Nitish Nayak
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nitissh.bsky.social
Nitish Nayak
@nitissh.bsky.social
particle physicist @ https://www.phy.bnl.gov/edg
I like movies, games and shitposting.

letterboxd : https://letterboxd.com/_nitish/
March 10, 2025 at 10:23 PM
I think I've managed to confuse myself about this too now lol - its been a while (plus the math works out so its easy to just not think too hard about it 😅)
August 14, 2023 at 2:47 AM
actually I should be more clear here 😅 probability of getting atleast 1 head can be summed from probabilities of getting exactly 1, exactly 2 etc. Waves on the other hand are fuzzier because if you don't restrict it spatially you aren't summing up from discrete localized coins, there's a "coin wave"
August 14, 2023 at 1:35 AM
that's definitely one way to do it, atleast bounding it spatially. I think its a bit like a counting game. if you flip N coins and count how many heads there are, you always get a particle like answer, i.e the probabilities for each number can be added.
August 14, 2023 at 1:26 AM
your intuition is correct! particles are ~waves of definite momentum and mass (which are defined concretely). if you have a free particle that just behaves like an unlocalized wave. but if you put it in a different environment (squished inside bounding box for eg) it becomes more particle-y
August 14, 2023 at 12:36 AM