ZapperZ's physics blog on the world of Physics and Physicists.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
An Infamous Fermi Picture
This is a very famous picture of Enrico Fermi that has been debated for years by many physicist. Look at it carefully. Can you see something STRANGE in this picture?
He was a shy person; maybe he was embarassed from the photographer and wrote that formula without attention (maybe he thought "e^2" and, knowing to have to write "hbar" immediately after, he "did too fast" and wrote "hbar^2" instead, and then e instead of hbar.
Its not the fine structure constant or the mystical looking diagram. Its the equation. The left hand side is the kinetic term for the Schrodinger equation. The right side, however, only has (i d/dt), which is linear. It should be squared for the Schrodinger equation. This might be an attempt at mixing the Dirac and Schrodinger pictures.
2 comments:
He was a shy person; maybe he was embarassed from the photographer and wrote that formula without attention (maybe he thought "e^2" and, knowing to have to write "hbar" immediately after, he "did too fast" and wrote "hbar^2" instead, and then e instead of hbar.
Its not the fine structure constant or the mystical looking diagram. Its the equation. The left hand side is the kinetic term for the Schrodinger equation. The right side, however, only has (i d/dt), which is linear. It should be squared for the Schrodinger equation. This might be an attempt at mixing the Dirac and Schrodinger pictures.
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