The Odd Quantum
Princeton University Press | November 8, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0691009260 | 280 pages | PDF | 2.93 MB
Whenever you cross a street, sad to say, you run the risk of being struck down by a misguided vehicle. The probability of such a tragedy is infinitesimal under most circumstances, but, as the statisticians say, it is non-negligible nonetheless. By the same token, when energy travels, it may bend this way or that in response to the vagaries of gravity, following a seemingly random course. The probability that it will wander in a certain direction given certain conditions is the province of quantum mechanics, a branch of physical science that concerns itself with small-scale phenomena that cannot be observed without instruments--and that cannot be described in the terms of classical Newtonian physics.
