Well, apparently being criticized was a bit upsetting for Professor Cox, because he fired off the following angry comment to both myself and Tom: Since the position of the particle is part of the wavefunction as well, electrons whose spatial wavefunctions are widely separated are also different. This is why we can, to first approximation, have two electrons in the same energy level in an atom: they can have different “up/down” spin states. I thought I’d mull over the broader implications a bit before writing my own post on the subject, but you’ve addressed it well.Ī more technical way to put it, if I were to try, is that the Pauli principle applies to the *entire* quantum state of the wavefunction, not just the energy, as Cox seems to imply. I just saw this clip the other day and it was an eyebrow-raiser, to say the least.
Phrase not even wrong full#
Tom over at Swans on Tea picked up on the same video, and wrote a critique of it with the not quite political title, “ Brian Cox is Full of **it“, in which he explained his initial critique of the video based on his own knowledge.
Ah, controversy! Physics is of course not immune from it, and sometimes the participants in an argument can let anger get the better of them.Īn example of this began last week, when the following video clip appeared, featuring Professor Brian Cox explaining to a lay audience the Pauli exclusion principle:įor reasons that I will try and elaborate on in this post, this short video was, to say the least, eyebrow-raising to me.
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