Physics Society - Quotes Archive

Quotes from Professor Tony Liss' Quantum Mechanics classes.

Check your intuition at the door.
So let me erase myself.
This is physics. It's not math.
I'm really going to abuse the Uncertainty Principle.
You will become amazed at the power of operators.
Therefore, it's magic.
Hilbert Space, named after the famous mathematician Dr. Space.
I will slip on a regular basis.
I think it's good if we can plant our feet on the ground.
The Science Fiction function... < psi | phi >
Usually, it's not that painful.
Quantum mechanics is all hocus pocus...and it's all true.
We learned a whole shitload of stuff about all these eigenvalues without doing any differential equations.
After discussing Gerlach (a Nazi) and the Stern-Gerlach experiment: You put the electron beam through this Nazi device.
I wanted to be consistent, so I immediately wrote down something different than before.
This was due to 3 guys. 1 was names Einstein. The other 2 weren't.
Einstein said "Hogwash"...in German.
I'll call it 'P' in order to confuse you.
I'm not going to go through all 106 elements. I'm only going to do 94 of them.

These were in Physics 386, but were said by Prof. Scott Willenbrock, who was teaching for Prof. Liss at the time.

It [fine structure constant] was one of the most well known constants in the universe until recently, when it became less well known.
Let's see if that jives with what we have here.
It's good to know the answer so you don't have the calculate anything.
The semi-classical hockey puck is useful.
I'm confusing dividing and multiplying. It happens occasionally.
And then you say "Eureka, the solutions to this equation are in table 8.1 in Griffiths!"
I don't know. I said a lot of things.
You get the magnitude of funny, curly P.
My funny, curly P's are deteriorating.
You may be wondering what this had to do with anything, and so am I.
When you don't know what something is, always define it as "A".
Absorbtion? Absorption? It's P?!? Energy is absorped?