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Re: The worm problem



It is, however, artificial and unrealistic as a physics
problem. It is a nice mathematics problem.

It is indeed not a physics problem; it is a mathematics problem which
speaks to a mathematical physics model we call statistical mechanics.
Yesterday I attended a very nice colloquium given by Howard Trottier
of our department. He introduced us to his field, lattice quantum
chromodynamics (lattice QCD). He does numerical simulations which
treat particle interactions by the Feynman path integral technique. A
stodgy old experimentalist like me might well think Howard's field to
be artificial and unrealistic, but making such a judgment depends
upon one's metaphysical orientation. Fortunately I find it exciting.
Yesterday I finally understood it a little bit!

What I was really complaining about in my post was the kind of problem one
often sees in physics books in which an artificial situation is presented
using words and images which imply a real-world setting. These often throw
students off the scent, forcing them to strip away these embelishments to
get at the heart of the matter. The best students will do this, and thrive
on it. The rest will be confused and frustrated, and complain that
physicists must live in some wonderful ivory tower where worms crawl in
straight lines, pulleys are frictionless and massless, projectiles travel
in parabolic paths, and V = IR where R is constant.

A student with so little imagination should never be exposed to the
likes of the work done in lattice QCD. Surely no practical person
could possibly take it seriously! However, if you have a student
whose imagination is still pliable, and who has not been spoiled for
mind stretching exercises, I recommend Feynman's own popularization
of his way of looking at nature: "QED: the strange theory of light
and matter".

Leigh