Quantum Mechanics and the Principle of Least Time
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- Опубликовано: 9 апр 2021
- In this short video I would like to tell you about the pioneering work of Pierre de Fermat, who discovered that light is the laziest object in the universe, always preferring to take the path that minimises the amount of time spent travelling between two points. But perhaps what is even more exciting is that Fermat’s principle lies at the heart of one of the most successful scientific theories ever created, quantum electrodynamics. In this video I would like to show you why light is so lazy, and how Fermat’s principle connects with our modern formulation of quantum electrodynamics. So, if you are ready for the ride, let's get started.
References:
Feynman Lectures on Physics - Feynman
QED: The strange theory of light and matter - Feynman
Fermat’s Principle and Hamilton’s Principle:
Does a least action take a least time for happening? - Anderson and Hadi (iopscience.iop.org/article/10...)
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I thinks it's funny that he goes into such great mathematical depth on some of the most complicated topics in physics yet still takes the time to explain what the chain rule is lol
Yes and same with trigonometry XD
he literally explained trigonometry for.... what? 5th graders ? okay
Agree with you ....I like His all video's
@@Cashman9111 hey some people are dumb like me let him explain
@@arpitdhukia9026 I don't mind ;), and you are probably not dumb, just... lazy - like light ;)
Mark my words...this series of videos will one day be archived as a lecture collection for a comprehensive Physics course. Excellent way of explanation.
It is always the Greeks the discover the secret in nature: math, science, philosophy. The Roman Empire lasted 15 hundred year, there was not a single person can match the Greeks. Forget about Greeks, can you find one person in the 15 hundred years can be called mathematician, scientist, or a philosopher? The Roman Empire was utter failure of mankind.
FACTS! Everything this channel does is fantastic, so detailed and so informative!
History should be like science in the sense that it aught to be objective, it aught to be told truthfully not to be used to secure some dominant groups preferred version of society. Nobel Laureate in physics, Dr. Abdus Salam wrote:
“Ibn-al-Haytham (Alhazen, 965-1039 CE) was one of the greatest physicists of all time. He made experimental contributions of the highest order in optics. He enunciated that a ray of light, in passing through a medium, takes the path which is the easier and ‘quicker’. In this he was anticipating Fermat’s Principle of Least Time by many centuries. He enunciated the law of inertia, later to become Newton’s first law of motion. Part V of Roger Bacon’s ‘Opus Magus’ is practically an annotation to Ibn al-Haytham’s Optics.”
RUclips might flag it for mansplaining but you have a British accent so it'll be fine.
@@seanleith5312 Two words: indoor plumbing
"Light is the laziest object in the Universe". Ah, so I have a rival then.
I felt in love with physics at an early age, just learning the concepts. At highschool I had an awesome professor that presented to me all the mathematics to understand and enjoy classical physics. Sadly, I was unable to study it at university level. Finding your channel almost 15 years later helped me a lot to reconnect with the joy of understanding nature.
Thanks for all the work you put on this material.
Why werent you able to study it in uni if you dont mind answering, just curious
@@auridon lack of rich parents, and having to work fulltime since I have 19.
@@_joac Ah i feel ya, I still went to uni but I work a part-time job and pay for my stuff myself since i have no rich parents either. Without my grants and scholarships, i probably wouldn't have gone to uni either.
@@_joac aw man
@@auridon I just got my grant for college today and it paid for everything!
Next video after only 4 days? Let's go!
Content from this channel doesnt only answer scientific questions using concise explainations and equations, but it also gives historical perspective as well.
Yes true true
sorry for highjacking this comment, but whenever i post in root my comments dont go through i think.
Physics Explained: What do you have to say about 1/s in the planck equation.
I think we all need to appreciate how you manage to create such high quality content with PowerPoint and a microphone.
Faxxxx
Sir, you are a legend and I thank you deeply. I only found this channel recently and studied physics until leaving university at the end of the first year but you have already taught me so much, so many details and key pieces of the logical puzzle that were never made clear to me. For example, I had known that the principle of least time was somehow due to the interference of the various wave functions contributions from the possible paths, and heard that it was a result of the non-optimal paths somehow cancelled out, but I didn't understand the mechanism. I assumed it was too complicated for my level and accepted that I would come back to it later. I now see that the reason is straightforward, simple and elegant. No more difficult to grasp than the rest of the math we had to learn. This is about the 10th time you have done this for me already... pointed out a key piece of the puzzle. Sometimes it can be annoying or feel patronising when you take the time to explain/recall things that like Pythagorean theorem or the chain rule, but when I think about it I realise what you're doing is providing the whole argument from first principles, with every detail necessary to understand, so that no one gets left behind no matter their level. It is humbling and wonderful to get to understand something a little deeper, thank you.
Explaining Snell's Law was great and all, but the highlight was explaining mirages. That was amazing!
Glad you enjoyed it!
This topics is relatively easier, but unfortunately, the quantum mechanics explanation of Snell Law is a little confusing, maybe because most people never know why the sum of vectors is related to the overall probability of receiving light emitted by A at B?
as a non-English speaker, i can easily understand what you are saying. very glad to get find your channel
I get what you mean, but if you can understand this I'd class you as an English speaker
I love these videos... Your clear, simple explanations of each step of the derivation process is inspiring. I see people with all levels of mathematical experience in the comments; the care you put into fostering genuine curiosity in each of them is a work of art to me. thank you
Exactly, superbly said
Beautiful description - Feynman would be proud of you!
Even more weird when you consider light does not experience time, yet it takes the path of least time.
Lol that’s right. Light perceives 0 time lol
if Houston used telescopes to look onboard the Enterprise they would see the crew running in slow motion
But everyone experiences proper time. E.g. Picard looks at his watch & he sees it ticking at normal speed. He sees his crew running about at normal speed.
Therefore if light could experience time, it would experience time running at normal speed. It would experience proper time.
@@alwaysdisputin9930 Proper time at light speed is instantaneous.
@@alwaysdisputin9930 Proper time for light is always t = 0 , infact , you'll be travelling at a finite speed in space but an infinite one in time (relative to the observer travelling at light speed) going from andromeda to the milky way would take exactly 0s , but to someone on earth it would still take You millions of years to reach our galaxy
@@renatoandresmartinezrubio8428 Your sentence is unclear. Please can you work on trying to make your sentences more clear. Use full stops. DrPhysicsA is the best IMO. Try to copy him. Also Physics Explained & DrBecky.
I appreciate you taking your time to explain more 'simple' concepts, such as trigonometry. It gives everyone a chance to follow your contents, and even if some information ends up getting lost, it also provide a clear path on what to check further. Your videos contain an amazing amount of information and I wish to thank you again for making them.
I’m glad to know you’ve managed to find a way to share your amazing explanations with everyone! It’s not quite the same as your in class lectures, but maybe I won’t have to miss your Physics classes as much!! Thank you.
Excuse me what
As usual, an amazing way to convey different mathematical perspectives about key physical phenomena. It's worth emphasizing the conceptual clarity, the mathematical rigor, and the understandable explanation. Great work!!! Please keep going!!!
Exactly, this is just amazing
This is an excellent video, I thought it had been available for a long time but I see it's just been posted last week. Thank you. Your walkthrough of the minimization problem is inspirational.
This channel is just so awesome. I really enjoy every video despite the fact that there are sometimes topics that I do not understand. Thanks for the videos and keep up the good work
Glad you enjoy it!
I understand QED in simple terms! That's amazing! You're the one of the best physics explainers in the field!
Wow, thanks!
Loving all these vids you're making! They're all so good and clear. Thanks
This is brilliant, maybe the first time I'm actually understanding the connection between qed, defraction and Snell's laws. Awesome!
Great video again! I suppose one thing I would add is that another consequence of the probability amplitudes being like you describe is that if we were able to conduct an experiment where we measured the x position at which the photons cross the air-water boundary to within some degree of accuracy, far from the position of minimum time, the probability would be very small as all of the amplitudes at nearby x positions would sum destructively, while the probability near the minimum would be large as the amplitudes would sum constructively :)
OMG You are uploading so fast! Appreciated man!
Just found this channel and now I'm hooked on these videos! As a creator, I felt truly inspired by how you took the time to explain even the simplest things before diving into the advanced stuff.
This is absolutely magnificent! I love how easy it was to understand the begining, deriving snails theorem, and using functional analysis to find the least time. But the quote by feynman at the end was so stunning. Truely awesome to understand reality
Glad you enjoyed it!
@@PhysicsExplainedVideos Your videos are a real treasure for youtube. Honestly, you should be given an award for the best physics video content creation in youtube. You breathtaking high quality presentation in your videos and unambiguous in depth and detail formal explanations and physical interpretation given, is leaving really no room for misunderstanding and is an amazing achievement. Be sure your videos are not only educational but are being used also as a review material by scholars and academics. People watching your videos not only appreciate more physics but also mathematics and how these two are entangled together the one pushing forward the other and controlled by logic.
Really, best physics scholar literature content in long memory currently on RUclips or any other public electronic media.
You have risen the bar to a much higher new level . Bravo!
much appreciated for going into the mathematical bit for the theory. often, the other yt educators skip the math part. QED, quantum mech, trig, calculus everything in 20 min video and yet comprehensible to people like me who have been away from the field. great work.
I am very excited for the next videos!! Great job
Another great video, honestly made Schnells law interesting, and it makes me wonder why I didn't learn about this. Keep it up!
Superb video. You pack in so much vital, and fascinating, material - and do it so clearly. It makes me want to go back and re-read Feynman's wonderful little QED.
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for the kind and encouraging words
As always love your videos, I do not understand maths as well as I would like but you are helping so much. I value so much what you do and have just one wish that you keep making video. Excellent work .
Glad the videos are helpful
Can't get enough of this great content! Amazing work!
So elegant and simple... and the derivation of Snell's law is something anyone with calc 1 under their belt.
Glad to see another video so quickly. Hello from Toronto 🇨🇦
Another great video. One of the best science channels there is!
Wow, this quality content so frequently? Good work man keep it up!
Just found this channel and you earned yourself a sub. Fascinating stuff also glad you don't skip the math even tho I don't understand it it's cool to see for some reason :)
woah, it all made perfect sense. I knew about Snell's law and that in some sense light took the path of least time, but I never quite understood it. And the best part was how easily it was all merged with qed, given that I was also vaguely aware that it also worked in quantum mechanics but in an even more nebulous way (I remember my professor saying something along the lines of light sort of 'looking ahead' in a causality breaking way, but honestly I can't remember much).
Out of all the great physics RUclips channels available yours is the best. Keep up the amazing work!
That's the kind of channel that I don't miss a single video! Always a beautiful dive in nature
Glad you enjoy it!
@@PhysicsExplainedVideos I wonder if the QED explanation could be applied to the effect seen with gravitational lensing even though the similar visual effects are for entirely different reasons? Also - I don't think Feynman proposed an equivalent explanation using the wave model but I wonder if someone did whether we could say that there is destructive interference everywhere except for the path of least time?
@@chriskennedy2846 I am really liking this channels approach;
Since "remote sources" see gravitational lensing it is concurrent to examine EM ( light ) as QED; If "hard-backscattering" disperses chromatically-as it does-then lensing would have an effect if gravity affects EM which it rather obviously does based on observations ○ My work currently suggests that Gravity is an "effect of" rather than a causal force of it's own ~ The result of that should be that distant EM is chromatically dispersed as it passes the intervening galaxy such as in diffraction as observed on the bench ○ At any scale the wave model holds it is only that at CDM Physics the effect becomes "lines" ( discrete bands of resonance ) which are themselves only resonances as described by Matt Strassler
@@ChiDraconis What do you propose is the actual force behind what we perceive as gravity?
@@chriskennedy2846
Luckily as fate would have it I have been working on related for several years:
*"Gravity is an effect-of not a causal force of it's own"*
Superb content ! As per usual. The 1st time I seen Feynman explain QED, it blew my mind. Still does actually.
Glad you enjoyed it!
a flavor-full mix of physics, maths, and history that delivers a clear and helpful explanation of some complex concepts. Thank you for your effort. i enjoyed and i learned and i will watch again🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼
Glad you liked it!
This was one of the best explanations I have ever gotten for this principle. You are a GENIUS!
One if the best videos I seen in a long time. As someone who hasn't sat in a calulus or physics class in a very long time, I found the math was presented with a perfect amount of explanation.
This was awesome! please continue and dont stop.this was greatly explained .thank you
This channel is such a gem. I'm glad I found it.
This is a superb video. Certainly one of the best if not the best on principle of least action and its connection to quantum physics
A great video for understanding these staffs! Thanks. Take love ❤️
It helped indeed!
This video gave me a deeper understanding of how things really work. You accidentally explained Feynman path integrals. But there is more. Much much more.
Amazing work as always!
how you managed to compress so much knowledge into one video is mindblowing..QM is a gift that keeps giving :)
Loving the quantity of videos recently! :D
Video was made with high quality and good explications ! I really enjoyed this video, thank you so much
Man I friggin love your videos so much!! Thank you for these!!
Glad you like them!
I was waiting for the day where you would talk about the Feynman QED description in his marvelous book ("All we have to do is simply to trace arrows !").
This book is very dear to me, by far my favorite scientific book. It has been a revelation when I first read it and no other physics book came close since then.
But Feynman purposely did not go too much into the details, essentially the mathematics of QED. This is sort of a missing piece for me so I can not wait to see your future detailed video about QED !
Thank you always for this great video, for you work and clarity.
This is a nice condensed adaptation of some of the arguments from QED. It's nice.
Its channels like this that make me reconsider the idea of a flipped class room. Flipped meaning, students watch video at home and when they arrive in the classroom they can ask as many questions as they like. Typically this doesn't work because students can tend to be undisciplined and won't watch the videos at their leisure, but this video series plus many other physics channels do such a great job at explaining stuff that its making me think that such a configuration would work very well in this new era.
Anyway, love your stuff, I try and always watch your content the moment it is released (hit the bell). Keep it up!
Hi Khalil. I agree. Such preparation would allow students to shine. Lazy kids will not do well, but this is better than the present broken UK system where 50% students get top marks, after years of grade inflation has created a distorted grade distribution. I'd love to be able to enter an informed discussion in the classroom.. these threads are the nearest I'll get. My kids will enjoy the system you describe at University. Old duffer here :)
That's fairly typical for university education in Denmark, the students attend lectures and read material before and then attend a classroom with usually a higher level student where they go over it together. They'll also have smaller groups where each student has to present a problem to the rest of the class.
It's not lazy, it's in a hurry. Excellent video
one of the best physics videos I have ever seen on RUclips 🔥
Gosh, what a well thought explanation. I wish that this was around when I was studying this stuff. Cheers.
@Physics Explained Your videos are a real treasure for youtube. Honestly, you should be given an award for the best physics video content creation in youtube. You breathtaking high quality presentation in your videos and unambiguous in depth and detail formal explanations and physical interpretation given, is leaving really no room for misunderstanding and is an amazing achievement. Be sure your videos are not only educational but are being used also as a review material by scholars and academics. People watching your videos not only appreciate more physics but also mathematics and how these two are entangled together the one pushing forward the other and controlled by logic.
Really, best physics scholar literature content in long memory currently on RUclips or any other public electronic media.
You have risen the bar to a much higher new level . Bravo!
Awesome channel thank you just got done watching all the videos and left wanting more.
A couple in the pipe line
Oh boy. This is so well explained - incredible. Very clear.
This is unquestionable the best channel of youtube.. Kids, just skip college and watch this.. I am on the floor in awe..
Thx. Very enjoyable indeed😊 @ 18.22 curve goes ( continuing its own path ) like going under ground ( below the X-Axis ) than comes up again to the Eye-Level of Observer. Cheers🍻
Great topic can't wait to watch
Class, Class ...Classic expression. Nice ......I enjoyed this video in full. What I understood in half becomes full now.
Deliver more videos.
Early for once! Looking forward to the rest of video.
Amazing content, crystal clear.
Thank you! Remarkable clarity. I really wish I had grown up with access to brilliant work like this. I still remember being the one to stick my hand up to ask "how light knew before it setoff how dense the water would be".. he said "all you need to know is it just does ok" 😂
Glad you enjoyed it!
it's also a quite nice illustration to lay sine waves over all paths from A to B, because they tend to cancel out (meaning that they have destructive interference at B) for most paths except around the optimum. the most intuitive way to explain Fermat's principle imo
Yeah, destructive interference can be a model to be used in this instance, but you will run into trouble in other circumstances.
But won't you get areas of constructive interference symmetrically arranged around the optimal point?
@@tim40gabby25 the path with the most constructive interference is the optimal one. I cannot really explain in words why, sorry, but when you draw / simulate it, it checks out.
To build some intuition you can think about it this way: we are only interested in interference between "neighbouring" paths (or paths that are very close to each other) and the stronger the phase shift between the neighbouring paths, the stronger the destructive interference. As the phase at the final point is only determined by the duration light takes to traverse the path, the path with the smallest first derivative in time (i.e. the fastest path) will have the lowest amount of interference.
"Pink Expression" is a perfect album name.
Great vid, btw.
Your series is incredible.Thank you very much. My wish list for future videos would be Dirac's equation, the Higgs Boson, and Feynman diagrams .....
thank you so much, I love your way of explaining. So thorough and provides historical and intuitive context for all the ideas and proofs (which makes understanding them much much easier). Brilliant, this will have a home in my bookmarks!
edit: even with no background in quantum mechanics, I understood the reasoning behind the last section of the video, something rooted in quantum mechanics (although not completely of course, given it was only 4 minutes haha). I think your explanation has been the best explanation of ANY concept I have ever been presented in my entire life…
Wow! Another great video...nice job
Simply brilliant (again).
Superb Explanation. Anyone can fall in love with physics if explanation is like this.
Thanks for the encouraging feedback, very much appreciated!
Thank you. This was a very clear explanation.
You are answering questions I never asked n I love it. 😂
Excellent video as always, thank you! If possible please make a video on the principle of least action. Many thanks!
Thank you so much for this brilliant video
Loving the videos and have been missing content like this, what education so you have? As I am considering studying physics at uni next year, and wondered what your experience was
You are the best ..... again you explain everything so simple.......
You are very close to discover and explain Theory of Everything.......🤔😎
You are actually forcing me to pass my physics exams with how easy these are to understand! Thank you!
Really enjoyed this! It would be great to see a more detailed follow-on.
I was shocked by nature's behaviour when I first listened to Richard Feynman's Univ of Aukland lecture video where he talks of vectors going round (zing, zing, zing, ...) and not doing much to the probability amplitude awy from the center and building up near the center (for reflection cases). This is a great video illustrating those concepts. Please talk about what is really happening in scattering inside the water (or glass) as the photons interact with electrons making those materials in a subsequent video. Much appreciated. Gerald
Excellent video! Thank you.
You’ve helped me become a physics person where not even 6 months ago I self admittedly hated the subject. Thank you so much.
Very interesting explanations, incredibly intuitive
3:56 to 4:48 has a wonderfully visualized explanation involving a Geometric Wavelength.
Brilliant video. I need to watch it at least twice againg after I've forgotten about it so I may be able to understand...
Many thanks!
SIncerly one of the best videos I've ever seen
After reading that title, I thought it was a reference to how Heisenberg's uncertainty principle makes it seem that God is using a programming technique known as Lazy Evaluation, where a dynamic value is only calculated if and when it is required (i.e. because a user should be observing it's effect).
Great video BTW!
This is a very nice derivation of Snell's Law as well as a quick and simple explanation of why Snell's Law works.
It's really facinating how these properties that we describe by using these intricate equations. Nature & the Cosmo's on the other hand just naturally find these behaviors and keeps the most important ones constant throughout space and time.
i think it could be like so: light does take all the routes between A and B, but since the route thats the shortest time "gets there" first, it has a roll of probablility, so a chance to collapse the wavefunction. as more time elapses, more and more rolls are happening. and as only the rolls that are near the fastest route happen, theyre the ones "racking up" the tries, making it more and more likely the actual route will be near shortest time
Interesting - but could you repost, clarifying your argument, please?
@@tim40gabby25 um... what wasn't clear? 😅I'm sorry... I'm not a physicist
Very nicely explained.
Excellent Explanations. You should have 10 million subscribers
I really like the fact that you explain some of the thought processes of discoverers.
How would he know those processes? At most he can repeat what they said about themselves. How do you know that those statements are accurate? :-)
22:07 goosebumps, i had seen such diagram related to butterfly effect,but didn't understand it,or never tried to understand it...here too I am unable to get a perfect picture, but I enjoy your videos
Well keep making these videos,upto to my knowledge topics are explained correctly