As I had mentioned in a previous post, complementarity doesn't even crack a mention in the textbook I learnt QM from (Shankar's book). I found it in another textbook I had (Schiff's book), which describes it as being a another way of expressing Heisenberg's uncertainty princple. I'm not even sure that's true, and in any case I believe Shankar's book to be superior of the two.
When I thought about it, I realised what complementarity refers in the
double slit experiment - this is what I've been discussing. I'm not at
all certain how it applies in other contexts, however.
Cheers
On Sat, Aug 14, 2004 at 09:58:10AM -0400, John M wrote:
> Dear Russell,
>
> I really would like to read (if ever) about that darn complementarity -
> based on/around a different example from the stale double-slit experiment
> (which it was really constructed for).
>
> IMO the 'double' nature of particle-wave is not (well?) understood and this
> resulted in sweating out the 'complementarity' syndrome to explain some
> hard-to-follow experimental results within the ongoing formalism. (I mean to
> match the quantized items within the system).
>
> Since 2x10^m million experiments - calculations and 3x10^n papers (not to
> speak about hundreds of prizes, tenthousands of tenure) have been devoted to
> the concept - taught to 3 consecutive generations of
> young receptive brains, it would be a BIG job to reformulate it.
>
> Yet it would be refreshing to approach the concept from another side
> (another framework), - maybe a new one??????
>
> John Mikes
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Russell Standish" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "Fred Chen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Cc: "'Everything List'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2004 5:50 AM
> Subject: Re: Quantum Rebel
>
>
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