Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The likely, the unlikely, and the incomprehensible
- 3 Normality and large numbers
- 4 Examples
- 5 A little mathematics
- 6 Forces, motion, and energy
- 7 Atoms, molecules, and molecular motion
- 8 Disorder, entropy, energy, and temperature
- 9 Heat, work, and putting heat to work
- 10 Fluctuations and the arrow of time
- 11 Chaos
- 12 Quantum jumps: the ultimate gamble
- Index
12 - Quantum jumps: the ultimate gamble
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The likely, the unlikely, and the incomprehensible
- 3 Normality and large numbers
- 4 Examples
- 5 A little mathematics
- 6 Forces, motion, and energy
- 7 Atoms, molecules, and molecular motion
- 8 Disorder, entropy, energy, and temperature
- 9 Heat, work, and putting heat to work
- 10 Fluctuations and the arrow of time
- 11 Chaos
- 12 Quantum jumps: the ultimate gamble
- Index
Summary
Even the experts do not understand it the way they would like to, and it is perfectly reasonable that they should not, because all of direct, human experience and of human intuition applies to large objects.
Richard P. FeynmanTwo great intellectual triumphs occurred in the first quarter of the twentieth century: the invention of the theory of relativity, and the rather more labored arrival of quantum mechanics. The former largely embodies the ideas, and almost exclusively the vision, of Albert Einstein; the latter benefited from many creative minds, and from a constant interplay between theory and experiment. Probability plays no direct role in relativity, which is thus outside the purview and purpose of this book. However, Einstein will make an appearance in the following pages, in what some would claim was his most revolutionary role – as diviner of the logical and physical consequences of every idea that was put forward in the formative stages of quantum mechanics. It is one of the ironies of the history of science that Einstein, who contributed so importantly to the task of creating this subject, never accepted that the job was finished when a majority of physicists did. As a consequence, he participated only indirectly in the great adventure of the second quarter of the century: the use of quantum mechanics to explain the structure of atoms, nuclei, and matter.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Reasoning about LuckProbability and its Uses in Physics, pp. 204 - 228Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996