Spacing Out
I got a new calculator! It's an HP 49g+ and I'm sad to say that I've fallen in love. It can graph in 3d, do integrals on the fly, write equations just as they are on paper, communicate to other calculators using infrared, distort the time space continuum, and serve as the perfect plot crutch for defeating any problem that comes my way. Yes, I'm quite happy with my new calculator. Sadly after using it for Physical and Analytical Chemistry this semester I will have no use for it except as a PDA of sorts.
3 semesters of calculus, 3 semesters of physics, all for one Chemistry class called Physical Chemistry where they would teach me everything that's wrong with our chemical description of the world. Quantum Mechanics is curious. The way I've been interpreting observations my entire life is fundamentally wrong, yet the error is so small as to be insignificant in most circumstances. It rattles your foundations a bit. Learning about relativity does the same thing but not to the same degree as Quantum Mechanics. Quantum Mechanics was the focus of Physical Chemistry last semester. To learn about this new quantum world you have to let everything go and relearn how the world works. One of the biggest problems in doing this is that it's hard not to take the classical world with us when we make the journey. We use wave equations and still describe things as having wave/particle duality when in fact there is no duality, we just interpret it that way because it's easier to imagine.
Sometimes I want to reimagine the world and interpret it with a new perspective other than my own. I want to see things in new ways, uninhibited by previous bias. I want to see a pool of water and describe it anew, experiencing it as fresh as my first time. But I can't. Sure, I can try but even my ability to imagine now relies on a thinking pattern tainted by prior experience. I am hardwired to be myself. Trapped in a prison I've created but one that is necessary for me to function. Even if I were to escape my prison I would feel lost and out of place as this prison is all I've ever known. But I still try. I close my eyes and I try to let everything go. And sometimes, every now and then, in a moment so short you can't be sure if it even existed, I am free of my chains and everything is gone. But then the universe swallows me again and I return. Yanked back by the very chains I thought had gone. And though my eyes open again I can't help but wonder if the only time I've ever really opened them was in that moment that never existed.
3 semesters of calculus, 3 semesters of physics, all for one Chemistry class called Physical Chemistry where they would teach me everything that's wrong with our chemical description of the world. Quantum Mechanics is curious. The way I've been interpreting observations my entire life is fundamentally wrong, yet the error is so small as to be insignificant in most circumstances. It rattles your foundations a bit. Learning about relativity does the same thing but not to the same degree as Quantum Mechanics. Quantum Mechanics was the focus of Physical Chemistry last semester. To learn about this new quantum world you have to let everything go and relearn how the world works. One of the biggest problems in doing this is that it's hard not to take the classical world with us when we make the journey. We use wave equations and still describe things as having wave/particle duality when in fact there is no duality, we just interpret it that way because it's easier to imagine.
Sometimes I want to reimagine the world and interpret it with a new perspective other than my own. I want to see things in new ways, uninhibited by previous bias. I want to see a pool of water and describe it anew, experiencing it as fresh as my first time. But I can't. Sure, I can try but even my ability to imagine now relies on a thinking pattern tainted by prior experience. I am hardwired to be myself. Trapped in a prison I've created but one that is necessary for me to function. Even if I were to escape my prison I would feel lost and out of place as this prison is all I've ever known. But I still try. I close my eyes and I try to let everything go. And sometimes, every now and then, in a moment so short you can't be sure if it even existed, I am free of my chains and everything is gone. But then the universe swallows me again and I return. Yanked back by the very chains I thought had gone. And though my eyes open again I can't help but wonder if the only time I've ever really opened them was in that moment that never existed.