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Phys(ics)Geek
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"The Hamiltonian operator is equal to negative h-bar squared over two m times the second partial derivative with respect to x, plus the potential... it is not equal to h-bar time i times the derivative with respect to x..."
My bro got a new car... *rabble scrabble college life* I want a new car too... Anyway... I blew my quantum test out of the water... I was pissed too, because I was asked to compute the expectation value of the Hamiltonian for a psi that was a solution to the time-independent Schr�dinger Equation, and I kept getting an imaginary value... and I knew that wasn't right... so I started looking around and I realized that all the way back at the beginning of the problem I had used the momentum operator instead of the Hamiltonian operator... so that blew my last problem and I had to start over... luckily... the correction made all the integrals rather simple (they weren't all that bad to begin with, though) and I still ended up being the first one done. I must say, I really enjoy quantum mechanics, and I've discovered the trick for "understanding" it... the key is this: if it's weird, ignore it... and proceed axiomatically as if whatever the author says is the word of God... It might not be the most philosophical approach, but it saves you a lot of sleepless nights... I can't tell you how long I've sat bewildered staring at the electron diffraction pattern and going "Why? Why does it look like photon diffraction? And why does it look like it's supposed to if I observe the electrons???" Argh! I'm not even going to mention quantum tunneling... Oop... I need to go to my happy place now. Feeling: Good
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