[1218] Yuna’s Measurement Problem
└ posted on Thursday, 15 October 2020, by Novil
The rest of Zoey’s tennis story arc isn’t completely ready yet. Until then, we’ll publish a couple of other strips.
- Cloud: A watched pot never boils.
- Yuna: That’s what I’m trying to prove!
- Yuna: According to the quantum Zeno effect, one can freeze the state of a system simply by measuring it frequently enough. So–
- Yuna: Oh no! I looked away for a moment!!
- Cloud: S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Okta-8 calling! I was able to sabotage another experiment by Prof. Boom!
![[1218] Yuna’s Measurement Problem](/comics/2020-10-15-1218-yunas-measurement-problem.png "[1218] Yuna’s Measurement Problem")
Actual Agent or just playing?
We may never know
So wait…does Sandra and Woo take place in the Marvel Universe.
If so, that makes things a lot more interesting…
(Imagining Woo dual wielding machine guns and wearing a leather coat…)
First strip with a Marvel reference. Now how about some Trek or Dragon Quest love:-D?
I love watching pots boil. It’s weird but relaxing.
@ Shotwells:
I remember a short interview on radio some time back (on BBC?). They were talking to a guy whose job was literally -Watching paint dry!-. Really! I think he worked in the development area for a paint manufacturer.
@ Antiyonder:
Maybe “Galaxy Quest”? 🙂
NO problem, Novil (and Powee!). I like little breaks with some good shorts or one-offs like this. 🙂 (And I definitely like THIS one!)
@ Titan:
Better question: actual agent of SHIELD, or secret HYDRA agent?
their sabotage is what will actually lead her to Super villany
Antiyonder wrote:
No, no… I want to see Yuna burn her room down with a pocket Epstein drive.
Good job agent. she has 3 other experiments you need to sabotage by the end of the week. Two are for the fate of this continent, one for the fate of the sandwich making industry….
😀
We had proved that result in Quantum Physics II. – Only a Yuna would be able to observe really continuously. (If she were not a little kid and easily distracted… 😉 )
Securing the existence of the humanity, one sabotaged experiment at time.
Not so bright to put a camera recording the pot?
@ YBerion:
Doesn’t work. A recording that someone is (maybe) going to watch only later doesn’t trigger the quantum collapse. It has to be observed in real time.
This strip reminds me no an old Garfield comic where Garfield observes a toaster…
(Strip 294; April 8th, 1979)
She must of heard of the observer effect, in that just by observing and object changes the nature of the object
Sothis wrote:
shazz_smifff wrote:
I would be careful about reading too much into that.
In truth, it is simply not defined when a wavefunction “collapses”. Which means that quantum mechanics does most likely not describe physical reality. It’s just a mathematical framework.
@ Arent:
That means Cloud is “Wigner’s Friend”, since he’s observing Yuna and (depending on your interpretation) maybe collapsing her</i) wavefunction.
*Starts obsessively measuring nitroglycerin.
I like the nickname, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Cloud really was an agent.
I had to look this one up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okta
@ Sothis:
No, that’s not correct.
The key (according to conventional QM, at least) is, more-or-less, interaction with a macroscopic system with many degrees of freedom [i.e., an “effectively classical” system], allowing it to decohere.
A camera would be such a system, producing quantum collapse just as well as a human.
[In order to “un-collapse” – i.e., still observe quantum interference effects – you would have to, without having any other system have its state changed by the state of the camera, perform a sequence of operations on the camera that produce the same state regardless of what it observed. This would entail erasing the camera, but it requires much more than that, rendering it practically impossible even before you consider the difficulty/impossibility of complete environmental isolation.]
The original maxim read, “A watched pot never boils over” which makes a lot more sense.
Magnema wrote:
Continuously watching is impossible with a camera: the observation (and thus the coupling) will only occur at discrete time intervals (e.g., it only captures 100 pictures per second). That’s the difference between real life and the theoretical result!
According to the Wikipedia article on meteorology “…In meteorology, an okta is a unit of measurement used to describe the amount of cloud cover at any given location such as a weather station. Sky conditions are estimated in terms of how many eighths of the sky are covered in cloud, ranging from 0 oktas (completely clear sky) through to 8 oktas (completely overcast). In addition, in the SYNOP code there is an extra cloud cover indicator ‘9’ indicating that the sky is totally obscured (i.e. hidden from view), usually due to dense fog or heavy snow…”
AnotherBear wrote:
Actually, -both- maxims are correct!
– “A watched pot never boils” is about the patience of the observer and how it “seems to” take -foreverrrr- for water to boil if you are watching and waiting for it to boil so you can use it to make tea, or something.
– “A watched pot never boils -over- is about keeping a watch on the boiling pot so you can catch it if it starts boiling too hard and can turn the heat down a bit to prevent it boiling over.
…my 2 cents… 🙂
Ah, Agent of SHIELD, how I’m going to miss you. You were one of those shows that felt like it needed to go 10 seasons to fully develop & finish up all the storylines. It also needed to go 10 seasons because that’s how awesome it was.
@ Audretsch:
The formal result is that as the time between measurements dt goes to zero, then the probability of decay at that time goes to zero as dt^2 (since the difference in states is ~dt but probabilities are states squared), hence d(num. decayed)/dt -> 0.
You’re right that a typical camera’s dt is perhaps too large to observe this practically, but then, there are other approximations that come into play with an apparatus with insufficiently many (qu)bits of intake to actually record the quantum state, which applies to the eye *or* a camera. In particular, we’re not really performing *quite* the same measurement each time, we have limited resolution (hence not completely measuring the system), etc….
In particular: it’s not clear to me that the total of approximations are any worse with a camera than by eye (particularly with a *good* camera), so even there the sentiment “you have to watch by eye and not by camera” isn’t necessarily an accurate statement, I think (and from a pedagogical POV risks the “quantum=consciousness” error that so much pop sci makes).
Of course, at some point, if you’re trying to actually crunch those numbers, then you’ve *really* run the joke into the ground.
Juna is the only (fictional) person where I would get very worried if she said she invented a new space heater,
@ Magnema:
The camera is also unnecessary. “Observation” doesn’t require a conscious observer or even a means of recording events. Interaction with the external world suffices. Just shining a light on the pot does the trick.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Zeno_effect
“Normal” physics doesn’t apply to Yuna. I think her first appearance had her recreating the double-slit experiment with Matchbox cars — which are fairly macroscopic objects.
Cloud’s “sabotage” isn’t very effective. If Yuna turns off the burner for just a minute, she can pick up where she left off and see if boiling resumes. Since the Zeno Effect suppresses changes in state and physical laws are all time-reversible (on the level of individual interactions) it would be much more interesting to see if the pot stops boiling if she watches steadily when the heat is off! A more practical form of “free energy” than some of her previous attempts.
I wonder why we’re not allowed to comment for the next strip. Is it something to do with that KONAMI code ?
I’m not sure how she was planning to prove it, to begin with. Watch it indefinitely?
Is it closed, tho?