Tuesday, October 3, 2023

Phase Space Trajectories and Conservation of Energy

The motivation for the derivation of the Schroedinger equation arising from the Law of Conservation of Energy as seen in the blog entry of December 13, 2022, is made clearer when one looks at the phase space trajectories in familiar classical settings. In the paper, Phase Space Curves and Conservation of Energy, we go through a few examples of how Newton's 2nd Law of motion and the conservation of energy are closely related and how the phase space trajectory gives insight into the equation that defines motion in quantum settings.

Wednesday, June 14, 2023

Geometry Studies

Like all realms of Mathematics, Geometry is an endless landscape where new roads and new interconnections between those roads and older roads are perpetually being introduced by some very clever people who seem to relish such activities. Their work, to most, is beyond the scope of interest. But to those who are interested, it can be absorbing. It is easy to understand why many do not give Geometry any attention. It is definitely not something that will pay the bills unless you happen to be a bit exceptional in the mathematical realm. As deep and extensive as the realm is, it is not widely known and it is not easily accessible for the less than determined. The originalists in the field are often remarkably clever and intellectually determined. For those who enjoy bending their brains a bit in the pursuit of understanding the properties and interrelationships of abstract objects (abstracted from real world objects to which the properties then apply), Geometry in rich in possibility. Almost everyone is introduced to the fundamentals of Geometry in school. Even those who are not particularly drawn to mathematics often find Geometry interesting because it does relate to familiar objects. Unfortuantely, for most, that taste of geometry they get in school is all they get. Even for those who go on to study more math after high school for engineering or science or computer science, etc, further studies of Geometry is not always part of their curriculum. So it is only a subset of even the small set of people who do study mathematics that get to experience the joys of this realm. The paper Geometry Studies takes the reader on a short trip into this realm. It is meant as another taste that many never got. It follows the flow of Chapter 2 in Howard Eves' "A Survey of Geometry, Volume 1". By working the exercises of that chapter in detail, the paper offers some insights for those who might get get their foot caught in some brambles on the side of the road.