Related papers: Understanding Physics: 'What?', 'Why?', and 'How?'

We study the non-equilibrium thermodynamics of a single particle with two available energy levels, in contact with a classical (Maxwell-Boltzmann) or quantum (Bose-Einstein) heat bath. The particle can undergo transitions between the levels…

The interpretation of quantum mechanics (or, for that matter, of any physical theory) consists in answering the question: How can the world be for the theory to be true? That question is especially pressing in the case of the long-distance…

In a companion paper, we discuss students' ability to take advantage of what they learn from a solved problem and transfer their learning to solve a quiz problem that has different surface features but the same underlying physics…

The traditional pedagogical paradigm in physics is based on a deductive approach. However, with the recent advances in information technology, we are facing a dramatic increase in the amount of readily available information; hence, the…

The rich body of physical theories defines the foundation of our understanding of the world. Its mathematical formulation is based on classical Aristotelian (binary) logic. In the philosophy of science the ambiguities, paradoxes, and the…

It is generally believed that physical laws, reflecting an inherent order in the universe, are ordained by nature. However, in modern physics the observer plays a central role raising questions about how an observer-centric physics can…

This article was written in response to a request from an editor of American Vedantist. It is shown that the idea that consciousness is essential to understanding quantum mechanics arises from logical fallacies. This may be welcome news to…

The reader surely knows what particles physics is about: finding building blocks of nature that appear elementary at a given time and study their interactions - so why in the world this essay? The problem is how to arrive at a fundamental…

In this paper the analogy between a thermal engine and a waterwheel is developed in details, showing that the analogous of the flow of water in an hydraulic engine is the flow of entropy in a thermal one. This analogy mat serve to analyse…

There is a growing consensus that solutions to complex science and engineering problems require novel methodologies that are able to integrate traditional physics-based modeling approaches with state-of-the-art machine learning (ML)…

Many surface cues support three-dimensional shape perception, but people can sometimes still see shape when these features are missing -- in extreme cases, even when an object is completely occluded, as when covered with a draped cloth. We…

Mechanics can be founded in a principle stating the uncertainty in the position of an observable particle delta-q as a function of its motion relative to the observer, expressed in a trajectory representation . From this principle,…

Scientific communication inside and outside the classroom is the main means for providing an adequate understanding of how science and technological innovation relate to society. In order to achieve this goal, it is important to explore new…

This paper is about the meaning of understanding in scientific and in artificial intelligent systems. We give a mathematical definition of the understanding, where, contrary to the common wisdom, we define the probability space on the input…

I explore whether it is possible to make sense of the quantum mechanical description of physical reality by taking the proper subject of physics to be correlation and only correlation, and by separating the problem of understanding the…

Contemporary perspectivism is viewed as a framework of scientific inquiry concerning the origin, generation and systematization of scientific knowledge of nature by focusing on the conditions under which such knowledge may arise in…

The interaction between two parts in a compound quantum system may be reconsidered more completely than before and some new understandings and conclusions different from current quantum mechanics are obtained, including the conservation law…

Starting from the stochastic thermodynamics description of two coupled underdamped Brownian particles, we showcase and compare three different coarse-graining schemes leading to an effective thermodynamic description for the first of the…

Operational quantum stochastic thermodynamics is a recently proposed theory to study the thermodynamics of open systems based on the rigorous notion of a quantum stochastic process or quantum causal model. In there, a stochastic trajectory…

A colloquial interpretation of entropy is that it is the knowledge gained upon learning the outcome of a random experiment. Conditional entropy is then interpreted as the knowledge gained upon learning the outcome of one random experiment…