View allAll Photos Tagged quantummechanics
Attendees mingle and enjoy coffee and cake during the 30th anniversary of the CLAS Collaboration 30th workshop at Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Va., on Thursday, November 2, 2022. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
Members of the Oppenheimer Science and Energy Leadership Program (OSELP) tour the SRF Test Lab with at Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Va., on Wednesday, May 24, 2023. (Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
Day four of the Computing in High Energy & Nuclear Physics (CHEP) conference held at the Marriott in downtown Norfolk, Va., on Monday, May. 11, 2023. (Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
Aerial photograph of Jefferson Lab's campus in Newport News, Va., on Oct. 10, 2013. (Jefferson Lab Photos)
Members of the Hampton University Proton Therapy Institute (HUPTI) and the Leo Cancer Center tour Jefferson Lab on Thursday, Mar. 2, 2023. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
Today, Hampton University Proton Therapy Institute - HUPTI announced a partnership with Leo Cancer Care to develop an upright proton arc therapy treatment technique for cancer.
The technique will allow patients to stand or sit upright and, combined with an additional CT system, may better target tumors in patients.
Jefferson Lab is proud to contribute to these efforts by applying its nuclear physics and technology expertise to help pave the way for improvements in patient care.
The recirculating electron accelerator seen inside Jefferson Lab’s Hall C located in Newport News, Va. on Monday, October, 18, 2022. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
Day four of the Computing in High Energy & Nuclear Physics (CHEP) conference held at the Marriott in downtown Norfolk, Va., on Monday, May. 11, 2023. (Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
Chief Technology Officer & Detector Systems Group Leader Drew Weisenberger, left, and Associate Director for Experimental Nuclear Physics Cynthia “Thia” Keppel, center, chats with attendees of the joint DOE/NIH Workshop: Advancing Medical Care through Discovery in the Physical Sciences Workshop Series during a welcome reception at the Newport News Marriott on Wednesday, Mar. 15, 2023. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
Is Schrödinger's cat in the box, or not? It depends on when you look at this linocut! This colour-changing thermochromic block print shows the famous thought-experiment of renown quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger (who would never hurt a real cat!). Both the cat in blue and the poison in pink will disappear when the print is exposed to heat.
In struggling to fully explain the strangeness of the quantum world, which can only be described in terms of probabilities and wave functions, Schrödinger suggested a sort of metaphor, at the size of every day things - the scale of classical physics as we know it. He imagined a cat in a steel box with a vial of poison which might be opened if, and only if, a radioactive decay occurs. In one half-life of the radioactive material, there is a 50:50 chance that the material has decayed or not. So, if the box is closed, and we cannot see within, we can only describe the state of the cat in terms of probabilistic wave functions. After one half-life, we would be forced to describe the contents of the box as the sum of the half likelihood of a live cat and the half likelihood of a dead cat. It is as if, to the outside world, there exists both a live and dead cat.... until, one opens the box and looks. Then we know we either have not yet had the radioactive decay and subsequent release of poison, so the cat is fine, or the radioactive material has decayed and the cat is no more. So, what's so special about looking in the box? Does the wave function "collapse" onto one of these two possibilities? Does the universe split into one in which the cat lives and one in which the cat does not, as in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics? I tend to side with Niels Bohr whose Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics says, as all experimentalists know, unless you observe something you cannot determine its state. However, physics cannot answer this question! We can determine the probabilities only, we cannot say why. But that's okay. Paradox is delicious.
This is one print in an edition of 10. Each print is made with the box and vial printed in normal, silver block printing ink. The cat and poison are printed using thermochromic powder and block printing medium so when heated above 30°C (86 F) then they turn colourless and disappear. Thus, as in the thought experiment, you don't know whether there is a cat in the box without looking at the print. Each print is 12.3 by 12.5 inches (31.2 cm by 31.8 cm) and made on Japanese kozo (or mulberry) paper.
Attendees mingle and enjoy coffee and cake during the 30th anniversary of the CLAS Collaboration 30th workshop at Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Va., on Thursday, November 2, 2022. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
Aerial photograph of Jefferson Lab's campus in Newport News, Va., on Oct. 10, 2013. (Jefferson Lab Photos)
Is Schrödinger's cat in the box, or not? It depends on when you look at this linocut! This colour-changing thermochromic block print shows the famous thought-experiment of renown quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger (who would never hurt a real cat!). Both the cat in blue and the poison in pink will disappear when the print is exposed to heat.
In struggling to fully explain the strangeness of the quantum world, which can only be described in terms of probabilities and wave functions, Schrödinger suggested a sort of metaphor, at the size of every day things - the scale of classical physics as we know it. He imagined a cat in a steel box with a vial of poison which might be opened if, and only if, a radioactive decay occurs. In one half-life of the radioactive material, there is a 50:50 chance that the material has decayed or not. So, if the box is closed, and we cannot see within, we can only describe the state of the cat in terms of probabilistic wave functions. After one half-life, we would be forced to describe the contents of the box as the sum of the half likelihood of a live cat and the half likelihood of a dead cat. It is as if, to the outside world, there exists both a live and dead cat.... until, one opens the box and looks. Then we know we either have not yet had the radioactive decay and subsequent release of poison, so the cat is fine, or the radioactive material has decayed and the cat is no more. So, what's so special about looking in the box? Does the wave function "collapse" onto one of these two possibilities? Does the universe split into one in which the cat lives and one in which the cat does not, as in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics? I tend to side with Niels Bohr whose Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics says, as all experimentalists know, unless you observe something you cannot determine its state. However, physics cannot answer this question! We can determine the probabilities only, we cannot say why. But that's okay. Paradox is delicious.
This is one print in an edition of 10. Each print is made with the box and vial printed in normal, silver block printing ink. The cat and poison are printed using thermochromic powder and block printing medium so when heated above 30°C (86 F) then they turn colourless and disappear. Thus, as in the thought experiment, you don't know whether there is a cat in the box without looking at the print. Each print is 12.3 by 12.5 inches (31.2 cm by 31.8 cm) and made on Japanese kozo (or mulberry) paper.
Cryomodule components inside the SRF Test Lab at Jefferson Lab on Wednesday, Mar. 16, 2023. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
Facilities Management & Logistics group photo at the CEBAF Center of Jefferson Lab on Thursday, Feb. 9, 2023. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
Einstein says that if you're having your teeth drilled without Novocain, a minute seems like an hour. But if you're sitting with a beautiful woman on your lap, an hour seems like a minute.
Students taking part in the 37th Annual Hampton University Graduate Studies (HUGS) Program tour Experimental Hall C at Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Va., on Friday, June 2, 2023. (Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
The HUGS Program at Jefferson Lab is an educational summer program designed for experimental and theoretical nuclear and particle physics graduate students who have finished their coursework and have at least one year of research experience in these fields.
Attendees mingle and enjoy coffee and cake during the 30th anniversary of the CLAS Collaboration 30th workshop at Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Va., on Thursday, November 2, 2022. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) provides scientists worldwide the lab’s unique particle accelerator, known as the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF), to probe the most basic building blocks of matter by conducting research at the frontiers of nuclear physics (NP) and related disciplines.
In addition, the lab capitalizes on its unique technologies and expertise to perform advanced computing and applied research with industry and university partners, and provides programs designed to help educate the next generation in science and technology. Thursday, December 1, 2022. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
Attendees mingle and enjoy coffee and cake during the 30th anniversary of the CLAS Collaboration 30th workshop at Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Va., on Thursday, November 2, 2022. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
How many topics in physics are contained in a simple rainbow produced on the wall (and toilet) by sun shining through a plastic privacy screen?
Well...the light from the sun is composed of many different wavelengths...the distribution of which is dependent on the temperature of the star - which ours is centered on the the yellow. When the the light encounters an optically dense medium (glass or plastic in this case), the light is absorbed by the molecules and passed from molecule to molecule, the probability of which an absorption and emission occurs is described by Feynman's QED. The principle of least action (from D'Alembert and Lagrangian mechanics) finds the maximum probability amplitude, and hence the interaction that occurs, or the direction the light is refracted. The path of light through the medium is dependent on the wavelength and frequency of the light. One can back up to PAM Dirac's relativistic quantum mechanics, ingeniously melded Schrodinger's wave equation and/or Heisenberg's Matrix mechanics with Einstein's relativity, which determined that the only certainty in the universe is the speed of light. Everything else including Newton's fixed stars and time...TIME itself are mutable to make the speed of light constant in every situation. Dirac faced with the actual energy of a particle being the square root of the rest mass and its motion, devised a Hamiltonian that required matricies, later interpreted by Pauli as spin states of particles. Schoedinger and Heisenberg following Bohr's amazing leap of quantized orbits to describe Plancks description of light as quanta....actually they were named by Einstein to describe the photoelectric effect....but Planck needed the quantized description of light to explain the ultraviolet disaster of Rayleigh. Planck was working for the electric company to maximize the light output of municipal utilities at the least cost.... TBC
Jefferson Lab Director Stuart Henderson, left, chats with Newport News Mayor Phillip Jones, center, and Director of Tech Center Research Park Jeff Johnson, right, during the Friends of Jefferson Lab member meeting held at JLab in Newport News, Va., on Monday, March 29, 2023. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
Seen inside Experimental Hall C at Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Va., on Friday, June 2, 2023. (Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
Radiation Control Technician Shantelle Brown uses a micro REM dose rate meter to survey magnets inside a storage building at Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Va., on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
These magnets came from Argonne National Laboratory, which shipped the 30-year-old Advanced Photon Source (APS) magnets to Brookhaven and Jefferson Lab, where they will be re-purposed for use as part of the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), a state-of-the-art particle collider being led by those other two labs and that will be built at Brookhaven.
This is a block printed portrait of Danish physicist Niels Bohr (1885-1962). One of his most famous contributions to quantum mechanics was the Bohr-Rutherford model of the atom. Bohr is shown in front of the Bohr model of the Hydrogen atom (all the concentric circles are actually at the appropriate spacing, proportional to the n squared, which probably reflects on my sanity in some way). Bohr proposed that the orbits of electrons were somewhat like planetary orbits (though circular, and at specific quantized distances). To explain how orbitting charged electrons didn't lose energy and annihilate spectacularly with the so-called "spiral death" (physicists are big on melodrama, I'm telling you), he stipulated that perhaps they simply weren't allowed anywhere but the specific orbits. They could lower their energy state if excited by falling to a lower orbit, giving off a specific photon of a specific colour related to the difference between energy levels. This also explained how the spectra of gases had distinct, thin, spectral lines. I've illustrated this with the Balmer series - because it is composed of lines which are visible to the eye (H-alpha is red and caused by a jump from the 3rd to 2nd orbit; H-beta is cyan and caused by a jump from the 4th to 2nd orbit; H-gamma is indigo and caused by a jump from the 5th to 2nd orbit; and H-delta is violet and caused by a jump from the 6th to 2nd orbit). I've shown both the quantum jumps (squigelly arrows - squigelly lines are tradition for photons) and by the line spectrum below Bohr.
This is a first edition print (one of eight) on Japanese kozo (mulberry) paper, (12.5" by 17").
U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Director Dr. Asmeret Asefaw Berhe tours Hall B during a visit to Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Va., on Friday, Mar. 24, 2023. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
The Dancing Wu Li Masters:
An Overview of the New Physics
by Gary Zukav (1979)
"'Schrödinger's Cat' sums up the differences between classical physics, the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, and the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics [...]
"A cat is placed inside a box. Inside the box is a device which can release a gas, instantly killing the cat. A random event [...] determines whether the gas is released or not. There is no way of knowing, outside of looking into the box, what happens inside it. The box is sealed and the experiment is activated [...]
"According to classical physics, the cat is either dead or it is not dead. All that we have to do is open the box and see which is the case. According to Quantum Mechanics, the situation is not so simple.
"The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics says that the cat is in a kind of limbo represented by a wave function which contains the possibility that the cat is dead and also the possibility that the cat is alive. When we look in the box, and not before, one of the possibilities actualizes and the other vanishes. This is known as the collapse of the wave function because the hump in the wave function representing the possibility that did not occur, collapses. It is necessary to look into the box before either possibility can occur. Until then, there is only a wave function [...]
"According to the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, at the instant [the experiment is activated], the world splits into two branches, each with a different edition of the cat. The wave function representing the cat does not collapse. The cat is both dead and alive. At the instant that we look into the box, our wave function also splits into two branches, one associated with the branch of reality in which the cat is dead and one associated with the branch of reality in which the cat is alive. Neither consciousness is aware of the other."
- pages 94-96
_______
If you understand this, but were never able to memorise your times tables, you can be my friend.
Zukav was brought to my attention by a prof I had in university who taught curriculum theory and implimentation. It was a dry fucking course, but the prof (whose name escapes me at the moment) was really cool. We talked a lot about philosophy and identity and reality, and that the new way mathematicians were understanding the world held more in common with traditional and pagan religions than it does with other "hard sciences" or state religions.
_______
Day 17 in my 365÷52 Photo Project.
Jefferson Lab User and Assistant Professor at Hampton University Dr. Bishnu Pandey, left, poses with physics students from the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) and Professor of Physics at Old Dominion University Col. George M. Brooke poses for a group photo before a tour of Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Va., on Thursday, Apr. 6, 2023. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
How many topics in physics are contained in a simple rainbow produced on the wall (and toilet) by sun shining through a plastic privacy screen?
Well...the light from the sun is composed of many different wavelengths...the distribution of which is dependent on the temperature of the star - which ours is centered on the the yellow. When the the light encounters an optically dense medium (glass or plastic in this case), the light is absorbed by the molecules and passed from molecule to molecule, the probability of which an absorption and emission occurs is described by Feynman's QED. The principle of least action (from D'Alembert and Lagrangian mechanics) finds the maximum probability amplitude, and hence the interaction that occurs, or the direction the light is refracted. The path of light through the medium is dependent on the wavelength and frequency of the light. One can back up to PAM Dirac's relativistic quantum mechanics, ingeniously melded Schrodinger's wave equation and/or Heisenberg's Matrix mechanics with Einstein's relativity, which determined that the only certainty in the universe is the speed of light. Everything else including Newton's fixed stars and time...TIME itself are mutable to make the speed of light constant in every situation. Dirac faced with the actual energy of a particle being the square root of the rest mass and its motion, devised a Hamiltonian that required matricies, later interpreted by Pauli as spin states of particles. Schoedinger and Heisenberg following Bohr's amazing leap of quantized orbits to describe Plancks description of light as quanta....actually they were named by Einstein to describe the photoelectric effect....but Planck needed the quantized description of light to explain the ultraviolet disaster of Rayleigh. Planck was working for the electric company to maximize the light output of municipal utilities at the least cost.... TBC
Attendees mingle and enjoy coffee and cake during the 30th anniversary of the CLAS Collaboration 30th workshop at Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Va., on Thursday, November 2, 2022. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
The moon shines over the Technology & Engineering Development (TED) buildling as the sun begins to set on December 1, 2022. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
Newsome House Museum & Cultural Center’s Museum Assistant James Pope carries Hollinger archives boxes into the Newsome House storage area in Newport News, Va. Jefferson Lab gifted approximately 44 archival boxes to the Newsome House on Friday, Dec. 16, 2022. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
The restored Victorian landmark is a historic fixture in the city, serving not only as a museum to prominent African-American attorney J. Thomas Newsome and his wife Mary Winfield Newsome’s accomplishments, but as a venue for exhibitions, special events, and community functions. It was the first structure owned by an African-American to receive a National Historic Preservation Award.
This is a block printed portrait of Danish physicist Niels Bohr (1885-1962). One of his most famous contributions to quantum mechanics was the Bohr-Rutherford model of the atom. Bohr is shown in front of the Bohr model of the Hydrogen atom (all the concentric circles are actually at the appropriate spacing, proportional to the n squared, which probably reflects on my sanity in some way). Bohr proposed that the orbits of electrons were somewhat like planetary orbits (though circular, and at specific quantized distances). To explain how orbitting charged electrons didn't lose energy and annihilate spectacularly with the so-called "spiral death" (physicists are big on melodrama, I'm telling you), he stipulated that perhaps they simply weren't allowed anywhere but the specific orbits. They could lower their energy state if excited by falling to a lower orbit, giving off a specific photon of a specific colour related to the difference between energy levels. This also explained how the spectra of gases had distinct, thin, spectral lines. I've illustrated this with the Balmer series - because it is composed of lines which are visible to the eye (H-alpha is red and caused by a jump from the 3rd to 2nd orbit; H-beta is cyan and caused by a jump from the 4th to 2nd orbit; H-gamma is indigo and caused by a jump from the 5th to 2nd orbit; and H-delta is violet and caused by a jump from the 6th to 2nd orbit). I've shown both the quantum jumps (squigelly arrows - squigelly lines are tradition for photons) and by the line spectrum below Bohr.
This is a first edition print (one of eight) on Japanese kozo (mulberry) paper, (12.5" by 17").
Attendees mingle and enjoy coffee and cake during the 30th anniversary of the CLAS Collaboration 30th workshop at Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Va., on Thursday, November 2, 2022. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
Attendees mingle and enjoy coffee and cake during the 30th anniversary of the CLAS Collaboration 30th workshop at Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Va., on Thursday, November 2, 2022. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
Jefferson Lab employees work to move a newly finished C100 cryomodule from the SRF Test lab to installing inside the CEBAF accelerator tunnel at Jefferson Lab in Newport News Va., on May 4, 2023. (Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
SRF Crymodule Assembly Tech Mike Murphey works on cryomodule parts inside the Cryomodule Assembly area in the SRF Test Lab located at Jefferson Lab on Wednesday, November 16, 2022. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
Students taking part in the 37th Annual Hampton University Graduate Studies (HUGS) Program tour the CEBAF accelerator tunnel at Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Va., on Friday, June 2, 2023. (Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
The HUGS Program at Jefferson Lab is an educational summer program designed for experimental and theoretical nuclear and particle physics graduate students who have finished their coursework and have at least one year of research experience in these fields.
A Haiku Note:
===========================
Read the Tao Teh Ching
and maybe you'll understand
what it's all about
===========================
The Tao Teh Ching of Lao Tsze
....................... Verse 1 .......................
The way in which mankind may hold
..... Is not the eternal way.
Eternal truths cannot be told
..... In what men write or say.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Translated by Charles A. Mackintosh
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ The Buddha ~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jefferson Lab’s Archives and Record Specialist Melissa Erlandson, left, unloads a trunk full of Hollinger archival boxes to be gifted to the Newsome House Museum & Cultural Center in Newport News, Va., on Friday, Dec. 16, 2022. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
The restored Victorian landmark is a historic fixture in the city, serving not only as a museum to prominent African-American attorney J. Thomas Newsome and his wife Mary Winfield Newsome’s accomplishments, but as a venue for exhibitions, special events, and community functions. It was the first structure owned by an African-American to receive a National Historic Preservation Award.
Students taking part in the 37th Annual Hampton University Graduate Studies (HUGS) Program tour the CEBAF accelerator tunnel at Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Va., on Friday, June 2, 2023. (Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
The HUGS Program at Jefferson Lab is an educational summer program designed for experimental and theoretical nuclear and particle physics graduate students who have finished their coursework and have at least one year of research experience in these fields.
Attendees mingle and enjoy coffee and cake during the 30th anniversary of the CLAS Collaboration 30th workshop at Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Va., on Thursday, November 2, 2022. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
How many topics in physics are contained in a simple rainbow produced on the wall (and toilet) by sun shining through a plastic privacy screen?
Well...the light from the sun is composed of many different wavelengths...the distribution of which is dependent on the temperature of the star - which ours is centered on the the yellow. When the the light encounters an optically dense medium (glass or plastic in this case), the light is absorbed by the molecules and passed from molecule to molecule, the probability of which an absorption and emission occurs is described by Feynman's QED. The principle of least action (from D'Alembert and Lagrangian mechanics) finds the maximum probability amplitude, and hence the interaction that occurs, or the direction the light is refracted. The path of light through the medium is dependent on the wavelength and frequency of the light. One can back up to PAM Dirac's relativistic quantum mechanics, ingeniously melded Schrodinger's wave equation and/or Heisenberg's Matrix mechanics with Einstein's relativity, which determined that the only certainty in the universe is the speed of light. Everything else including Newton's fixed stars and time...TIME itself are mutable to make the speed of light constant in every situation. Dirac faced with the actual energy of a particle being the square root of the rest mass and its motion, devised a Hamiltonian that required matricies, later interpreted by Pauli as spin states of particles. Schoedinger and Heisenberg following Bohr's amazing leap of quantized orbits to describe Plancks description of light as quanta....actually they were named by Einstein to describe the photoelectric effect....but Planck needed the quantized description of light to explain the ultraviolet disaster of Rayleigh. Planck was working for the electric company to maximize the light output of municipal utilities at the least cost.... TBC
Young science enthusiast Emmet Blake, 7, left, learns about mixed reactions with New Kent Middle School’s Carla Williams, right, during the Region II Physical Science Teacher Night held at Jefferson Lab on Newport News, Va., on Thursday, April 3, 2025. (Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
Teachers from the JSAT (Jefferson Lab Science Activities for Teachers) shared science-themed classroom activities geared toward upper elementary and middle school students.
Is Schrödinger's cat in the box, or not? It depends on when you look at this linocut! This colour-changing thermochromic block print shows the famous thought-experiment of renown quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger (who would never hurt a real cat!). Both the cat in blue and the poison in pink will disappear when the print is exposed to heat.
In struggling to fully explain the strangeness of the quantum world, which can only be described in terms of probabilities and wave functions, Schrödinger suggested a sort of metaphor, at the size of every day things - the scale of classical physics as we know it. He imagined a cat in a steel box with a vial of poison which might be opened if, and only if, a radioactive decay occurs. In one half-life of the radioactive material, there is a 50:50 chance that the material has decayed or not. So, if the box is closed, and we cannot see within, we can only describe the state of the cat in terms of probabilistic wave functions. After one half-life, we would be forced to describe the contents of the box as the sum of the half likelihood of a live cat and the half likelihood of a dead cat. It is as if, to the outside world, there exists both a live and dead cat.... until, one opens the box and looks. Then we know we either have not yet had the radioactive decay and subsequent release of poison, so the cat is fine, or the radioactive material has decayed and the cat is no more. So, what's so special about looking in the box? Does the wave function "collapse" onto one of these two possibilities? Does the universe split into one in which the cat lives and one in which the cat does not, as in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics? I tend to side with Niels Bohr whose Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics says, as all experimentalists know, unless you observe something you cannot determine its state. However, physics cannot answer this question! We can determine the probabilities only, we cannot say why. But that's okay. Paradox is delicious.
This is one print in an edition of 10. Each print is made with the box and vial printed in normal, silver block printing ink. The cat and poison are printed using thermochromic powder and block printing medium so when heated above 30°C (86 F) then they turn colourless and disappear. Thus, as in the thought experiment, you don't know whether there is a cat in the box without looking at the print. Each print is 12.3 by 12.5 inches (31.2 cm by 31.8 cm) and made on Japanese kozo (or mulberry) paper.
From left: U.S. House of Representatives District 3 Bobby Scott and Southeastern Universities Research Association SURA President and Chief Executive Officer Sean Hearne, after the Biomedical Research & Innovation Center (BRIC) press announcement event held at Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Va., on Friday, Mar. 24, 2023. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) provides scientists worldwide the lab’s unique particle accelerator, known as the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF), to probe the most basic building blocks of matter by conducting research at the frontiers of nuclear physics (NP) and related disciplines.
In addition, the lab capitalizes on its unique technologies and expertise to perform advanced computing and applied research with industry and university partners, and provides programs designed to help educate the next generation in science and technology. Thursday, December 1, 2022. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)
This is a block printed portrait of Danish physicist Niels Bohr (1885-1962). One of his most famous contributions to quantum mechanics was the Bohr-Rutherford model of the atom. Bohr is shown in front of the Bohr model of the Hydrogen atom (all the concentric circles are actually at the appropriate spacing, proportional to the n squared, which probably reflects on my sanity in some way). Bohr proposed that the orbits of electrons were somewhat like planetary orbits (though circular, and at specific quantized distances). To explain how orbitting charged electrons didn't lose energy and annihilate spectacularly with the so-called "spiral death" (physicists are big on melodrama, I'm telling you), he stipulated that perhaps they simply weren't allowed anywhere but the specific orbits. They could lower their energy state if excited by falling to a lower orbit, giving off a specific photon of a specific colour related to the difference between energy levels. This also explained how the spectra of gases had distinct, thin, spectral lines. I've illustrated this with the Balmer series - because it is composed of lines which are visible to the eye (H-alpha is red and caused by a jump from the 3rd to 2nd orbit; H-beta is cyan and caused by a jump from the 4th to 2nd orbit; H-gamma is indigo and caused by a jump from the 5th to 2nd orbit; and H-delta is violet and caused by a jump from the 6th to 2nd orbit). I've shown both the quantum jumps (squigelly arrows - squigelly lines are tradition for photons) and by the line spectrum below Bohr.
This is a first edition print (one of eight) on Japanese kozo (mulberry) paper, (12.5" by 17").
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) provides scientists worldwide the lab’s unique particle accelerator, known as the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF), to probe the most basic building blocks of matter by conducting research at the frontiers of nuclear physics (NP) and related disciplines.
In addition, the lab capitalizes on its unique technologies and expertise to perform advanced computing and applied research with industry and university partners, and provides programs designed to help educate the next generation in science and technology. Thursday, December 1, 2022. (Photo by Aileen Devlin | Jefferson Lab)