A few common sense and quantum physics cliches / by mirena

More is less, but less isn't more - more lines on the paper don't a better piece make. I discover this first hand and decide to  take comfort in the foreign territory of quantum physics, I often feel good in foreign places. I come back to quantum physics by listening to Leonard Susskind of Stanford after I discovered a random fact about certain "work function" - this explains why you get sunburn, and this is the threshold frequency in order to kick an electron out of an atom. I think it's pretty simple to understand that low frequency light like infrared heats you up but it takes high frequency light like ultraviolet to get you skin burned.

There are a few quantum physics cliches I really liked even before understanding what they mean, like Quantum entanglement, destructive interference and the uncertainty principle. The great thing about the latter is that on the scale of people and cars it still exists, it's just too small to be critical. I take great comfort in the fact that things that we really thought are quite obvious, like your speeding ticket, are just assumptions and approximations of certainty.

The abstract thought in physics and abstract thought in art became simultaneously apparent in the West. The Zen monks who designed these gardens in Kyoto, however, were already abstract 5 centuries before. When I sat on the wooden floors contemplating these gardens I came very close to feeling like an atom, a particle: