![]() Think of classical computers as a Newtonian, deterministic approach to computation. They “ain’t nothing”-or they’re always everything-until we “call ‘em.” Heisenberg initially felt deeply alarmed by the ramifications but eventually came to appreciate what he was seeing as the “strangely beautiful interior” of reality. The more we know about one quantity the less we know about the other-and until we observe the particles, we can consider them to be simultaneously in all their possible states. The mathematics worked and its elegance impressed even Albert Einstein, but it came at the cost of no longer being able to describe precise quantities like the position or momentum of any subatomic particles. His breakthrough was to use only what could be observed-the frequency and intensity of light emitted when an electron moves between orbits-to define tables of possible locations for the electron. In the summer of 1925, he isolated himself on the uninhabited island of Helgoland off the German coast and steeped himself in defining the mathematics that would explain the behaviours of electrons, which his mentor, Niels Bohr, had observed in the laboratory. Say his name Heisenberg was an early 20 th century pioneer of quantum physics. To see how, let’s take a closer look at the uncertainty principle. In mathematical terms, quantum computing is probabilistic instead of deterministic, but this doesn’t mean it isn’t useful. And, while we count on classical computers to give us exact solutions to the problems we pose them, we’re finding that-thanks, again, to Heisenberg-quantum computers are only good at being almost right. Similarly, in the case of quantum physics, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle undermines the accuracy we’ve come to expect from Newton. The first says “I call ‘em as I see ‘em,” to which the second replies, “Well, I call ‘em as they are.” The third points out the fundamental truth of quantum physics: “Boys, they ain’t nothing until I call ‘em!” The precision that Frank Robinson treasured about baseball is, in other words, tempered by the subjectivity of the umpire’s power of observation. Whether we’re launching baseballs out of the park or rocket ships to the moon, Newton’s laws have enabled us to precisely predict the behaviour of objects in motion on a large scale for hundreds of years.īut Werner Heisenberg might disagree-and he might tell us the old joke about three umpires describing their approach to the game. ![]() There’s something to that-a pitch is either a ball or a strike, a hit is either fair or foul, a base runner is either safe or out. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.” And on July 31, 1973, he gave us his famous quote from which I’ve borrowed the title of this post: “Close don’t count in baseball. ![]() He was the only player ever to be named MVP in both official professional baseball leagues. 294 batting average, 1,812 RBIs and 586 home runs. Robinson went on to a hall of fame career with a. Robinson’s team would win the double-header, and, eventually, the championship that year. It’s not often a player literally hits one out of the park. Adjusting his swing accordingly, he then applied Newton’s second and third laws to launch the ball on a trajectory that would carry it completely out of the stadium, rolling to a stop underneath a car in the parking lot 540 feet from home plate. Within a fraction of a second, Robinson intuitively applied Newton’s first law of motion to understand that the spin and the air resistance over the ball’s seams would cause it to drop into the strike zone low and inside. In the bottom of the first inning of the second game, with one out and one on, he was up to bat facing the opposing team’s ace pitcher who threw a fastball. On the warm Sunday afternoon of May 8, 1966, Robinson was playing in an early-season double-header. ![]() Frank Robinson might have known a thing or two about physics.
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