum leap could be used to define the octave leap of an overblown flute or the distinct notes of a bugle call.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I understood that what goes on within an atom similarly happens in space, at large distances. (Maybe my interpretation is wrong)
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Carpal Tunnel
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I tend to think of electrons not as discrete little blobs but as wave forms in resonance around the nucleus of the atom. If there are n cycles in a particular orbital there would be (n + m) in the next orbital out, where n would be some integer and m some small integer. This would be perfectly analogous to the flute and bugle examples where n=m=1 in the flute example and n=3 and m=1, 2, 3 in the bugle example.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Thank you. I understand there is a difference between narrator Faldage and narrator Bill Bryson. Numbers and mathematical comparisons are definitely byond my understanding.
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