Timeline for Quantum Number of a Tennis Ball
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 29, 2013 at 23:41 | vote | accept | Bronzeclocksofbenin | ||
| Sep 20, 2013 at 5:23 | comment | added | Mitchell Porter | Presumably one is supposed to think of the ball as a point particle with the mass of a tennis ball, rather than as an extended object with 10^23 internal degrees of freedom. | |
| Sep 20, 2013 at 3:28 | answer | added | Andrew | timeline score: 2 | |
| Sep 20, 2013 at 2:05 | answer | added | Brian Moths | timeline score: 0 | |
| Sep 19, 2013 at 17:06 | comment | added | John Rennie | The system of the ball in the box will decohere in an extremely short time, so you wouldn't be able to observe any quantum behaviour. You can do the calculation but it will have no physical relevance. | |
| Sep 19, 2013 at 15:29 | comment | added | user10851 | For normal QM, $n$ is the number of half-wavelengths in the sinusoidal wavefunction of the particle that fit in the box. I have no idea, though, if your instructor wants you to do this with the actual de Broglie wavelength of a tennis ball, or if this whole exercise treats the "wavelength" of the ball as being its macroscopic width, or what. | |
| Sep 19, 2013 at 13:06 | comment | added | Bronzeclocksofbenin | I know it's silly, but it's one of my homework questions, so I have to try and think this way for now. | |
| Sep 19, 2013 at 13:04 | comment | added | Danu | The reason you're having a hard time thinking about macroscopic objects quantum mechanically is because it'sutterly ineffective... There is no point in considering a tennis ball as a quantum mechanical particle in a box (apart from the fact that assuming $n=2$ makes no sense whatsoever) | |
| Sep 19, 2013 at 12:59 | history | asked | Bronzeclocksofbenin | CC BY-SA 3.0 |