Objectives
Intelligence
This task should be simple, as it is in a real world. Your job is to measure the exact position of the tennis ball, and it's speed. You will get a special tool for this purpose, you just need to hover your mouse for a while (5 seconds) over the ball as it moves through our little laboratory.
Newton's Second Law was up to early 10's our fundamental understanding of the universe by explaining mathematically how the motion of objects works.
F=m*a
Remember this from school? ;-)
The Second Law is very powerful and an essential item in any physicist or engineer's toolbox. It can be used to describe the motion of more or less anything in classical mechanics by breaking the motion down into a series of velocity changes. Rearranging the formula algebraically means that only two of the quantities are ever needed in order to calculate the third.
That means YOU CAN calculate exact position and speed of the ball...
I got my glasses on, bring it!
Quite simple task? It was. And you are one step closer to get your prize.
This was too easy... I need action!
Objectives
Intelligence
Now, it is gonna get harder! We will show you bunches of ugly and nasty bacterias under the special electron microscope, moving freely in vacuum, in zero gravity conditions. You still operate the same measurement tool, and your goal is to do the same - get the position and the speed of one of this bacterias. We allow you to make a little mistake in your measurements, since these things are really small! Just hover over the bacteria for more than 3 seconds.
So now we are on the bacteria scale. It is not easy to measure things any more. The main problem is an observational error. Things here are really small.
Measurements we make are not exact, but include the influ
ence of error or noise. Still - we wish you luck :-)
I'm feeling like Dr House today!
How about something, uhm, harder?
I'm ready, let's ROCK!
Objectives
Intelligence
Ok, good! There is only one step between you and your iPad! We have some ultra-high tech technology stuff from the Aliens, and we will show you the chamber with electron particles. Go, get the position and the speed of one of them!
This is the most important step. We cannot go any deeper than now. We are on the electron scale.
The electron is a subatomic particle carrying a negative electric charge. It has no known components or substructure. Therefore, the electron is generally believed to be an elementary particle.
In the older days, people considered electron as very small thing, but still a thing. Since Heisenberg's discovery, we know that it is not like that anymore. The electron is more like a wave. It is very hard to imagine that or visualize.
And the most important thing - we cannot get the exact position and speed of an electron not because our tools are not accurate enough. We cannot measure it, because electron is unmeasurable. It's a feature. Not a bug.
Hey, iPad, I'm coming! Here we go!
Immanent features of our Universe are that we cannot say what is exact position and speed of the electron simultaneously. More over - if you were an electron - you could not say it about yourself. Hence - immanent features of our universe you forbids you to win this iPad.
We are really sorry that you feel disapponted, but hey, we didn't make the universe ;-).
Oh, come on!?!
The uncertainty principle is sometimes erroneously explained by claiming that the measurement of position necessarily disturbs a particle's momentum. Heisenberg himself offered this explanation initially. Disturbance plays no part, however, since the principle even applies if position is measured in one copy of the system and momentum is measured in another, identical one. It is more accurate to say that the particle is a wave, not a point-like object, and does not have a well-defined simultaneous position and momentum.
Share and revenge yourself!
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Werner Heisenberg (1901 - 1976) was a German theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to quantum mechanics and is best known for asserting the uncertainty principle of quantum theory. In addition, he made important contributions to nuclear physics, quantum field theory, and particle physics.
In 1923 Heisenberg has been awarded with Nobel Prize in Physics for being one of the creators of quantum mechanics - underlying engine of our universe.
Through this contest we want to pay tribute to his great work.
I want to play and win an iPad!
Why?
Because we:
- love physics
- enjoy contests
- have time to spare
When?
April 2011
Disclaimer
This site is just a demo what you can build during one day of hardore coding with team of experienced web developers.
Site as it apears now, is only slighty changed version of contest application (code and images refactorization, minor bugfixes, minor CSS fixes, spelling, award graphics, this disclaimer).
And of course there is no iPad nor the contest itself. We hope that you are not disappointed and, after all, you had fun :-)