User talk:Mathoreilly

Can you write about quantum mechanics in a way that a bright high school student could follow your meaning? --Ed Poor ^Talk 21:10, 1 July 2008 (EDT)

What I have written is not graduate-level material, it's college-level. Quantum mechanics is, after all, a college-level subject. If someone is interested in learning quantum mechanics and comes to this page, I think it would be nice to have the essential postulates of the subject summarized precisely and succinctly. If people want a more general description of the theory as well, they should by all means add that to the beginning of the section. Unfortunately, there's no way that I know of to simplify the material I added to make it accessible to a high school audience. For those people who have the necessary background to even begin to study quantum mechanics (calculus and linear algebra), the material I added should be accessible.--Mathoreilly 22:06, 1 July 2008 (EDT)

Well, I have a year of high school physics and a year of college physics, and I can't understand it. I might be stupid (seriously, I'm considering this), but on the other hand it might just be that the topic deserves a better explanation and that we haven't found a suitable author yet.

Please make an attempt to make it accessible, even at the cost of being succinct. --Ed Poor ^Talk 22:22, 1 July 2008 (EDT)

Well, what don't you understand or recognize? That will help me a lot to determine what needs to be changed. The more specific you are, the better a job I can do. --Mathoreilly 22:23, 1 July 2008 (EDT)

The postulates section. --Ed Poor ^Talk 22:27, 1 July 2008 (EDT)

yeah, but what part of it?--Mathoreilly 22:42, 1 July 2008 (EDT)

The first five bullet points. For example, what's an eigenvalue, what is Hilbert space (and how might that involve a unit vector)?

Don't assume your readers know this. And if you aren't up to the task of explaining the lofty to the earth-bound, you might want to try writing on another topic - I can simply delete the entire section. --Ed Poor ^Talk 22:52, 1 July 2008 (EDT)

Well, there's a link to Hilbert space. I'm not going to write a whole book on quantum mechanics in one day. I never said that the whole section is complete, and I welcome anyone to come and add more detailed explanations. But I do think this information should be somewhere in there.--Mathoreilly 23:07, 1 July 2008 (EDT)

See the note I just left on Ed's page. It may be possible to save CP as an educational resource, and get the sysops to stop interfering. SamHB 23:17, 1 July 2008 (EDT)