Complex Numbers

Uncertainty Principle

With no comments or feedback of any kind on yesterday's entry, I can only assume that no one actually wants me to be positive. Which is fine, because I don't want to be positive anyway.

Heisenberg's Bathtub  
Copenhagen University
Copenhagen, Denmark
Did he come up with a theory of cosmic-ray showers while sitting in this bath?

There's an old tourism cliché: "George Washington Slept Here." The idea was that historic places would put the sign up as a way to draw in tourists, whether or not the father of our country (or the worst traitor ever if you're British) actually lodged there or not. It's the American secular equivalent of a church having a "piece of the True Cross."

This especially amused me as a kid because we lived in the area where Washington grew up, and visiting a place where we know (to a high degree of certainty) that he slept was pretty commonplace for me.

Werner Heisenberg may not be as famous as Washington; after all, he doesn't have a city, a state, several schools, and a giant phallic symbol named after him. But his position in quantum theory is similar to that of old George in the US: a prominent founder. Heisenberg didn't even own slaves, so he has that going for him. Perhaps his most famous contribution, from a layman's perspective, is the Uncertainty Principle: the mathematical formulation of the idea that you can know a particle's velocity, or its location, but never both (it's somewhat more complicated than that, but whatever).

So there's a joke floating around in nerd circles: theoretical signs in historical places that read "Heisenberg may have slept here."

It's a good joke, a fine joke, albeit one that requires a certain amount of knowledge of the history of science. But sometimes in-jokes are extra amusing because you know that out-groups won't get it.

What's truly maddening to me, though, is that apparently there was a character on a popular TV show who was also named Heisenberg, and, just like one cannot mention the Big Bang Theory without someone making a Sheldon comment, the Heisenberg joke is now ruined for all time.

It's a real shame.

In any case, here we have a place where Heisenberg probably didn't sleep, but close enough.

On the top floor of the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen University, tucked away in a room that now serves as a kitchenette, is a famous bathtub. The simple porcelain tub has become a well-known object in certain circles because it was used by at least one famous physicist: Werner Heisenberg.

Bohr was, of course, another founder of quantum physics. He apparently got stuff named after him, though.

Though it has likely been years since anyone bathed in this tub, it has been kept around for about a century. Most physicists that work there will not really have an answer for it. Most will say that the institute did not get around to removing it yet, or that it’s kept for potential future use.

Or maybe it hasn't been hit with a high-enough energy photon.

Amongst students the story is slightly different, most of them know of its existence and connection to Heisenberg and other famous physicists who may have bathed in it at some point.

See? "may have bathed in it." Uncertainty Principle. Look, I can't overstate just how damn funny that is to science nerds.

Much like Albert Einstein’s Sink at Leiden University, this item can be called an “academic relic,” or a mundane item that gained value from its connection to a prominent scientist.

Einstein's Sink sounds like it should be something related to black holes, but alas, this is apparently an ordinary plumbing fixture.

Similar relics connected to saints or Christ himself are very common in religious circles, but many scientists would not be too happy with the comparison.

Like I said way up there.

Despite that, they might be reluctant to throw the item away due to sentimentality and perhaps because it offers a connection to great minds of the past. Everyone’s reason may be different but still, these items somehow persevere.

Nothing wrong with preserving a connection to the past. It gets people thinking and talking about it.

Who knows what is being kept in your local university?

Considering that my local university is the one Jefferson founded, there's a lot. And probably a lot that's been kept secret, too. But we'll never know the full story. You know. Uncertainty Principle.