Laws of Life

[TexasBred]

 Law of Mechanical Repair - After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch and you'll have to pee.

 Law of Gravity - Any tool, nut, bolt, screw, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner.

 Law of Probability -The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act.

 Law of Random Numbers - If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal and someone always answers.

 Law of the Alibi - If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the very next morning you will have a flat tire.

 Variation Law - If you change lines (or traffic lanes), the one you were in will always move faster than the one you are in now (works every time).

 Law of the Bath - When the body is fully immersed in water, the telephone rings.

 Law of Close Encounters -The probability of meeting someone you know increases dramatically when you are with someone you don't want to be seen with.

 Law of the Result - When you try to prove to someone that a machine won't work, it will.

 Law of Biomechanics - The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.

 Law of the Theater - At any event, the people whose seats are furthest from the aisle arrive last.

 The Starbucks Law - As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your boss will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.

 Murphy's Law of Lockers - If there are only two people in a locker room, they will have adjacent lockers.

 Law of Physical Surfaces - The chances of an open-faced jelly sandwich landing face down on a floor covering are directly correlated to the newness and cost of the carpet/rug.

 Law of Logical Argument - Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about.

 Brown's Law of Physical Appearance - If the clothes fit, they're ugly.

 Oliver's Law of Public Speaking - A closed mouth gathers no feet.

 Wilson's Law of Commercial Marketing Strategy - As soon as you find a product that you really like, they will stop making it.

 Doctors' Law - If you don't feel well, make an appointment to go to the doctor, by the time you get there you'll feel better. Don't make an appointment and you'll stay sick.

 

[HerefordSire]

Excellent TB. I vote a 10. When something is observed it can affect the observed. I forgot the term used to describe this...I think it could be the "uncertainty principal"....and it works for atoms also.

 

[chrisy]

the open sandwich one is something to do with angles and if it falls off of a plate or counterside and as long as it turns between 90 and 270 degrees before landing, it will land butter-side down.

there are some that seem to always happen...very good.

 

[LoveMoo11]

So true
The law of result always seems to happen to me. Especially with the lawnmower :? :?

 

[HerefordSire]

This explains it. Notice the bold print below.



Uncertainty principle and observer effect

The uncertainty principle is often explained as the statement that the measurement of position necessarily disturbs a particle's momentum, and vice versa—i.e., that the uncertainty principle is a manifestation of the observer effect.

This common explanation is incorrect, because the uncertainty principle is not caused by observer-effect measurement disturbance. For example, sometimes the measurement can be performed far away in ways which cannot possibly "disturb" the particle in any classical sense. But the distant measurement (of momentum for instance) still causes the waveform to collapse and make determination (of position for instance) impossible. This queer mechanism of quantum mechanics is the basis of quantum cryptography, where the measurement of a value on one of two entangled particles at one location forces, via the uncertainty principle, a property of a distant particle to become indeterminate and hence unmeasurable. If two photons are emitted in opposite directions from the decay of positronium, the momenta of the two photons are opposite. By measuring the momentum of one particle, the momentum of the other is determined, making its position indeterminate. This case is subtler, because it is impossible to introduce more uncertainties by measuring a distant particle, but it is possible to restrict the uncertainties in different ways, with different statistical properties, depending on what property of the distant particle you choose to measure. By restricting the uncertainty in p to be very small by a distant measurement, the remaining uncertainty in x stays large. (This example was actually the basis of Albert Einstein's important suggestion of the EPR paradox in 1935.)

This disturbance explanation is also incorrect because it makes it seem that the disturbances are somehow conceptually avoidable — that there are states of the particle with definite position and momentum, but the experimental devices we have could never be good enough to produce those states. In fact, states with both definite position and momentum just do not exist in quantum mechanics, so it is not the measurement equipment that is at fault.

It is also misleading in another way, because sometimes it is a failure to measure the particle that produces the disturbance. For example, if a perfect photographic film contains a small hole, and an incident photon is not observed, then its momentum becomes uncertain by a large amount. By not observing the photon, we discover indirectly that it went through the hole, revealing the photon's position.

But Heisenberg did not focus on the mathematics of quantum mechanics, he was primarily concerned with establishing that the uncertainty is actually a property of the world — that it is in fact physically impossible to measure the position and momentum of a particle to a precision better than that allowed by quantum mechanics. To do this, he used physical arguments based on the existence of quanta, but not the full quantum mechanical formalism.

This was a surprising prediction of quantum mechanics, and not yet accepted. Many people would have considered it a flaw that there are no states of definite position and momentum. Heisenberg was trying to show this was not a bug, but a feature—a deep, surprising aspect of the universe. To do this, he could not just use the mathematical formalism, because it was the mathematical formalism itself that he was trying to justify.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

 

[chrisy]

HS ya got to much time on your hands.... :lol: :lol:

 

[HerefordSire]

HS ya got to much time on your hands.... :lol: :lol:

Should I spend my free time on superstitions or learning exactly why observing an object changes the state of an object?

 

[chrisy]

HS ya got to much time on your hands.... :lol: :lol:

Should I spend my free time on superstitions or learning exactly why observing an object changes the state of an object?

I would say that is entirely up to you. ;-)

 

[Jogeephus]

HS ya got to much time on your hands.... :lol: :lol:

Should I spend my free time on superstitions or learning exactly why observing an object changes the state of an object?

Your question brings up another question. How do you know these superstitions are not real physical laws not yet understood by science? Afterall, the chewing of willow was once thought to be a superstition till science found salicytic acid in willow. Its still raises some eyebrows cause it doesn't come out of a bottle. In light of this, how can you be sure that superstions like - hanging a dead snake or a boot from your fence - doesn't in some way have an effect on weather through the butterfly effect as described in the chaos theory? Maybe once we fully understand this theory it will become clear. But then again, maybe not. ;-) :lol2:

 

[john250]

I had a property line surveyed a few years ago, and now I'm wondering if the mere action of the survey caused the line to move.