Thursday, January 7, 2010

What Is the "Inability" he refers to?







This discussion should be compared with the first topic in this blog.There we said,following Gottfried,that a massive particle's position can best be estimated as $\delta\ x\sim\lambda_C\$.This is the lower limit of the scale where $\lambda_C\$ is the Compton wavelength of the particle.

The error in the non-relativistic length scale goes down to the order of $\lambda_C\$ which satisfies $\lambda_C\rightarrow\ 0\$ and this means in the non-relativistic limit,we are able to specify the particle's position with fantastic accuracy.

After saying all these,Gottfried says the inability to specify a massive particle's position to ARBITRARY accuracy is acceptable in non-relativistic Quantum Mechanics.I do not understand what does he mean by saying inability...

It is true that $\lambda_C\$ is very very small while being finite yet.Hence,the word "inability" is not wrong in that sense...But then why should he has written it is zero in the non-relativistic limit!

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