Quantum Notation Police

Quantum Notation Police
quantum-physics-memes, schrödinger-memes, boolean-logic-memes, probability-memes, notation-memes | ScienceHumor.io

The quantum physics equivalent of grammar police has entered the chat. Someone clearly misinterpreted Schrödinger's cat thought experiment as implying simultaneous life and death, rather than a superposition of states until observed. In Boolean logic and probability theory, "+" typically represents "OR" while "AND" is represented by multiplication or "∧". The frustrated physicist is trying to explain that proper quantum state notation uses product states (|s1=+1/2⟩|s2=-1/2⟩) to represent conjunctions like "spin 1 is up AND spin 2 is down." I've corrected this mistake approximately 3²⁷ times in undergraduate papers and it still haunts my dreams.

More Like This